frugal innovation Archives

Frugality Beyond Scarcity: Challenging Universal Narratives in Frugal Innovation

By ISS Blog Bliss 15 October 2024 1806 views

This blog series, Rhiannon Matthias and Peter Knorringa aims to spotlight diverse cultural values related to frugality, their alignment with sustainable practices, and touch on questions linked to the legitimacy of frugal innovation. By incorporating indigenous perspectives and cultural narratives alongside other global viewpoints, this initiative seeks to bridge academic insights with public understanding, inspiring a more inclusive and nuanced dialogue on frugality.

Ruins on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca by Rhiannon Mathias

Frugal innovation is making headway as a relatively new concept in global discourses on sustainability, development, and ethical living. As outlined in the Handbook for Frugal Innovation (2023), this approach generally involves reducing the complexity and cost of goods and production processes while maintaining essential functionality and performance. While frugal innovation as a formal area of study is relatively new, the virtue of frugality and its associated practices have deep roots in many cultures worldwide. The Global South, encompassing regions and populations historically disadvantaged by global economic and political systems, has often been viewed as a primary target ‘market’ for or beneficiaries of frugal innovation(s).

Yet, simultaneously, the Global South holds a wealth of philosophical traditions that offer nuanced and potentially radical reconceptualization of frugality. These include concepts such as Ubuntu from Southern Africa and Buen Vivir from the Andean region, which emphasize interconnectedness, community, and prioritizing collective well-being over individual excess. However, these perspectives are frequently overlooked in the new frugal innovation discourse, which at times tends towards ahistorical and universalist takes. This universalizing tendency is, on the one hand, somewhat understandable in a new area of study that is also concerned with practical outputs and outcomes. On the other hand, it is not without consequences. As one contributor to the handbook astutely observes, “in trying to create a more universalized narrative the specific and local is erased.”

Challenging the Universal: The Importance of Local Perspectives

The erasure of local nuances is not merely a theoretical concern; it has tangible implications for how frugal innovations are conceived, developed, and implemented across diverse contexts, potentially affecting their success and impact. To move beyond a simplistic “West vs. Rest” dichotomy, it is crucial to engage with the deeper ideological and cultural roots of frugality in the Global South. This engagement can stretch the discursive walls that encase frugality as a concept, allowing for more nuanced understandings.

These perspectives on frugality have evolved in different contexts of historical struggle and resilience. Through their exploration, it becomes possible to better see the potential pitfalls in practical outcomes and challenge notions of universality in frugal innovation discourse. How do societies that have long grappled with resource constraints and colonial legacies understand and practice the virtue of frugality?

African Humanism and Ubuntu: Collective Frugality Rooted in Interconnectedness

At the heart of many Southern African philosophical traditions lies a profound understanding of human interconnectedness, most famously articulated in the concept of Ubuntu. Rooted etymologically in Tswana, Sotho, Tonga, Zulu, and many other Southern African languages, Ubuntu has a rich and evolving history that defies easy categorization. Gade (2011) demonstrates that the term ‘ubuntu’ has appeared in writing since at least 1846, with its meaning shifting significantly over time.

Initially defined as a human quality, Ubuntu later expanded to encompass notions of African humanism, philosophy, ethics, and worldview. The now-ubiquitous Nguni proverb ‘umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu’ (often translated as ‘a person is a person through other persons’) only became widely associated with Ubuntu between 1993 and 1995, coinciding with South Africa’s transition to democracy. Ubuntu’s emphasis on interconnectedness and collective well-being presents a philosophical framework that fundamentally challenges individualistic notions of virtue. As Ramose (2003) explains, Ubuntu embodies a nuanced philosophy of human interdependence and collective well-being that goes far beyond its often-simplified translation, “I am because we are.”

This raises important questions: Does Ubuntu suggest a form of ‘collective frugality’ where virtue lies not in individual restraint, but in the equitable distribution and use of resources within a community? It is crucial to recognize that Ubuntu’s resurgence in post-apartheid South Africa has been deeply political. Eze (2010) argues that there’s a risk of Ubuntu being used as a “conceptual trick” to promote a false sense of reconciliation without addressing underlying structural issues. Moreover, the application of Ubuntu principles in modern, urbanized contexts presents challenges. How can ideas of communal resource-sharing be implemented in societies marked by significant economic disparities and individualistic economic structures?

Viewing frugality through the lens of Ubuntu can open new possibilities for addressing resource management and sustainability challenges. It prompts us to consider how communal values, and interconnectedness can inform more holistic and equitable approaches to resource use, potentially offering solutions to the environmental and social challenges faced by modern societies.

Buen Vivir: Redefining Prosperity in Harmony with Nature

Shifting focus to the Andean region reveals a complex set of concepts that offer profound challenges to dominant paradigms of progress and innovation. While often used interchangeably in academic and political discourse, the Kichwa concept of Sumak Kawsay (often translated as “Life in Plenitude”) and the more widely known Buen Vivir (Good Living) have distinct meanings and implications. At its core, Buen Vivir emphasizes harmony between humans and nature, community solidarity, and a broader conception of wealth beyond material accumulation. Gudynas (2011) describes Buen Vivir as suggesting that true well-being can only be achieved in the context of community, including the broader community of nature. In this framework, frugality isn’t about deprivation or scarcity, but about finding fulfillment in balance and reciprocity rather than excess.

Buen Vivir enriches the frugality discourse by reframing it within a holistic worldview that prioritizes ecological balance and communal well-being. It challenges us to consider frugality not merely as a means of resource conservation, but as a pathway to harmonious coexistence with nature and community. This perspective invites us to reimagine frugal practices as tools for fostering sustainable relationships between humans and their environment, rather than just methods for reducing consumption. It suggests that community-based, nature-aligned approaches to innovation and resource use can lead to more holistic and sustainable solutions. This paradigm offers potential alternatives to the environmental and social challenges posed by conventional models of economic development, emphasizing balance and reciprocity over unchecked growth and consumption.

Relatedly, the Spanish term for frugal innovation, “innovación popular,” evokes notions of community involvement and grassroots innovation. This linguistic connection invites consideration of frugality not just as individual restraint, but as a collective practice, aligning with the principles of Buen Vivir. It implies a bottom-up, community-led approach to innovation that resonates with the core tenets of Buen Vivir.

