Examining the legitimacy of inclusive innovation processes: perspectives from smallholder farmers in Uasin Gishu, Kenya

ABSTRACT

In recent decades, the concept of inclusive innovation has been used to refer to how innovation can include actors that are considered marginalised from its processes and outcomes. Contrary to the ‘expert-driven’ approaches prevalent in evaluating the legitimacy of such processes, this paper examines the legitimacy of inclusive innovation from the perspective of smallholder farmers with little resource endowments in Uasin Gishu, Kenya, that are targeted with various agricultural innovation interventions. Findings indicate that procedural aspects of legitimacy, such as including farmers as co-innovators and including their knowledge and skills in agricultural innovation processes, are an important criterion used by targeted farmers to accord legitimacy to such interventions. We also find that such interventions need to be stable over time to be legitimate to the intended beneficiaries. These criteria used by targeted actors can be an important addition to evaluation procedures and methods for inclusive innovation.

KEYWORDS:

• Inclusive innovation
• responsible innovation
• smallholder farmers
• agricultural development
• epistemic justice
• rural Kenya

Introduction

In recent decades, the concept of inclusive innovation has been used to refer to how new or improved knowledge, technologies and social arrangements can be aligned to the needs and opportunities of sections of the population that are considered to be excluded from participating and benefiting from innovation processes (Chataway, Hanlin, and Kaplinsky 2014; Foster and Heeks 2013; Van Gorp 2007), particularly in less industrialised countries. This perspective is part of a debate that emphasises the role of innovation in the advancement of societal goals rather than on economic outcomes (Hounkonnou et al. 2012; Ludwig and Macnaghten 2020). Inclusive innovation therefore refers not only to changes such as new technologies or services that improve the economic status of actors that are targeted but also include changes to improve existing social and institutional arrangements that are beneficial to targeted actors (Kilelu, Klerkx, and Leeuwis 2014; Swaans et al. 2014).

Several approaches exist that experiment with and aim to address the problem of social exclusion from innovation processes (Opola et al. 2021). First, business-oriented approaches advocate for the development and deployment of affordable services and technologies, and other products to groups of people such as resource-poor rural households or informal sector residents, through what have been referred to as frugal or bottom of the pyramid innovation processes (Onsongo and Knorringa 2020; Prahalad, Di Benedetto, and Nakata 2012). Second, other approaches emphasize the participation of marginalised actors in innovation processes by recognising and including their knowledge, skills, and technologies in innovation processes (Fressoli et al. 2014; Karanja et al. 2017; Smith, Fressoli, and Thomas 2014). Third, theories and approaches, especially from disciplines such as political economy and critical agrarian studies have called for a re-examination of the rules and social structures that lead to the exclusion of groups of people from the benefits and processes of innovation (Arora and Romijn 2012; Crivits et al. 2014; Mdee et al. 2020; Papaioannou 2014). Fourth, but to a lesser degree than the well-established approach of inclusive innovation, the literature on responsible innovation in which the notion of inclusion is also central (Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten 2013; van Mierlo, Beers, and Hoes 2020), is starting to be applied in the context of less industrialised countries (Hartley et al. 2019; McCampbell et al. 2021; Nyamekye, Klerkx, and Dewulf 2021; Wakunuma et al. 2021).

Common among these different approaches and initiatives is the focus on a specific group of people that are thought to be excluded from innovation processes due to various reasons. In the context of less-industrialised countries, these groups of marginalised actors have included workers in the informal sector such as artisans, food distributors and traders who lack access to formal education, skills and other resources needed to be innovative or benefit from outcomes of innovation (Arza and van Zwanenberg 2014; Cozzens and Sutz 2014). In agriculture, smallholder food producers with minimal resources and pastoralists in semi-arid areas are considered to be marginalised from mainstream agricultural innovation processes and various initiatives have been developed to enable them to participate and benefit from innovation (Mdee et al. 2019; Mwangi and Rutten 2012). In addition, certain population sub-groups such as women and youth who have little influence or authority over institutions and resources are likely to be excluded from participating and benefiting from innovation processes in rural and urban areas due to the accompanying power dynamics (Dolan and Rajak 2016; Jiménez 2018; Vossenberg 2018).

