Science, Technology, Development

STD - ISSN 2752-6879 - © ISTE Ltd

Journal issues

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Recent articles

Determinants of frugal innovation in informal sector enterprises in Burkina Faso

This study analyzes the determinants of frugal innovation in informal enterprises in Burkina Faso. The methodological approach adopted is quantitative and is based on data collected from 405 enterprises spread across all thirteen regions of the country. These data were analyzed using principal component analysis (PCA) and multiple linear regression. The results highlight the predominance of the owner-manager’s psycho-cognitive factors as the main driver of innovation. Whilst the immediate environment also has a notable, albeit more moderate, impact, the study paradoxically reveals that government policy does not significantly influence the propensity to innovate in informal sector enterprises. This finding validates the theory of self-organization in the informal sector and confirms the importance of proximity-based models. It highlights a form of entrepreneurial resilience capable of overcoming the shortcomings of institutional support. This research encourages entrepreneurs to capitalize on their agility and local networks. It also calls for a shift away from current public policies, moving from complex formal support to local technical support, and creating “frugal innovation free zones” with reduced regulatory constraints.

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Adoption of technological innovations on rice-growing performance in Senegal

This study assesses the impact of the adoption of technological innovations on rice-growing performance in Senegal. Given the endogenous nature of the adoption process, we used an endogenous stochastic frontier model. The results reveal that adopting improved or certified varieties alone does not significantly impact farmers’ technical efficiency. The impact of sustainable land management practices remains small but significant. However, combining both types of innovations significantly improves farmers’ performance. Thus, to improve farmers’ technical efficiency, the simultaneous adoption of these technologies should be favored, given their complementary nature.

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The price erosion of vanilla and its impacts in the district of Andapa and Sambava, the north-eastern region (SAVA) of Madagascar

Over the course of five years (2014-2019), the production and sale of vanilla were essential and lucrative activities for the population of the SAVA region. Development is gradually manifesting in the social and economic lives of each individual or household involved in this sector. From the 2020 season until today, the price of a kilogram of vanilla has experienced an incredible erosion from 34% to -11.6%. The green has lost almost 60% of its export value for prepared (black) vanilla. The consequences of this situation have significantly amplified in this region, especially in the districts of Andapa and Sambava, due to the sudden shift in cultivation system by farmers and producers toward vanilla monoculture. There is desperation as in this sector it is the only quick and viable crop to escape unemployment, significant and chronic poverty, and overpopulation. The objective is to raise awareness about the effects of the continuous decline in vanilla prices on the socio-economic and financial lives of the population in the targeted areas. Socio-economic surveys were conducted, followed by data analysis using econometric models. Questionnaires were developed regarding price variations from 2020 to 2024. The variances and standard deviations were calculated for the obtained results. Thus, the repercussions of the decrease in the cost of vanilla are significant. Despite this, the vanilla sector represents the social, economic, and financial driving force of the two districts in the SAVA region, and the promotion and enhancement of this "Vola Magnanika" sector have been advocated.

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The erosion of agrobiodiversity of cotton in India: interplay of politics, science, and technology

The dissection of the contemporary cotton crisis in India has cast light on knowledge and deskilling, capitalism and commodification, biotechnology and public policy, Bt cotton and yield, diseases and management, etc. Whereas how agricultural-technology, plant breeding and biotechnology, have influenced cotton agriculture reciprocating to global demand is rarely invoked in the political-ecological analyses. Here, employing various data, I reconstructed the trajectory of cotton agrobiodiversity and underlying drivers nestled in the broad technopolitics of the last century. It revealed that a major change in the twentieth century was steered by cotton improvement through breeding when a few varieties of American cotton with industry-set staple-length have gained precedence, causing the continued abandonment of native species. The process was exacerbated by the large-scale adoption of the hybrids in the seventies and eighties. Increasing genetic homogeneity unleashed bollworm infestation that raised the pesticide application and cost of cultivation. Later, genetically modified Bt cotton was widely adopted in the twenty-first century to circumvent this problem. Genetic erosion driven by global technopolitical change has raised the vulnerability to major diseases, especially bollworm, wreaking havoc across geographies and culminating in agrarian distress. The study seems to lay a foundation for future research on the entanglement between technopolitical, bio-cultural, and agrarian change.

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Adoption behavior of Sustainable Land Management (SLM) technological innovations in Senegal

The objective of this work is to identify the determinants of the adoption of innovative sustainable land management technologies among agricultural households while highlighting the relationship between gender and the adoption of these technological innovations. The data used in this article come from the 2018-2019 Annual Agricultural Survey (EAA), which covers all agricultural households practicing rainfed agriculture distributed by census district. The study involved 5,863 agricultural households in Senegal. The estimates were carried out with Stata 2015 using the multinomial logit model method. The results showed that beyond the determinants studied in the literature, other factors such as the duration of the journey between home and the sales market, being the owner of the plot, the characteristics of the plot, being a member of a commercial cooperative, storage capacity, market access constraints, and marketing constraints significantly explain the adoption of SLM technologies. The study also shows that the female variable is on the one hand positively and on the other hand negatively correlated with adoption. Thus, to encourage adoption, it is necessary to strengthen awareness among farmers but also to improve the conditions of women on access and exploitation of land for better inclusion in adoption.

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From socio-historical inventiveness to the process of participatory innovation in the Haitian mutualist system (Southern Peninsula)

This contribution questions the inherent denial of economist and developmentalist logic associated with the dissemination of innovation theories. Reconsidering this process from a socio-historical perspective enables us to view it from the angle of resistance, using the Haitian mutualist system as an example. The persistence of socio-communal soli-darity practices (Konbit, Eskwad, etc.) specific to this system proves that social innovation can serve to recover existing models. The experiences of different local structures, such as OCPGA and REMIFA, with their Mutuals of Solidarity (MuSo) and Kosodes with their Tontines Sòl practice, bear witness to survival strategies against the hegemonic process of formal-izing exogenous innovation ideas from the outside. So how can we innovate without dominating and destroying? Viewing social innovation as a participatory process of resistance that preserves rather than dispossesses offers a viable alternative to the dominant framework.