However, like Ubuntu, Buen Vivir has also been subject to political reconfiguration and co-option. Several Andean countries, notably Ecuador and Bolivia, have incorporated Buen Vivir principles into their constitutions and national development plans. While this represents a significant recognition of indigenous philosophies, it has also led to tensions and contradictions. Villalba (2013) points out that there’s often a gap between the rhetoric of Buen Vivir and the continuation of extractive economic policies that conflict with its principles. The concept has sometimes been used to legitimize government actions without fundamentally altering economic structures or power dynamics. This raises complex questions: How can a philosophy that emphasizes harmony with nature be reconciled with the pressures of economic development and modernization?

Reflections on Collective Frugality

The examples of Ubuntu and Buen Vivir illustrate the richness and complexity of Global South perspectives on frugality and well-being. They offer profound challenges to dominant narratives of development and innovation, suggesting alternative ways of conceptualizing progress, community, and humanity’s relationship with nature. At the same time, their real-world applications reveal the challenges of translating philosophical principles into practice, especially in the face of entrenched economic systems and power structures.

Examining these philosophies, including their complexities and contradictions, allows for a more nuanced understanding of frugality as a virtue. This understanding goes beyond simplistic notions of “doing more with less” to encompass questions of equity, community, and ecological harmony. Approaching these ideas requires both an open mind and a critical eye. It is essential to resist the temptation to romanticize “local ways of life” or “indigenous knowledge systems.” Many people in Africa and the Andean region live in cities and participate in capitalist economies. The goal is not to present these philosophies as untouched alternatives to modernity, but to understand how they continue to evolve and inform contemporary debates about resource use, community, and well-being.

Expanding philosophical horizons and resisting the erasure of local specificities may provide new ways to think about frugality, innovation, and sustainable living in our interconnected world. As this series continues, subsequent entries will delve deeper into philosophical traditions from the Global South, exploring their implications for frugal innovation, sustainability, and global development.

This article was first published by the International Centre for Frugal Innovation

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the Authors

Rhiannon Matthias

Peter Knorringa is a Professor of Private Sector & Development at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) at Erasmus University Rotterdam. His Chair focuses on the diverse roles and impacts of business on development. He does not perceive private firms as either the ‘enemy’ or the ‘heroic deliverer’ of development. Instead, he aims to advance a more empirical and nuanced debate on where and when entrepreneurs and firms are more likely to contribute to achieving more inclusive and sustainable development.

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Disaster Risk Reduction doesn’t (always) need to be expensive: introducing Frugal DRR

By ISS Blog Bliss 10 October 2024 2049 views

In this blog, to mark global Disaster Risk Reduction Day, Tom Ansell (HSC Coordinator) considers whether disaster risk reduction activities can be made less-resource intensive through Frugal Innovation. Whilst Frugal DRR shouldn’t be considered a money-saving replacement for development and infrastructure work, it does provide an opportunity for communities to reduce their vulnerability and increase their capacity for dealing with the consequences of hazards that could include extreme weather, geological hazards, or other environmental hazards.

What is DRR? And what’s wrong with the term ‘natural disasters’?

Disaster Risk Reduction, according to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) is activities that are “aimed at preventing new and reducing existing disaster risk and managing residual risk, all of which contribute to strengthening resilience and therefore to the achievement of sustainable development.” So, in simple terms, activities that work to prevent and mitigate risks to reduce the effects of disasters. It’s important to note here that we use the term disaster in connection with hazards like earthquakes, floods and others while avoiding the ‘natural disaster’, as this ignores the social dimension of disasters.

People across the world live in places that have different levels of risk and have different vulnerabilities in the face of these risks. More than the hazard itself, a much larger defining factor for how much damage, social upheaval, and loss of life occurs is how vulnerable people are, and how prepared they are for when a potential hazard becomes a disaster. In other words, an earthquake of magnitude 8 will have significantly different effects in a wealthy country with a strong governance system, to a much poorer country with (for example) a fragmented government. In the words of Margaret Arnold at the World Bank, “the key lesson is that disasters are social constructs. People are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and natural hazards due not just to their geographical context, but their financial, their social status, their cultural status, their gender status, their access to services, their level of poverty, their access to decision making, and their access to justice.”

For example, Tokyo often suffers from extreme stormy weather: as many countries with a Pacific coast do. The city of Tokyo, however, also has one of the largest storm drains in the world to help divert water resulting from storms or extremely heavy rainfall. The project, completed in the 1990s and costing around 3 billion US Dollars, means that though the city is often affected by tropical cyclones and typhoons, there is typically much less loss of life in the Tokyo area than others affected by the same typhoon – especially as the city of Tokyo has well-developed evacuation routes, early warning and information systems, and more besides.

This example serves to demonstrate the purpose of DRR activities: to prevent risks and – where this is not possible – to minimize the overall damage caused by extreme weather. As the ‘no natural disasters’ movement emphasizes, reacting after the event is a less intelligent way to respond to disasters, compared to prevention, pre-preparation, and planning is a much more productive and intelligent way to ‘respond’ to disasters. Various frameworks for ‘good’ risk management activities have been devised, including the Hyogo Framework (2005-2015) and Sendai Framework (2015-2030).

Are DRR activities always expensive?

In the example above, of the city of Tokyo, a major contributing factor to mitigating climate risks for the city involved constructing a large piece of public infrastructure. Similar projects have taken place around the world, for example the Delta Works in the Netherlands , the Thames Barrier in the UK, or the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway West Closure Complex in New Orleans in the USA. These three examples are all related to storm surges, flooding, or other water-related hazards. But (expensive) risk-reducing infrastructure also exists to mitigate the effects of rockfall (for example in Interlaken in Switzerland), avalanches (for example the Gazex system), or to stabilize land vulnerable to landslides through enormous retaining walls (for example in West Bengal, India).

At this point, it might seem that all DRR activities are exceptionally expensive, very large public infrastructure that are only available to the very wealthiest regions in the world. But that would be a serious oversimplification of what smaller groups of citizens, with or without the support of institutions, can achieve to mitigate risk and so reduce their vulnerability. DRR activities also include mapping areas that will be most affected by an extreme event, creating evacuation routes, developing information systems and early-warning systems, training citizens on flood-proofing their homes, or even making informational videos on what to do should a disaster strike.

This is not to say that large infrastructure projects aren’t important: indeed they can be transformational. However, it is important to emphasize that DRR activities are not always expensive: even though an all-round DRR plan for a place will likely include both more expensive infrastructure, less economically-expensive activities can also make a difference.

Can ‘Frugal Innovation’ inspire low-cost but effective interventions?