A key issue pointed out in inclusive innovation literature is how power, hierarchy, and influence manifests across various levels in innovation processes (Arora and Romijn 2012; Eidt, Pant, and Hickey 2020; Mdee et al. 2020; Papaioannou 2014). Influential actors such as the state, research organisations, and large enterprises often have more influence over how problems are framed and what solutions are adopted in innovation processes (Eidt, Pant, and Hickey 2020; Pandey and Sharma 2021; Sengupta 2016; Swaans et al. 2013). Actors such as farmers in rural areas or informal food distributors are likely be excluded not only from innovation processes but also from the power structures that govern and control such processes. As a result, inclusive innovation interventions risk being under-valued by the actors that they target despite their noble intentions. This is because these initiatives are likely to embody the interests and perspectives of organisations such as state agencies, development agencies or research institutions that promote them (Mdee et al. 2020; Ribeiro et al. 2018; Valkenburg et al. 2020). The assessment of how successful inclusive innovation processes are is also likely to be centred on criteria developed by the organisations that promote it (Ribeiro et al. 2018). The criteria that targeted groups of people use to evaluate the success or failure of inclusive innovation interventions remain largely unknown in inclusive innovation literature (Geels and Verhees 2011; Uddin et al. 2014). These later criteria concern how appropriate or legitimate these interventions are to the targeted actors and is an important knowledge gap since the targeted actors are likely to participate and benefit from inclusive innovation processes directed at them only if they consider them appropriate (Geels and Verhees 2011).

Little is known about the values, norms, and interests through which the targets of inclusive innovation interventions assess the appropriateness of such initiatives (Cozzens and Sutz 2014; Ribeiro et al. 2018; Woodhouse et al. 2017). In this paper, we use the case of innovation initiatives targeted at smallholder farmers in rural Kenya to investigate the criteria which these groups of farmers use to assess the success of failure of such interventions. To achieve this aim, we employ the concept of legitimacy to examine the appropriateness of inclusive innovation to its ‘audience’,¹ a term which (Suchman 1995) uses to refer to a group of people who are usually the target of an organisation’s interventions. For our case, we use the term ‘targeted actors’ instead of ‘audience’ in the rest of this paper to refer to smallholder farmers that are the intended beneficiaries of inclusive innovation initiatives by organisations such as universities, agricultural research institutes and agricultural enterprises and civil society organisations. The perspective of legitimacy has been applied to assess for example agricultural technologies and transitions (de Boon, Sandström, and Rose 2022; van der Velden et al. 2023), but has been less focused on initiatives taking an inclusive innovation approach, and this is where we hope to make a contribution. Our aim is to address the following question: What criteria do targets of inclusive innovation interventions use to assess the legitimacy of such initiatives?

In the next section, we further explain the concept of legitimacy and its relevance to inclusive innovation literature and for our study. This is followed by a section outlining our research methodology. We then present our findings before ending with a discussion of these findings.

Three dimensions of legitimacy

Suchman (1995, 574) defines legitimacy as ‘a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions’. Three main aspects of legitimacy can be identified regarding how a society evaluates the appropriateness of an organisation’s actions: Moral legitimacy, cognitive legitimacy, and pragmatic legitimacy (Suchman 1995).

Moral legitimacy

Targeted actors subject organisations and their initiatives to a moral judgement based on the history of interaction with the organisation (Suchman 1995). This judgement may be positive, negative, or neutral and is based on the conformance to certain norms and values among the targeted actors such as fairness, justice, integrity, and competence (Harris-Lovett et al. 2015; Johnson, Dowd, and Ridgeway 2006; Suchman 1995). In innovation processes, moral legitimacy can be differentiated into personal, procedural, and consequential legitimacy (Harris-Lovett et al. 2015). Personal legitimacy is accorded based on the integrity and trustworthiness of the organisation itself and its personnel (Harris-Lovett et al. 2015). Procedural legitimacy is based on an evaluation of the procedures and methods employed by the organisations and is accorded after interaction between the organisation and targeted actors. For instance, people may value the right to participate in decision-making processes even if they do not use this right to achieve desired outcomes (Jäske 2019; Johnson, Dowd, and Ridgeway 2006). Finally, consequential legitimacy is based on the consequences of an organisation’s actions or initiatives and can only be observed and accorded after a significant period of interaction between the organisation and its processes and the actors that are targeted (Uddin et al. 2014).

