Institutional barriers to successful innovations: Perceptions of rural farmers and key stakeholders in southwest Nigeria

Diffusion studies in sub-Saharan Africa have typically focused on the impact of traditional adoption factors on uptake of technological innovations. This study draws on semi-structured interviews of rural farmers and in-depth interviews of stakeholders in southwest Nigeria to examine the impact of institutional factors on the success of technological innovations. The findings indicate that government policies, markets, financial institutions, infrastructure and other institutional conditions play significant role on the success of technological innovations. A successful innovation package should integrate institutional reforms with promotion of innovative inputs, and vibrant farmers’ cooperatives can be at the heart of such agrarian reform. This is the accepted manuscript of an article whose final and definitive form has been published in African Journal of Science, Technology, Innovation and Development 2014, 6(4) © 2014. Institutional barriers to successful innovations: Perceptions of rural farmers and key stakeholders in southwest Nigeria is available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/20421338.2014.966039