In order to develop new ideas around lower-cost (frugal) risk reduction activities, it is useful to dive into the world of Frugal Innovation. The International Centre for Frugal Innovation (ICFI), based at ISS and part of LDE, considers the practice and approach to be a potentially transformative way of finding new solutions to growing societal problems, in a non-excessive way. Andre Leliveld and Peter Knorringa, in an article from 2017 setting out the potential relationship between Frugal Innovation and development, note that the field sprouted from multiple sources but takes much inspiration from jugaad practices in South Asia. Jugaad is an excellent catch-all term (borrowed from Hindi, and with similar terms in Punjabi, Urdu, and various Dravidian languages including Telugu and Malyalam) for low-cost and often ingenious solutions to nagging problems; as well as the kind of mindset that allows the creative thinking around these solutions to occur. Whilst the term and thinking is often used in business (to create products for people with less purchasing power), it is very versatile.

Utilising some of the thinking inherent within Frugal Innovation in relation to DRR activities requires taking a solutions-oriented approach, and making use of existing resources, skills, or initiatives to reduce vulnerability by mitigating risk.

Painting and planning: Frugal Disaster Risk Reduction in action

How urban communities adapt to heatwaves across India is an interesting way to demonstrate how integrating Frugal Innovation techniques into Disaster Risk Reduction carries the potential for meaningful reduction in vulnerability.

Heatwaves have the potential to be very destructive, and one solution that is being rolled out across several areas that have a high number of informal dwellings in cities including Mumbai and Nagpur is the low-cost but high-yield technique of painting roofs white (to reflect the sun) and installing secondary ‘shade roofs’ on buildings. This can reduce inside temperatures by several degrees on the hottest of days. Similarly, a network of inexpensive recording devices has been installed to track ‘hotspots’ in the city, which can inform where communal ‘cooling zones’ need to be set up local city corporations or voluntary groups. And, in Ahmedabad in the north-west of India, a ‘Heat Action Plan’ was developed by the city corporation and scientific partners that is estimated to have prevented hundreds of fatalities.

Developing evacuation routes, making sure that citizens are prepared for what to do in a disaster, small and uncomplicated changes to people’s homes, or even utilising close-knit communities and communication networks as informal warning systems may not structurally reduce peoples’yet vulnerabilities yet can make a difference in preventing the worst of disaster impacts. And, whilst not as transformational as large public infrastructure projects, any gain in a communities’ resilience is an important step. Luckily ‘Frugal Innovation’ techniques show us that DRR doesn’t always need to be expensive.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author

Tom Ansell is the Coordinator of the Humanitarian Studies Centre and International Humanitarian Studies Association.

What can the frugal innovation debate learn from the Norm Life Cycle debate?

By ISS Blog Bliss 30 May 202414 December 2024 2545 views

There is a strong case for making innovations more frugal. The world needs innovations which are sparing in the use of resources and affordable by poor people. They matter especially in poor countries but also for people in rich countries, as frugal innovations can help us to push towards a more sustainable future. Frugal innovations are therefore relevant for most of the world’s population. The problem is that frugal innovation so far remains a fringe phenomenon. The question addressed in this blog is how frugal innovation can become the norm rather than remain the exception.

To address this question, we draw on the Norm Life Cycle framework because it helps us to unpack the time dimension. It creates the mental space for detecting insights into process and sequence. This blog shows how the Norm Life Cycle framework helps to understand how idealistic and committed actors – going against the tide – can bring a new norm towards a tipping point. Once it reaches this tipping point, it starts to become the new normal. Then also those who earlier dismissed this new norm will start to adhere to the new norm, even if with fits and starts. A final stage is when such a new norm becomes internalised in a society through policy and law making.

Norm life cycle based on Illustration in Savarimuthu and Cranefield(2019)

In what follows we present the Norm Life Cycle framework in more detail and then indicate how it can move us forward.

Three stages

The framework was developed by Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink in their article International norm dynamics and political change. It investigates how the norms for what is acceptable behaviour in a society change over time. Its key propositions are as follows. In the first stage of norm emergence, altruism, empathy, idealism and commitment are seen as the main motives for so called ‘norm entrepreneurs’ to push for a new norm. This new norm goes against the tide of ‘how things have always been done’ and is initially dismissed by mainstream stakeholders as going against common sense and the interests of the elites, being impractical, going to drive up costs, etc. An often-used example is the abolition of child labour. While child labour was once considered a normal and convenient practice in many societies in earlier centuries, at some point ‘enlightened’ activists began to rally against child labour. In the early stages these activists fought an uphill battle, and it took them lots of effort and perseverance to get the upper hand and reach what in the Norm Life Cycle framework is called the tipping point when such a new norm becomes mainstreamed.

This is called the second stage of norm cascading where it becomes ‘the right thing to do’ for more mainstream stakeholders beyond the idealistic norm entrepreneurs. Even less convinced stakeholders may start claiming they adopt the new norm in order to minimize the risk of being considered a laggard or ‘out of touch with the new reality’. Effectively, the societal license to operate has tipped and a new norm has become established. Another typical dimension of an established new norm is that it becomes difficult to imagine that such a norm did not exist before, like in the case of the broad conviction that child labour should never have been allowed.

The third and final stage is norm internalization. This is when the new norm becomes consolidated in policy and law making as it is considered to represent a generally accepted minimal level of legitimate behaviour. Here it is important to note that this implies that policy and law makers tend to follow norm setting in society instead of spearheading the establishment of new norms.

The key actors

What does this imply for the frugal innovation debate? In order to show how this framework helps us with mainstreaming frugal innovation thinking, we need to populate these stages with actors. We distinguish between two types of actors. Those who develop frugal innovations and those who facilitate the process.

Amongst those who actually develop frugal innovations, we can identify three types of norm entrepreneurs. The first group consists of people trying to creatively solve a bottleneck in their own community. They are not primarily motivated by the prospects of subsequently making a business based on their innovation. They recognise a problem and see a technical or organizational solution, which is affordable and saves energy or other resources. The second category are social entrepreneurs and NGOs who develop frugal innovations – sometimes with local stakeholders – to help address a Sustainable Development Goal, like access to electricity through a solar-panel driven local mini-grid. These two types of norm entrepreneurs embrace frugal innovation thinking as a way to tackle developmental challenges. The third type of entrepreneurs develop frugal innovations to enhance their competitiveness and profits. They may do this through, for example, simplifying and stripping products, services and systems from superfluous frills, using fewer and possibly more renewable resources.