Cognitive legitimacy

Innovation initiatives by organizations have cognitive legitimacy when they are well known and understood by the targeted actors (Oers, Boon, and Moors 2018). The dominant innovation trajectory in most countries is capital and skill intensive (Pansera and Martinez 2017). Targets of inclusive innovation initiatives may therefore find these types of innovations to be incompatible with the knowledge, resources, and experiences that they possess and therefore lack legitimacy (Chataway, Hanlin, and Kaplinsky 2014; Woodhouse et al. 2017). For example, it has been pointed out that globally, research and development activities are mainly conceived and managed in industrialised counties and therefore the concept and aspects of predominant forms of innovation are ambiguous when applied in the context of less industrialised countries (Pansera and Martinez 2017). Initiatives to promote certain innovations to targeted actors such as smallholder farmers in rural areas may therefore face an impasse when the language, skills, and resources required for the innovation are incomprehensible to these farmers and therefore rendered illegitimate by them (Ribeiro et al. 2018).

Pragmatic legitimacy

This is based on the targeted actors’ assessment of the benefits that can be derived from the innovations being promoted by different organisations (Harris-Lovett et al. 2015). Over time, the audiences of inclusive innovation initiatives familiarise themselves with the innovation and can assess the cost and effort required to use or participate in it as well as its benefits (Johnson, Dowd, and Ridgeway 2006). Pragmatic legitimacy can be observed or experienced in two ways (Suchman 1995): first, benefits such as material or financial gains are directly observed or realised after engagement and interaction with the innovations being promoted. In the context of agricultural innovation for example, new modes of production such as conservation agriculture may lack legitimacy if they result in undesirable changes in the everyday lived experiences of the farmers involved such as more labour requirements compared to conventional agricultural practices (Jimenez-Soto 2020). Second, benefits may be symbolic rather than directly observed. For example, through participation in the design and implementation of inclusive innovation initiatives, targeted actors can anticipate benefits even though this can not be immediately observed or experienced (Suchman 1995).

Methodology

We employ a case study research design to investigate the criteria that smallholder farmers in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya, use to assess the legitimacy of various agricultural development interventions targeted at them. Our case is limited to farmers that are targeted by agricultural innovations promoted by three organisations: the Uasin Gishu County Government, the University of Eldoret and the New Kenya Co-operative Creameries. Below, we outline the agricultural landscape of Uasin Gishu and highlight the inclusive innovation initiatives promoted by these three organisations in the region.

Inclusive innovation initiatives for smallholder farmers in Uasin Gishu, Kenya

Uasin Gishu is a region in Western Kenya often referred to as the ‘breadbasket’ of country due to high food production in the region compared to the rest of the country (Clare, Simiyu, and Elizabeth 2019; County Government of Uasin Gishu 2013; Wildermuth 2021). The major crops cultivated in the region have traditionally been wheat, maize, beans, sorghum, millet, and vegetables while new crops such as passion fruit, avocado, and coffee have been recently introduced in the region. The county is also a major producer of milk (County Government of Uasin Gishu 2020). Majority of farmers in Uasin Gishu produce and distribute food in smallholder farming systems with minimal application of new agricultural technologies and skills such as agricultural mechanisation and new breeding techniques (MoALF Kenya 2017). As a result, the area has been a major site in Kenya for experimenting with and promoting new or improved agricultural technologies, skills, services, and governance arrangements to improve food production and distribution, and farmers’ livelihoods (County Government of Uasin Gishu 2020; 2013).

The main actors driving this process have been state agencies, research organisations, private business enterprises, and development agencies. Some of these interventions in innovation have focussed on socially inclusivity, by targeting new skills, technologies and social arrangements in agriculture to specific groups of people marginalised from mainstream innovation processes such as smallholder farmers with low income and formal education, groups of women with low incomes or social status or groups of youth with minimal access to resources such as land and financial capital (County Government of Uasin Gishu 2020; MoALF - Kenya 2019). The Uasin Gishu County government is one of the main actors that aim to promote inclusive agricultural innovation in the region. It is one of the 47 local administrative units in Kenya and has a dedicated department and program on agricultural extension. The department engages in the dissemination of new agricultural technologies such as improved crop and animal varieties and breeds to youth, women, and farmers groups that are identified to be vulnerable.

