A new way to reward innovation in African agriculture

William Masters and colleagues are building a novel approach to development assistance, through which donors could reward innovators for the new technologies needed to help African farmers raise their incomes and reduce malnutrition. These “prize rewards” would be cash payments, made to innovators after their technologies are adopted, like a royalty payment for non-market services. Prize rewards would be strictly proportional to the extent of adoption and impact, using verifiable data from controlled experiments and farm surveys to document which new techniques work best in what areas.

The proposal is for a specific way to deliver cash payments to innovators, in direct proportion to the social benefits generated by farmers’ adoption of the techniques they helped to develop and disseminate. These prize rewards would help innovators expand their activities, and also attract private investors and other donor funding to help to spread the most successful new technologies.

To earn prize royalties, innovators would submit data from controlled experiments and adoption surveys to a prize secretariat, which would audit the data and submit certified results to donors for disbursement against lines of credit allocated for this program. Payment rates would depend on the available prize funds and the extent of measured gains in each time period.

For example, a million dollar prize fund might elicit a total of $36 million in documented benefits, in which case each applicant would receive a payment equal to 2.8% of the gains they generate. Typical applicants would be consortia of public agencies and private firms, who would be motivated by the prize program to generate the greatest possible verifiable gains.

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2. African Science, Technology & Innovation Indicators Initiative (ASTII)
3. African Science, Technology & Innovation Indicators Initiative (ASTII)