Next to those actors who actually develop frugal innovations, we identify four types of facilitators. These are researchers, educators, early adopters and policy makers. Let us start with the researchers. An increasingly multi-disciplinary academic debate is emerging among researchers about the importance and relevance of frugal innovation. A recent example is a multi-disciplinary Handbook on Frugal Innovation, published by Edward Elgar. Educators further spread the message further, for instance business schools which offer case studies of frugal innovation in their courses for future executives. Another example is the popular module on Frugal Innovation for Sustainable Global Development offered to bachelor students from Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Universities in the Netherlands. This module presents frugal innovation as a crucial component in broader sustainability thinking for the next generation.

The third category of facilitators are so-called early adopters, a term that comes from marketing science. They make frugal innovations fashionable, demonstrating a lifestyle that others can then aspire to. Typically, they are younger people with high levels of income and education, for whom greener and more frugal consumption patterns are already a more established norm. A final facilitating actor are law and policy makers. In the basic Norm Life Cycle framework, they come to prominence only in the final stage of internalisation, where they further consolidate a new norm in the law and in policies. In principle, however, they can also play a role earlier in the process, as discussed in the next section.

Moving forward

What stage are we currently in? De facto we are in the norm emergence stage. However, advertising creates the illusion that we are already in the norm cascading stage. ‘Responsible resource use’ may be ubiquitous in advertising but not yet in reality. In this concluding section we indicate how the various actors can help the progression from norm emergence to norm cascading.

In the present norm emergence stage, norm entrepreneurs that actually develop and implement frugal innovations are crucial to show how such innovations benefit poorer people while being sparing in the use of resources. The facilitating actors are also crucial as their role is to showcase these examples and create the conditions for the broader public and policy makers to grasp the importance of frugal innovations. The research community, one of the facilitating actors, showed recently an encouraging sign of getting closer to the tipping point towards norm cascading. In its December 2023 editorial, the journal Nature apologizes for neglecting frugal innovation research and encourages policy makers, scientists and journal editors to ‘not just to make do, but to make amends’ and make frugal innovation a mainstream concern. (Nature, Vol 624, 7 Dec 2023, p. 8).

The question is how to achieve this. Here we benefit from the step taken in the previous section in which we populated the Norm Life Cycle framework with the relevant actors. Now we need to take this one step further and consider these actors not in isolation but as potential collaborators in a common project. The relevance of doing this was stressed in our previous blog which emphasized the role of coalitions in promoting renewable energy.

There are signs that some policy actors (facilitators of frugal innovation!) are starting to join hands and build alliances with like-minded stakeholders. Some policy makers at the provincial and European levels have been pro-active in generating interest in frugal innovation thinking, and in trying to convince their colleagues and political chiefs of its importance. Such frontrunners are important allies in attempts to weld stronger coalitions with like-minded norm entrepreneurs and other facilitators to push towards the key tipping point towards norm cascading.

Still, as a diverse community of facilitators, we need to become more strategic about the need to really act in tandem as norm entrepreneurs. As shown in our previous blog mentioned above, one can go further and build selective and temporary coalitions with stakeholders who may well have other ulterior objectives but would lend support to the initiative in question. This also applies here. While actors may have very different motives for promoting frugal innovation, we need to pragmatically form alliances to create critical mass. For example, actors whose prime concern is the fostering of local economic development or the promotion of Small and Medium Enterprise could become allies in supporting frugal innovation projects and policies. Operationally, we can start with developing a set of appealing pitches for various audiences of why and how frugal innovation will help to address some of the grand challenges of our time. Further sector- and region-specific research is needed to substantiate and concretize such pitches.

There is an alternative route from norm emergence to norm cascading in which early adopters play the key role. Let us explain. So far, we have assumed that the norms emerge in the context of poor communities. Indeed, frugal innovation research has tended to unearth examples of innovations which are resource saving and are affordable by the poor from the start. However, we need to recognise that some innovations are expensive to start with and become affordable by the poor later in the product life cycle. This is why we introduced the category of early adopters as facilitators of frugal innovation. These early adopters tend to be young, rich and well-educated, and they demonstrate a sustainable lifestyle and make it fashionable. This matters because the more others aspire to such lifestyles the faster the decline in prices and the greater the affordability by the not-so-well off. Researchers can contribute by showing examples of communities where frugal innovation thinking – taking this route – has become the way to move forward. In other words, a concern with the dynamics of frugal innovation leads us to also consider this route from norm emergence to norm cascading.

As stressed in the beginning, the Norm Life Cycle framework helps us to unpack the time dimension and creates the mental space for exploring processes and sequences. We have seen that bringing about a cascading effect is a huge challenge. Once frugal innovation reaches the norm cascading stage, policy and law makers are crucial to further consolidate this in the norm internalization stage. Moreover, the early adopters can pave the way towards norm internalization by setting the example of more frugal consumption patterns, out of choice, not necessity. For this norm internalization to occur it would benefit from a vision that is aspirational and expresses both the resource saving and affordability of our ambition. We propose ‘frugal prosperity for all’ as the vision to strive for.

This article was first published here

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Hubert Schmitz is a renowned development economist specializing in sustainable industrialization, investment politics, and green transformations with 40 years of expertise.

Peter Knorringa, is a Professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and specializes in the multifaceted influence of businesses on development.

What can the frugal innovation debate learn from the renewable energy debate?

By ISS Blog Bliss 20 February 202415 December 2024 1729 views

In this article, Hubert Schmitz and Peter Knorringa look into the pathways, processes, and coalitions necessary for achieving innovation, and compares the recent leaps in the renewable energy sector with the conditions to make frugal innovation practices a reality. They propose new ways of framing frugal innovation, borrowing from renewable energy campaigners, and propose new types of ‘coalitions of the willing’ that can help bring about innovation that is sparing of resources, and also accessible for people with lower incomes.

Making economic progress sustainable has become the central issue of our time. Recent work on frugal innovation seeks to contribute to this challenge. This blog asks what the analysts and practitioners of frugal innovation can learn from the renewable energy debate. Frugal innovation is a young line of work compared with that on renewable energy, which has a long and prominent history. It therefore makes sense to distil what the former can learn from the latter, particularly since both seek to contribute to the sustainability of human life on our planet.

The key attributes of frugal innovations are first, that they are sparing in the use of resources and second, that poor people can afford them. These features matter especially in poor countries but also for low-income people in rich countries. Frugal innovation is thus relevant for most of the world’s population and can contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. Here are some examples: low-cost ventilators that do not need electricity to help hospitals treating COVID patients; irrigation pumps that do not require diesel or electricity; safely sending and receiving money without a bank account.