The University of Eldoret, a public research organisation, is also involved in inclusive innovation initiatives. It has an agricultural outreach centre and department that is mandated to disseminate agricultural research and development activities done by the university through trainings, seminars, and providing facilities for co-innovation with farmers. Finally, the New Kenyan Co-operative Creameries is a private milk processor experimenting with an innovative social arrangement that includes small-holder family farms and other community-based actors in the design and management of agricultural extension programs. All the three programs engage in promoting and dissemination of technologies, skills and social arrangements developed or recommended by them. In contrast to taking a supply-side focus on the criteria that these organisations would use to evaluate the uptake of the solutions they promote, we take a demand-side perspective and turn the focus on the farmers that are targeted with these interventions, to investigate the legitimacy of these interventions.

Data sources and analysis

We purposefully selected 29 farmers in Uasin Gishu that were targets of inclusive innovation initiatives by three organisations in Uasin Gishu County: The Uasin Gishu County Government (UGCG), The University of Eldoret Outreach Centre (UoEOC), and New Kenya Co-operative Creameries (New KCC). Our participants were sampled for maximum variation in terms of social status, gender, and age. The list of farmers recruited and the programmes that they were affiliated to are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Overview of interview respondents.

Respondent	Programme affiliated to	Details of the respondent
DF1	New KCC	Female; Elderly; Member of co-operative
DF2	New KCC	Male; Youth; Member of co-operative
DF3	New KCC	Female; Youth; Member of co-operative
DF4	New KCC	Male; Youth; Member of co-operative
DF5	New KCC	Male; Elderly; Individual farmer
DF6	New KCC	Male; Elderly; Member of co-operative
DF7	New KCC	Male; Youth; Member of co-operative
DF8	New KCC	Male; Elderly; Chairperson of co-operative
DF9	New KCC	Female; Youth; Chairperson of farmers’ association
DF10	New KCC	Male; Elderly; Treasurer of co-operative
DF11	UGCG	Male; Elderly; Individual farmer
DF12	UGCG	Female; Youth; Member of farmers’ association
DF13	UGCG	Male; Youth; Member of farmers’ association
DF14	UGCG	Male; Elderly; Manager of a village-based processor
DF15	UGCG	Male; Elderly; Individual farmer
DF16	UGCG	Male; Elderly, Individual farmer
DF17	UGCG	Female; Youth; Individual farmer
DF18	UGCG	Male; Elderly; Individual farmer
DF19	UGCG	Male; Youth; Member of farmers’ association
DF20	UGCG	Male; Youth; Individual farmer
DF21	UGCG	Female; Youth; Individual farmer
DF22	UoEOC	Male; Youth; Individual farmer and extension officer
DF23	UoEOC	Male; Elderly; Individual farmer
DF24	UoEOC	Male; Elderly; Individual farmer
DF25	UoEOC	Male; Youth; Individual farmer
DF26	UoEOC	Female; Youth; Individual farmer
DF27	UoEOC	Male; Youth; Individual farmer
DF28	UoEOC	Male; Elderly; Individual farmer
DF29	UoEOC	Male; Youth; Individual farmer

In-depth interviews with the participants were conducted over a period of 9 months between June 2019 and March 2020. This was complimented by non-participant observation in farms and participant observation in knowledge exchange platforms during this period. Initial months were spent on field visits and informal interviews to obtain consent, build rapport, and familiarise with the context and actors within the study area. This was followed by the in-depth interviews and non-participant observation which included walks through farms to observe and document the appropriateness of various innovations promoted to the farmers. Participant observation (Merriam 1998) was employed to observe and document through event logs and field notes the interaction between farmers and other actors in two agricultural exhibitions, four farmers training sessions, and two demonstration sessions organised by the three programs in this study. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and uploaded to the ATLAS.ti data analysis software. The aspects of moral, cognitive, and pragmatic legitimacy (Suchman 1995) were used as sensitising concepts while coding the data to unravel how the participants assessed the legitimacy of the inclusion innovation initiatives. Emerging concepts were later clustered and refined to develop themes of how legitimacy in constructed by the farmers in Uasin Gishu. The results of our analysis are presented below.

Findings

Table 2 summarises what farmers in Uasin Gishu, Kenya, that were part of this study elicited as the key aspects of legitimacy. We explain these aspects in the subsequent text.

Table 2. How targeted farmers assess the legitimacy of inclusive innovation.

