Knowledge Management for Development Journal

This Special Issue focuses specifically on contributions on how the private sector, through the design and organization of partnerships that strive to move beyond ‘business as usual’, contributes - or fails or struggles to contribute - to transform agricultural and rural development towards the achievement of the SDGs. The contributions to this Special Issue are diverse in terms of geographical location (South East Asia, Europe and Africa, Benin, Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda) but also in terms of themes: value chains, knowledge management strategies, research processes, knowledge brokering, institutional spaces, knowledge networks and governance. A number of the contributions to the Special Issue provide examples of how collaboration between the private sector and other actors, including marginalized women and small farmers, can be facilitated and give value to research processes and in terms of scaling up innovations. The contributions attracted and co-developed with the authors include analytical frameworks, typologies of partnerships, benchmarking practices and mapping of the intellectual assets of the private sector. The contributions do not lead to the immediate conclusion that the private sector is a ‘magic bullet’ in global development. Instead, they lead to the conclusion that the private sector does have a role to play but that this role requires facilitation and brokerage to be effective.