What are we trying to achieve?

Our central concern is to find ways of making frugal innovations more common. Indeed, the central concern which underlies this blog is whether and how the development and uptake of frugal innovations can be accelerated.

There are of course examples of standard innovation that benefit poor people. Perhaps the best-known example is the mobile phone, which enables people to leapfrog fixed phone lines and organise their lives in a multitude of time saving ways: arrange meetings, make payments, negotiate deals, and access the latest information. The standard innovation process, however, is rarely driven by the concerns of poor people. On the contrary, the innovation process is usually targeted at the better off and benefits to the poor tend to be a by-product that emerges at a late stage in the product cycle. Support of frugal innovation aims to target lower income customers at an earlier stage and do so for many products. Even that is just half the battle. The aim is to come up with products which are also sparing in the use of scarce resources. Frugal innovation is about addressing the resource constraint and affordability criterion. This is a tall order.

Another way of capturing the essence of frugal innovation is to talk about over-engineering. Products tend to be over-engineered when the innovation process is not driven by concerns with affordability and material saving. Most of us have ample experience of dealing with over-engineered products that are sophisticated and expensive, providing features which we rarely, if ever, use. In contrast, we tend to have few products which result from frugal innovation. The aim is to help change that balance. But how?

In order to address this HOW question, some useful lessons can be learned from the renewable energy debate which has a longer history. Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy is essential for reducing carbon emissions responsible for the climate chaos (increasing frequency of extreme weather events) which we can now observe in many parts of the world. We will draw here in particular on the development and deployment of solar and wind energy, so far the most successful technologies in replacing fossil fuels. The literature on the energy transition is huge. In this blog we draw on two articles which have pulled together the most relevant lessons: Cameron Roberts, Frank Geels, Matthew Lockwood et al, 2018, ‘The politics of accelerating low-carbon transitions: towards a new research agenda’, Energy Research & Social Science 44, 304-311, and Hubert Schmitz, 2017, ‘Who drives climate relevant policies in the rising powers?’, New Political Economy 22:5, 521-540.

The first lesson is about framing. The concern is to accelerate frugal innovation. We are not starting from scratch. This provides a space for celebrating the frugal technologies and the organisations which have brought them about. There is something to build on. Exploring frugal innovation is not a hopeless undertaking. A framing in terms of accelerating progress also invites a discussion of why there is success in some cases and failure in others. Even if successes are rare, the comparison with failures makes for a more analytical debate.

The second lesson from the renewable energy debate is that the key problem is not technological but political. This seems to apply also to frugal innovation. Solutions which prioritise saving resources and being affordable can be found. But the forces which drive the innovation tend to take the process into a different direction. This became clear in a discussion we had with a senior EU official who was himself enthusiastic about the potential of frugal innovation but sceptical about getting it high onto the EU innovation policy agenda because ‘nobody lobbies for frugal innovation’.

The coalition perspective

This hint at politics takes us in the right direction but needs further thought. The renewable energy debate helps us with this. It suggests a political economy approach which takes four analytical steps:

Recognising that no single actor has the resources to bring about the transition to renewable energy.
Recognising that actors in government, business and civil society seek to advance or slow down the process.
Paying attention to alignments of interest across government, business and civil society.
Including actors with different motives and to understand these alignments.

Detailed empirical analysis has shown that these alignments of interest have made the difference at key moments in renewable energy promotion. The vocabulary used for these alignments varies, some call them ‘coalitions’, others prefer ‘alliances’. The breakthrough in the renewable energy debate came when it was recognised that those joining the coalition did not necessarily do so in order to fight climate change. Some were more concerned with securing energy for their region or company, others with building a new industry and creating jobs. What mattered was not their motivation but their support for a particular piece of legislation or for a new programme or project. Often the resulting coalition was incidental, members happened to pull in the same direction for whatever reason. In other cases, there was a consciously pursued strategy. This distinction between incidental and strategic coalition seems useful as well. Finally, it is important to realise that this coalition approach works both ways. It can help us to understand where and why progress was made. It can also help to understand where and why progress was held back.

In summary, climate-relevant renewable energy research has given us a language and an analytical apparatus which has the potential to advance the frugal innovation debate. We will now discuss some specific ways in which this could be made to work.

Coalitions for frugal innovation?

How can the development and uptake of frugal innovation be accelerated? This is our central question. Adopting the coalition perspective means asking who is interested in frugal innovation – for whatever reason. We will want to look for relevant actors in government (including inter-governmental organisation); in business (both domestic and foreign, both large and small); and in civil society (including academia). Let us start with the latter.

The first actor that comes to mind is us: the members and associates of the International Centre for Frugal Innovation. Most of us are academics, trying to understand the world and improve it. There are others pursuing the same objective but operating under a different heading. A notable example is ‘the circular economy’. We need to apply the coalition perspective to ourselves and reach out to the colleagues who use the circular economy approach. They have an even stronger emphasis on saving resources with their ‘Triple ‘R’ strategy (re-use, repair, recycle) and ‘extended producer responsibility’ for end-of-life disposal. Implementing this strategy requires above all organisational innovation. Affordability is a less explicit objective, but it is implicit in their work. The important thing in adopting the coalition perspective is to concentrate on common ground and not on differences. This can be uncomfortable in that the brand (frugal innovation, circular economy, appropriate technology) gives us a feeling of identity and sometimes also privileged access to a particular funder.

As policy-oriented researchers we need to work with people in government, concentrating not necessarily on ministries or departments but pockets within these ministries or departments that are interested in and relevant for our work. Governments tend to work in silos. The coalition perspective makes us look across these silos and identify the most significant players who (can) support our work. In seeking to identify these players, our question is not whether they have the same objective but whether their policies and projects affect what we want to achieve. For example, there are often pockets in central or local government which seek to promote competitiveness in particular products and services. If their policies make products or services more frugal, we will want to work with the government officials driving these policies whatever their rationale. In practice this will often mean adopting a sector-specific or sub-sector specific approach. The International Centre for Frugal Innovation recently ran a course with entrepreneurs involved in horticulture. Most of them initially thought that ‘doing innovation’ was only for high-tech sectors with R&D labs. They were surprised how they could in a few sessions co-develop frugal innovations that created new markets for their products. For example, one entrepreneur developed a gift set of mini plants that could be ordered online and delivered through a physical mailbox.