Moral legitimacy	Ownership and influence over inclusive innovation initiatives Perceived competence of the organisations promoting innovation Credibility and trust of the organisations involved and its procedures Geographical proximity between the organisations and targeted farmers Frequency of interaction between the organisations and targeted farmers
Cognitive legitimacy	Familiarity with the ‘site’ for knowledge and technology exchange Accessibility of the ‘site’ for knowledge and technology exchange Complexity and ease of use of the promoted innovation Familiarity of the farmers with the innovations promoted Suitability of the procedures and methods employed
Pragmatic legitimacy	Affordability and effort required to participate in the promoted innovation Alignment of the innovation to farmers’ needs and interests Flexibility of the innovation to allow adaptation Timeliness of the innovation Scope of the innovation Novelty of the innovation

Moral legitimacy

Aspects of moral legitimacy that were elicited include the degree to which targeted farmers had ownership and influence over the initiatives directed at them, the credibility and competence of the organisations that facilitated the innovations, and the proximity and nature of relationship between the targeted farmers and the organisations promoting innovations to them.

Ownership and influence over inclusive innovation initiatives

As the farmer quoted below demonstrates, being consulted, and included in the development, implementation, and ownership of agricultural innovations such as plant breeding was an important criterion for making the innovation morally legitimate to them.

It is like baking a cake and after it’s done you divide it among people. Suppose you baked it in a bad way, do you think those people will eat the cake simply because it was your intention that you feed them? No! Participate with them. Do it together and at the end of the day they will say we did it, this is ours […] come and live with these farmers, see what they do, how they do it, why they do it, you know … all those things and then from there you can initiate yours gradually. DF16.

The importance of influence over the inclusive innovation processes was also demonstrated by the desire for farmers to contribute to the initial conceptualisation and design of the initiatives as the quote below shows.

… the training agenda should not be dictated by one side because it must be a partnership … it must come from both the farmers and O2 […] It is like the case of a patient and a doctor. If the patient does not communicate what is ailing them to the doctor properly, the doctor may not be able to attend to them. So, it must be both. DF15.

Respondents believed it was morally inappropriate for organisations to conceptualise, design, and implement initiatives meant for them without their involvement. As a result, they lacked trust in recommended solutions and did not believe that the organisations were acting in their best interests.

Geographical proximity and communication between farmers and other organisations

The lack of constant communication and physical interactions between farmers and the organisations promoting inclusive innovation eroded the legitimacy of the latter. Respondents expressed a desire for close contact and proximity with the organisation’s staff as a key aspect of engaging with them. For instance, the quote below indicates that having a programme for the elderly is not sufficient and needs to be accompanied by visibility and close contact with the programme’s administrators.

Who will I go to? Who will I approach? […] You cannot go to O1’s offices and see the leader. When you get there, you are directed to stand in a long queue … ‘what do you want old man?’ They will ask. They talk about assisting the elderly … but you know as the elderly we come from a certain place where things are done in a certain manner. You cannot keep going there every morning. You lose interest and tell yourself to just work on the farm as long as God helps you and you get some food. DF11.

This indicates that farmers value symbolic gestures such as personalised communication even if they this does not materialise into tangible benefits. The visibility and transparency of the organisation create an assurance that the organisation and its employees can be trusted since they have nothing to hide.

Credibility and competence of the organisations that promote innovation

Respondents assessed organisations promoting innovations to them based on whether they had competent staff, sufficient resources or whether they had a history of implementing programmes in a fair and just way. The quote below for instance shows that the history of the organisation was important in determining whether it was legitimate to the farmers that it targeted with innovation.

But now … the problem with O1 is that they they just ‘party’at the top and do not scrutinise the plight of farmers. They purchased maize from farmers at 3200 shillings per bag from taxpayers money. But that maize eventually got rotten and had to be destroyed. Experts said that it had been infected with aflatoxins[…] So where are we going? Do you get my point? Such are the things that are letting us down. It is O1 that is failing us together with the politicians. DF11.

Promoted technologies such as new crop varieties were also observed to be adopted on an experimental basis in several homesteads because the farmers did not trust the organisations to develop quality varieties. It is therefore shown that the historical background of an organisation, perceptions on its competence, and fairness in the procedures are important aspects of making an organisation morally legitimate to the farmers that it targets with its innovation. Since this assessment takes time, organisations that are likely to be legitimate are those that have existed for a sufficient period to allow targeted actors to assess its legitimacy.

