Drivers
Successful scaling up almost always involves champions who push the process forward relentlessly. It can be an individual leader, as in the cases of AKDN and the Gates Foundation, groups of individuals as in the Peru case, or institutions that have scaling up in their DNA, such as PepsiCo and the Global Fund. Scaling up can be driven by crisis or memories of a crisis, as in the Peruvian case, where a history of violence in the region was a powerful driver for the area- based rural development programs. Incentives are also critical drivers, especially as they help
generate private demand for the innovations in farming practices to be scaled up. Ownership rights are essential for farmers, as demonstrated by the Loess Plateau project in China and the regreening experience in Africa. Empowered rural communities can serve as strong drivers of scaling up and as agents of accountability for public agencies. Finally, those institutions that have pursued a scaling-up agenda consistently and successfully evidently found ways to ensure internal accountability of their managers and staff to align with institutional goals.
Spaces
• Institutional space. A pervasive theme of the briefs in this series is the need for effective development and deployment of institutions that can carry forward the scaling-up process. The institutions that have promoted the original innovation or pilot may not have the capability to scale up or manage the initiative at scale. Special institutional capacity may have to be found or created. Often, many institutions are involved and need to cooperate or be coordinated. Institutional rivalries may prevent effective leadership of the process, and decentralization of governmental responsibility, now frequently promoted in developing countries, may interfere with effective leadership by national ministries. And yet the successfully scaled-up initiatives described in this series demonstrate that with imagination, persistence, and selectivity the institutional space can be created. Richard Kohl (Brief 12) concludes that the best approach is to focus from the outset very deliberately on the institutional choices to be made and the capacity-building needed for the chosen scaling up pathway.
• Policy space. The policy and regulatory framework is critical for effective scaling up. For farmers, ownership rules and their enforcement provide incentives or disincentives for adoption of innovations. The roles that rural communities are allowed to play and the support communities receive from local, provincial, and national governments are essential factors for empowerment and capacity. The general business environment and specific regulatory interventions can hinder or support effective development and scaling up of value chains. Rules governing rural credit, deposit, and insurance schemes can limit or support expansion of the rural economy.
• Fiscal and financial space. The extent to which fiscal and financial resources are available to sustain and scale up an initiative beyond the original donor-supported project needs to be addressed from the outset. National governments must make credible commitments to provide sustained budget funding where appropriate, or initiatives have to keep cost down to minimize dependence on outside funding. In the case of commercial ventures, such as the orange sweet potato
initiative, innovations must be able to compete with other traditional products.
• Political space. Small initiatives tend to fly under the radar of major political actors, but, when scaling up is the goal, it is important to create the space needed to avoid political obstacles by advocacy and outreach to key constituencies and actors, as stressed for the regreening initiative in Africa. Brief 14 documents a case in which a highly successful Indian nongovernmental organization had to suspend a program in one state due to problems with state-level authorities. In countries subject to electoral cycles, building constituencies of support across the spectrum of political parties is important.
• Partnership space. All the successful scaling-up initiatives reviewed in these briefs involved deliberate efforts to seek out and mobilize the appropriate partners from the outset. In more advanced developing economies, this generally means national and local partners in the countries themselves; for less-developed countries, it also often means partnering with external donors. But in all cases, seeking local counterparts that own the donor initiatives and can eventually drive and sustain the scaling-up process is critical. For example, in its rice intensification project in Vietnam, Oxfam is deliberately planning for a "phase down" of its own engagement in support of project execution as local partners increasingly take over.
• Learning space. An evidence-based approach to scaling up is invariably needed. It starts with a good situation analysis, as stressed by PepsiCo in its approach to value- chain development, followed by effective monitoring and evaluation (M&E) along the scaling-up pathway, as in the case of HarvestPlus and Oxfam, and complemented by intensive institutional learning from experience, as documented by the Gates Foundation. Traditional modalities of M&E, which have focused exclusively on the achievement of project- specific input and output goals, need to expand to include the dimensions critical for scaling up. They must go beyond narrow project confines to measure whether and how the project supports the overall scaling-up process, in which the project is only one step along the pathway.
• Other spaces. Dealing with a severely constrained environmental space was of critical importance in the case of scaling up the Loess Plateau project in China. Capitalizing on the cultural characteristics of community action was a key asset for success in the Peruvian Highlands. Cultural obstacles needed to be addressed in the development of the orange sweet potato initiative, and PepsiCo had to adapt to the cultural context of the environments where it developed its value chains. Many of the briefs stress the importance of creating social space for women to contribute to the scaling-up process, whether it involves community-driven development, new agricultural crop methods, or the adoption of nutrition initiatives.
Cross-cutting issues
• Sustainability. Sustainability and scalability are deeply intertwined. Where a project is not sustainable, it is not likely to be scalable unless special attention is given to the factors that impede sustainability. These, in fact, are often the
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