If we are serious about accelerating frugal innovation, we need to work with business. This is not easy. We cannot expect business federations or chambers of industry and commerce to put frugal innovation on their banner. These organisations exist to lobby government and support the competitiveness of their members. Broad industry-wide pleas to pay more attention to frugality in their competitiveness strategy are unlikely to work. Cheese producers operate in a world different from makers of electronic sensors or truck manufacturers or enterprises which specialise in shelving solutions. At the sectoral level, however, it might be possible to identify enterprises that have developed frugal products, and which can make them more competitive in their home or international market. Asakawa et al (2019) show how this can be achieved in their article ‘Frugality-based Advantage’ (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0024630117305290). Such positive examples are important to demonstrate that frugal innovation is not just desirable from an equality and sustainability perspective but can also be a good business strategy. Working with such enterprises would be essential for making the coalition perspective work.

Business schools have good access to private enterprise and might become key allies. There is fierce competition between business schools to attract the greatest talents. Being relevant for the new age of sustainability is essential for business schools to succeed in this competition. ‘Frugal innovation’ provides them with a focus for achieving this. This can be our entry point for working with business schools. Such collaboration can help us with studying and promoting frugal innovation.

Identifying the relevant actors in a coalition is merely the first step. There is a tested methodology for rapid political economy analysis which can then be used for the subsequent steps: mapping the actors according to whether they support or oppose specific policies or projects; according to how influential they are; according to their location in society (public, private, civic sectors); and according to their priorities (making money, enhancing competitiveness, minimising waste, protecting environment, reducing poverty). There are simple ways of visualising these configurations of actors and identifying (potential) coalitions. These methods are of the ‘quick and dirty’ kind, more appropriate for rapid analysis than for PhD level research.

The analysis will then need to distinguish between incidental alignments of interest that come together just to get a particular law or project approved and coalitions which have a more enduring character with regular meetings on strategy and targets. This is an important point. Coalitions need not be long term alliances, they can be short term for specific aims such as: reforming industrial policy, vocational training or industrial standards; exhibiting a new approach at a trade fair; or developing a new conceptual and practical course on ‘frugal innovation’ to be taught at business schools. Tracing where renewable energy made significant steps forward showed that this kind of coalition perspective helps to see political feasibility in a different – usually more optimistic – way. In short, in order to accelerate the development and uptake of frugal innovations we need to come to grips with the politics of the process. Borrowing freely and selectively from those who have analysed the political economy of the energy transition is a promising way forward.

Aerial photo of solar panels in Offingen, Germany by Andreas Gucklhorn via Unsplash

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Professor Hubert Schmitz is a renowned development economist specializing in sustainable industrialization, investment politics, and green transformations with 40 years of expertise. An Emeritus Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, he advises bilateral and multilateral development agencies. Known for concise policy research synthesis, he has managed international teams and focused recent research on the impact of the global power shift on low-carbon transformations and the drivers of climate-relevant policies.

Peter Knorringa, Professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam, specializes in the multifaceted influence of businesses on development. As the academic director of the International Centre for Frugal Innovation since 2013, he examines the developmental impact of frugal innovations. His broad research portfolio spans clustered SMEs, trust in value chains, and sustainability standards. With extensive experience in India, Vietnam, and other countries, he contributes to a nuanced dialogue on when and where entrepreneurs and firms contribute to inclusive and sustainable development.

COVID-19: Should Europe embrace frugality?

By ISS Blog Bliss 9 July 20205 October 2020 3726 views

[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1592900783478{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;}”][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1592900766479{margin-right: 10px !important;margin-left: -10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]The Covid-19 pandemic, emerging in the aftermath of the recent global financial crisis, could potentially further shake the confidence that Europeans have in their institutions. Rigid and slow decision-making processes and an excessive institutional reliance on super-specialisation and protocol-driven scientific evidence can at least partly explain why Europe finds it so difficult to predict disruptions and why it adapts its institutional machineries so slowly. Greater flexibility, including space for experimentation and improvisation, can help Europe to adapt more quickly to future contingencies, write Saradindu Bhaduri and Peter Knorringa.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#f00f0f” css=”.vc_custom_1593430915072{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”17580″ img_size=”600×450″ alignment=”center”][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#f00f0f” css=”.vc_custom_1593430944892{margin-top: -20px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Europe has offered a historically unprecedented degree of stability, prosperity, comfort and reliability to most of its citizens in recent decades. Many of its citizens have grown to take these benefits for granted, even when all this makes Europe a very high-cost economic system. Two recent disruptions, the earlier financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, are unprecedented in the history of Europe, at least since World War II. The pandemic has caused more than 150,000 deaths so far, with a mortality rate in Europe far exceeding that of countries outside the continent. Potentially, these two events could shake the faith of people in the institutional mechanisms of the continent developed brick by brick over the last half a century, especially if such disruptions are expected to recur more frequently in the future.

Understanding the European system

Few would disagree that the present European production and innovation system, inter-country variations notwithstanding, relies extensively on the super-specialisation of work and an overwhelming reliance on strongly protocolised ‘hard scientific evidence’. Together, they are supposed to uphold quality and transparency in economic decision making, even at the cost of being expensive and sticky, i.e. slow in its ability to adapt to changing circumstances. While specialisation and protocols are in themselves indispensable and desirable elements in a modern economy, too much of it creates its own challenges.

In this blog we argue that the excessive institutional reliance on super-specialisation and protocol-driven scientific evidence in all its decision-making processes can, at least partly, explain why Europe finds it so difficult to predict disruptions and is not able to quickly adapt its institutional machineries in the face of a crisis¹. A remedy in our view lies in reducing over-formalisation in its decision-making processes and creating more space for experimentation and judicious improvisation. These steps can help Europe to adapt quicker to future contingencies².

A discourse which has begun highlighting the importance of such experimentations and judicious improvisations is the one on frugality and frugal innovations. They suggest ways to re-introduce such experimentations and improvisations in innovation processes to reduce ‘over-engineering’ and costs while maintaining basic functionality and affordability³. A concurrently emerging discourse on frugality in policy making emphasises the need for improvised decision making based on seasoned, practical, context-specific experience and the importance of ‘experimenting while deciding’⁴.

Does Covid-19 challenge protocolised hard evidence-driven decision-making?