Cognitive legitimacy

In relation to cognitive legitimacy, aspects such as the ‘site’ where interactions took place, the risks and uncertainties involved in the agricultural innovations being promoted as well as the suitability of the procedures employed all influence the degree to which the innovations were understandable to the farmers and therefore appropriate.

Familiarity and accessibility of the ‘site’ for knowledge and technology exchange

The site of exchange between the respondents and other actors as well as the respondents and the innovations prompted was observed to be important in making the innovations understandable. Sites that were familiar such as smallholder farms were preferred to off-farm sites such as an organisation’s premises because it reduced the complexity of new skills or technologies being promoted. The farmer below for instance describes how smallholder farms are more appropriate for knowledge exchange.

… when they are talking about various irrigation technologies, let them come and demonstrate these technologies where the farmers are and not take them to town, to the show ground and tell them to go and see the irrigation systems. It is like you want some technologies to be adopted and you take the farmers to some advanced places so that they may learn from there, so that they can tap it, or they can scale it down. It cannot work! Empower them from their own backyards, from what they know … that is where O2 is lagging behind. D26.

Additionally, respondents recommended interactions with people they can easily identify with and relate to during innovation processes. The farmer below expresses how knowledge exchange is more valuable when it is between peers compared to between farmers with different socio-economic backgrounds.

Once we went to Ndaragwa and that is where I felt challenged because the farmer we went to visit is somebody we know. The farmers here at Plateau are mostly of European background. But this was someone we know, and we saw his transition from what he used to have before compared to now … he took us around the farm showing us how the animals are fed, he also took us to his milking shed and showed us the actual milking. If you look at his cows, they are the same as the ones we have, the only difference is what he feeds his and what we feed ours. DF6

These findings indicate the importance of using the right platforms for innovation processes such as co-learning between different actors for the innovations to be rendered legitimate.

Complexity and ease of use of the innovations being promoted.

Respondents did not have a full knowledge of the whole food production and distribution system and were therefore subjected to risks and uncertainty as a result of engaging with the innovations promoted to them. In addition, there was anxiety over unexpected future events which may disrupt any new practices adopted. For the innovation to appropriate therefore, farmers expressed the need to understand the whole system and aspects of the innovation being promoted including the risks involved, legal regulations and distribution requirements. The farmer below explains how an improved variety of avocado was not appropriate for farmers targeted due to the uncertainty involved in its marketing.

We decided to embrace it [avocado] because it is a new variety, and we should not be struggling with maize every season since birth. So, we decided to change. I am not saying that they [O2] have done something bad … but yesterday I was asking myself that if personally I cannot go to China, how will my produce get there? Suppose our produce is ready to export and everything is on lockdown, what are we supposed to do? DF15

This indicates that farmers find new skills or technologies to be legitimate when they can evaluate all the risks involved and adequate information is provided to them in order to make this assessment.

Suitability of the methods and procedures employed.

The methods and procedures used in innovation processes such as agricultural extension are significant in determining whether the process was cognitively legitimate. We observed several methods used by organisations for knowledge exchange, including farmers’ seminars with the classroom style type of teaching, demonstrations in prototype farms and in actual farm settings, use of digital technologies and services, and linkages to other actors who can provide the required knowledge. Among respondents, there was a preference for localised training (such as use of local languages), practical methods and opportunities for interaction with other actors during knowledge exchange. As explained below, learning by seeing and doing was more valuable that other forms of learning such as seminars where farmers did not have much practical interaction with the skills and technologies being promoted.

… previously there were institutions called farmer field schools … I wish they could come to the farmer groups and put up some model farms purely sponsored and managed by both O3 and the farmers or farmers groups. So that when we are talking about passion fruit for example, there exists a model farm that can serve as a learning school for others. You know seeing is believing … those who are slow in learning through words can see. When we say a passion fruit plant produces a certain number of fruits or it matures after a certain period, we will be seeing that. DF16.

Bridging the cognitive gap between ‘scientific’ and ‘local’ types of knowledge such as through enhanced interactions with the promoted innovations was therefore instrumental in making innovations legitimate.

