“Be an innovator not an imitator – there is always a way to improve things!”

Hello, who are you?

I am Straton Habumugisha, devoted to supporting improvements in rural and urban livelihoods. When people come together, work in cooperation and collaborate, new ways of doing things may arise from one day’s conversations! I am an independent consultant, an agricultural economist with over nine years’ experience in agricultural value chain and rural development, agroprocessing, agroeconomics and agribusiness, organizational development, management, SME development and humanitarian programmes. I previously worked in both public and private sectors, donor funded projects and UN emergency projects. I first heard about CDAIS in early 2016 when I met a colleague who participated in the scoping study and I was very interested in the concept of ‘innovation partnerships’. This was new in Rwanda and we clearly needed different kind of platforms here. The approach of working partnership based on beneficiaries’ needs made me eager to participate and follow the whole process. My intervention as NIF was initiated by

What are your roles and responsibilities as National Innovation Facilitator?

I am a national innovation facilitator and am conversant with the CDAIS approach, methodology and tools, thanks to ToT training sessions organized by Agrinatura and FAO. I help to catalyze agricultural innovation in niches through analyzing existing opportunities, assessing prevailing problems in their working environment hindering partnerships and collaboration, and then working with actors to find suitable mitigation measures. I used CDAIS tools and methodology to participate and contribute in capacity needs assessments for background analysis (using the timeline tool), identification of existing problems, root causes, impacts and possible solutions (using the problem/solution tree), and assessment of actors and the importance of their interventions (using the netmap). These activities were followed by development of intervention plans for implementation of workable activities to alleviate the identified problems.

What has CDAIS changed for you?

Working with CDAIS has brought me a clear understanding on innovation partnership. The experience gained from working with niche actors on innovation partnerships has proven to me that innovation arises when people are communicating and collaborating, and only then can new ideas or new processes to produce products or services arise.