Indeed, the pandemic struck, and struck hard while the system often continued to wait for a ‘formal go-ahead’ informed by ‘hard evidence’ to be gathered by ‘super-specialised’ actors and processes, to take policy decisions on (i) whether to test ‘asymptomatic patients’, (ii) whether ‘to wear a mask’, (iii) whether it is okay ‘to use hydroxychloroquine’, or (iv) whether ‘to impose a lockdown’. Waiting for ‘hard evidence’ has often been given a priority over also making clever use of readily available ‘soft evidence’ by seasoned practitioners, presumably also not to disturb the comfort of its citizens ⁵^,⁶^,⁷^,⁸. Moreover, this denial to act upon soft evidence is not specific to the context of the current pandemic; it is rather the routine. Incidentally, later more systematic studies seem to validate the soft evidence of wearing masks, and practising social distance⁹.

Is the system adapting?

Going beyond ‘super-specialised actors?’

While Europe initially responded slowly to the arrival of Covid-19, we do now observe quite a few deviations from the routine reliance on ‘super-specialisation’ and formal protocols surrounding innovation, production, and validation. Such improvisations are particularly visible in products and services related to public health deliveries, arguably to ensure their timely and affordable access at the time of the pandemic. Examples include the open-source development of a ventilator, where so-called lay persons can also contribute and participate. Similarly, many informal organisations have sprung up across the continent to produce open-source medical equipment and protection gear for patients and healthcare workers¹⁰. These organisations are not taking the routine protocolised path of regulatory approval. Instead, in order to ensure timely affordable access, they are relying on the viewpoints of physicians and clinical administrators on ‘whether it works’ in the ‘actual’ environment of their use¹¹.

Going beyond ‘protocolised’ hard evidence?

A sizeable section of physicians and clinical researchers of repute have vouched for including hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) in the treatment protocol of Covid-19 based, once again, only on soft evidence of clinical acumen, ‘prudent observations’, and targeted, non-randomised, small-sample clinical studies¹²^,¹³^,¹⁴. While the opposition to rely on such soft evidence may be rational, the issue remains that we need fast decisions and therapies to deal with the pandemic, and ‘hard evidence’ of randomised controlled trials does not come fast, nor do they come cheap. Indeed, more than four months into the pandemic, we have conflicting evidence of its (non-) efficacy for advanced-stage treatment. While the WHO has stopped its randomised controlled clinical trial (RCT) citing ‘no benefit’[20], a recent ‘retrospective study’ by the Henry Ford Health System reports significant benefits.[21] For early-stage treatment or as a prophylactic, we are still guided by softer evidence of ‘clinical observations’ and ‘retrospective studies’¹⁵.

The evidence of low rates of mortality in places and countries using this therapy have triggered a diverse set of responses from scientists, politicians, and regulatory authorities¹⁶^,¹⁷. Some of them have rejected it outright due to non-availability of ‘gold standard’ evidence from RCTs. Other responses have ranged from agreeing to conduct more elaborate studies (RCTs or otherwise), to continuing with the therapy based on ‘prudent clinical acumen’. Indeed, an emerging view in this context invites us to explore ‘doing while learning’ by integrating the urge of clinical practitioners to use untested therapies, while designing, if necessary, full-fledged protocolised clinical trials to evaluate efficacy of the therapy better¹⁸. These propositions challenge the sharp division of super-specialisations between clinical research and clinical practice: “clinical practice and clinical research are addressed by separate institutions, procedures, and funding”¹⁹. The crisis has underlined the necessity to adapt this structure.

So, is a new pattern emerging?

Many of the presently successful experiments can be defined as frugal innovations: they are affordable, retain basic functionalities, and are developed through extensive polycentric interactions, involving super-specialised experts as well as seasoned lay practitioners. Similarly, in line with the arguments of the frugality discourse in policy making, decisions are being made by localised, practical experiences of people in the field, focusing more on ‘what works’ rather than ‘what ought to work’, to ensure faster access to protective gear, medical equipment, as well as medicine therapies. Such a process of decision making arguably gives priority to arriving at ‘good-enough’, faster decisions, rather than waiting for a zero-error solution. Of course, we need to be careful here; most of these experiments show that results are contextual, local in their scope and feasibility, and difficult to scale up.

Still, an exclusive reliance on super-specialisation and protocols would hold fort only in an environment where lives and livelihoods are stable, prosperous, comfortable, and reliable. But now that the illusion of a zero-risk and fully controllable society is fading, we propose a more nuanced future orientation that creates space for experimentation and improvisation based on localised knowledges. Recent EU efforts to pay more attention to citizen science and frugal innovation, for example in a Horizon 2020 call, are promising stepping stones in this direction, i.e. to develop rigorous science that is also built on the bottom-up knowledge, practices, and the creativity of EU citizens. This will help make the society more resilient to future contingencies.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#f00f0f” css=”.vc_custom_1593177038993{margin-top: -10px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]1. See for an elaborated account of Europe’s early response to COVID -19 ‘Coronavirus Europe failed the test’, Politico.^{Last accessed on 1 June 2020.}
2. See ‘Better luck next time? How the EU can move faster when disaster strikes’,Sciencebusiness
_{Last accessed on 10 June 2020.}
3. Knorringa, P., Peša, I., Leliveld, A. et al. Frugal Innovation and Development: Aides or Adversaries?. Eur J Dev Res 28, 143–153 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2016.3 . _{Last accessed on 1 June 2020.}
4. Patil, K., Bhaduri, S. ‘Zero-error’ versus ‘good-enough’: towards a ‘frugality’ narrative for defence procurement policy. Mind Soc 19, 43–59 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11299-020-00223-7 _{Last accessed on 1 June 2020.}
5. ‘Italy, Pandemic’s New Epicenter, Has Lessons for the World’, New York TImes, especially the section on local experiments. _{Last accessed on 1 June 2020.}
6. ‘Report on face masks’ effectiveness for Covid-19 divides scientists’, The Guardian _{Last accessed on 6 June 2020.}
7. ‘In one Italian town, we showed mass testing could eradicate the coronavirus’, The Guardian _{Last accessed on 6 June 2020.}
8. ‘Up to 30% of coronavirus cases asymptomatic’, DW _{Last accessed on 6 June 2020.}
9. ‘Physical distancing, face masks, and eye protection to prevent person-to-person transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis’ _{Last accessed on 6 June 2020.}
10. Digital Response to COVID-19. _{Last accessed on 3 June 2020}.
11. ‘Open-Source Medical Hardware: What You Should Know and What You Can Do’, Creative Commons
12. ‘Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19: What’s the Evidence?’, Medscape _{Last accessed on 1 June 2020.}
13. ‘Hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis for high-risk COVID-19 contacts in India: a prudent approach, The Lancet’. _{Last accessed on 1 June 2020.}
14. See ‘He Was a Science Star. Then He Promoted a Questionable Cure for Covid-19’, The New York Times. _{Last accessed on 1 June 2020.}
15. ‘Preventive use of HCQ in frontline healthcare workers: ICMR study’, The Indian Express. _{Last accessed on 10 June 2020.}
16. ‘A Look at COVID Mortality in Paris, Marseille, New York and Montreal’, Covexit.com
_{Last accessed on 10 June 2020.}
17. ‘Coronavirus: How Turkey took control of Covid-19 emergency,’ BBC. _{Last accessed on 10 June 2020.}
18. ‘Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in covid-19′, the BMJ. _{Last accessed on 1 June 2020.}
19._‘Optimizing the Trade-off Between Learning and Doing in a Pandemic’, JAMA network. _{Last accessed on 1 June 2020.}

