This research was undertaken as a Ph.D. dissertation (Stanford University) in conjunction with the ILCA programme in Niamey, Niger. The objective of the research was similar to that of the World Bank studies: to test how land tenure affects land-improving investment, agricultural productivity and resource management. The standard hypothesis is that land tenure that is non-exclusive insecure or non-transferable will lead to under-investment and depressed factor mobility.

The authors started the discussion with the fundamental question: why are property rights important? The central hypothesis of this collaborative venture is that inappropriate property rights institutions lead to resource degradation. Two cases were distinguished: single-user resources and multiple-use resources. A good example of a single-user resource is land. Absence of secure property rights will result in land degradation, as incentives to improve the resource base do not exist under such conditions.

There is an increasing interest among researchers, practitioners and donors in using agricultural innovation system approaches to reach development outcomes. Limited practical experiences have been shared on the dynamics of these innovation processes and how project partners have dealt with that. The objective of this paper is therefore to share experiences from a smallholder livestock development project – the imGoats project in Mozambique – by reflecting on the dynamics of innovation processes in the project.