20. https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/04-07-2020-who-discontinues-hydroxychloroquine-and-lopinavir-ritonavir-treatment-arms-for-covid-19

22. https://www.henryford.com/news/2020/07/hydro-treatment-study[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#f00f0f” css=”.vc_custom_1593177030722{margin-top: -10px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]This article was originally published by the Centre for Frugal Innovation in Africa (CFIA). This article is part of a series about the coronavirus crisis. Read all articles of this series here.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#f00f0f” css=”.vc_custom_1593177017606{margin-top: -10px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1594149888800{margin-top: 0px !important;}”]Saradindu Bhaduri held the Prince Claus Chair in Frugal Innovation for Development and Equity (2015-17) at ISS (EUR). He is Associate Professor at the Centre for Studies in Science Policy, at JNU New Delhi, and the Coordinator of the proposed JNU-CFIA Transdisciplinary Research Cluster on Frugality Studies.

Peter Knorringa is a Professor of Private Sector & Development at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Since 2013, Professor Knorringa is the academic director of the Centre for Frugal Innovation in Africa (CFIA).[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

A green revolution using frugal innovation: crop insurance for Tanzanian farmers by Meine Pieter van Dijk

By ISS Blog Bliss 2 May 201918 May 2020 3173 views

What is the best way to help traditional small maize farmers in Tanzania to increase their production? A crop insurance project in Tanzania showed great success in decreasing the vulnerability of these farmers to drought through a simple frugal innovation called Weather Index Insurance. However, a transition from traditional to hybrid seeds is recommended to further decrease vulnerability and increase agricultural productivity.

What is the best way to help traditional small maize farmers in Tanzania to increase their production? Droughts occur more frequently in Tanzania, but the core problem is low agricultural productivity. Local extension services are not functioning properly (Lamek, 2016), while farmers are still using traditional seeds instead of hybrid seeds, which could contribute to achieving food security in the country. A non-commercial private sector initiative is helping these farmers by providing crop insurance. Between 2011 and 2014, the Swiss Capacity Building Facility (SCBF), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) financed by ten Swiss insurance companies, funded four training projects in Tanzania aiming to familiarise maize farmers in the Iringa, Mwanza and Arusha regions with crop insurance.

No new technological options were introduced to reach as many farmers as possible at minimum cost. Instead, the project used a Weather Index Insurance (WII) based on existing satellite images to determine whether drought prevailed in the area concerned during the seeding, germination or ripening period. If the signal is less rain than normal, the farmers registered through their mobile phones are compensated for the damage, ideally by topping up the amount available for calling or making mobile phone payments. This is a frugal innovation (using existing technology), because farmers can insure as little as one bag of hybrid seed bought from the seed company (SeedCo) using their telephone, covering only the germination period), or through signing up for a package for one acre of land through NGOs.

The training projects were carried out by Acre Africa (AA), an international NGO, with a local affiliate (Acre Tanzania). The project contributed to the training of thousands of farmers in the three regions studied. In total, more than 20,000 farmers are insured in the Iringa region and more than 10,000 in the Mwanza and Arusha regions taken together.

Assessing Weather Index Insurance

To assess the effects of Weather Index Insurance for Tanzanian maize farmers, a survey has been undertaken by the author in the Arusha, the Mwanza and Iringa regions. A total of 200 farmers were interviewed using cluster sampling with the villages as sampling units and then selecting farmers’ households per village as randomly as possible. The objective was to analyse the effects of the crop insurance introduced with the support of SCBF on household’s income and assets and on agricultural productivity.

Different ways of supplying insurance were compared. Farmers supported by a local NGO, the One Acre Fund (1AF), showed that insurance is particularly useful if it is embedded in an institutional support structure that is non-commercial and close to the farmers; not using a profit-oriented intermediary (SeedCo) or a combination of a commercial and non-commercial organisations also led to greater success. All modalities re-insure the final risks with a local commercial insurance company and a re-insurance company.

Most farmers did not know how much they pay for the insurance, but were generally positive about it, since the insurance offers a feeling of security and the intermediary organisations reduce the loan in case of a crisis. However, some farmers were critical because no payments were made despite limited rains, or the payouts were too low. They wanted support to find better markets for their produce and more transparency concerning payouts.

Transition from traditional to hybrid seeds required

Supporting the transition from using traditional to hybrid seeds is recommended to increase rural incomes and food supply and contribute to food security in the country. It is important to select the intermediary carefully and to consider crop insurance as part of support package, which should also include fertilisers and additional inputs like pesticides and access to water. There is scope for making the innovation more frugal by really using only mobile phones for registration and payouts, which was currently not always the case. There is demand for this service from other regions, for other crops and risks (like caterpillars). More information and training should be provided to farmers and the insurance needs to be made more transparent. Complaints of farmers should be taken seriously.

An extended version of this article has been published on researchgate: “Going for hybrid maize: the importance of land for the success of maize crop insurance in Tanzania”. Contribution to a World Bank conference on Land and Poverty, Catalyzing innovation in Washington, March 25-29, 2019.

References

Wilfred Lamek (2016) Agricultural extension in Tanzania, PhD, Free University Amsterdam.

Image Credit: ICRISAT on Flickr.

About the author:

Meine Pieter van Dijkis economist, em. professor of Water Services Management at UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, visiting professor at the Beijing University for Civil Engineering and architecture, and em. professor of Urban management at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) and the Institute of Housing and Urban development Studies (IHS) of Erasmus University.

Tag Archives frugal innovation

References

Wilfred Lamek (2016) Agricultural extension in Tanzania, PhD, Free University Amsterdam.