Pragmatic legitimacy

Dimensions of pragmatic legitimacy elicited by the respondents included affordability of the innovation, effort required to participate in the innovation as well as alignment of the innovation to the farmers’ needs and interests.

Affordability and effort required to participate in the promoted innovations

Some respondents prioritised initiatives that were affordable or free, had minor impact in changing their daily routines, and required less investment in time and other resources as demonstrated by the observed high level of participation in events within the initiatives that were easily accessible and available to targeted farmers. Monetary and non-monetary resources such as time, planning, financial costs, and effort required to take part in or benefit from innovation processes were found to be important in determining whether an innovation was appropriate to them. The farmer below for instance laments on the costs and effort involved in putting knowledge acquired from a research institute into practice.

… concerning fish production, birds were a major problem as pests. When someone approaches, they will fly away so that means it requires constant supervision and where will you get the funds for such? That is one of the reasons the project has stalled. Also, water. You must pump it to get enough and that needs a machine … So, they [O3] have helped us to have that knowledge but to put into practice has been a challenge. DF23.

The geographical proximity of the organizations that engage in or facilitate inclusive innovation processes and the farmers that they targeted also influence how appropriate the knowledge and technologies will be since it lowered the cost of access. Some respondents expressed a desire for a physical presence or availability on call of agricultural officers from the programs that promoted innovations to them so that they could easily reach out to them whenever advice was required. Apart from direct benefits, respondents also valued the social networks that they created such as with other farmers during the inclusive innovation interventions which made the innovations valuable and legitimate to them.

Alignment of the innovation to farmers’ needs and interests

Respondents considered promoted innovations to be aligned to their interests when they addressed the day-to-day challenges that they faced, were delivered on time, had flexibility to allow the farmers to experiment with it, and were novel. For instance, the farmer below explains how a new chicken variety introduced and promoted to women groups was legitimate because it had the intention to address day to day challenges faced specifically by women.

… we as Kalenjin women most of the time do not own land, cows, or sheep. So, what you can claim to be yours is the chicken. The chicken is yours because even if you sell it, your husband will not inquire why you sold the chicken. But if you sell off the cow you will not even be allowed to stay in that home, you will go back to your people [chuckles]. So, you see the Inua Mama Na Kuku [uplift women through chicken production] idea by the County Government is the best because it can take your children to school. DF12

However, intention is not a sufficient criterion for legitimacy, and it needs to be accompanied by actual outcomes that can be observed over time. As the respondent below illustrates, the new variety of chicken was a legitimate intervention in its inception, but later lost its legitimacy in time because of unintended consequences.

… they call the project ‘Inua mama na kuku’ [uplift mothers through chicken production], but for us in fact we made a loss of 111,000 shillings from those chicken […]. If they would have made follow ups, then the project would have raised the women’s living standards as it is named […]. Before the county government noticed us, we were a highly active group. Attendance was 100%. But lack of follow-ups resulted in this current situation. we even ended up calling it ‘Ua mama na kuku’ [kill mothers through chicken production]. DF17.

This implies that farmers evaluate legitimacy over time, and an innovation positively evaluated may later lose its legitimacy at a later time. Respondents also pointed out that their needs evolve over time and seasons and agricultural innovation had practical value to them when it could address their needs at a particular time. Seasonal fluctuations were observed within agricultural activities such as high milk production during the rainy season and a low production during the dry season. The respondents also claimed to face seasonal and unexpected calamities such as locusts and fall armyworm invasion. As demonstrated by the respondent below, initiatives are most valuable when they can address the immediate challenge being faced.

I normally cooperate with the so-called extension officers … In my work, I seek the assistance of the agricultural officers in my area […] this last year we had the armyworm problem … they invaded the farm and ate the maize crop. So, the officers came to my farm to support and to advise me. They even supplied me with almost a litter of the pesticide … I cannot remember what its name was. DF29

Innovations were therefore appropriate when they addressed a challenge being faced at a particular time in a timely manner. This implies that legitimacy of innovations to targeted groups of actors can change over time depending on fluctuating challenges and how they are addressed through innovation. Respondents also found the novelty of the innovation compared to what they were used to be valuable. The farmer below for example explains how new technologies would be useful if they would help to transition from manual to automated processes.

I would like for things to become automated. Like self-adjustment of the temperatures in the room, identification of diseases and prediction of growth because you need to find market a day before the mushrooms become perishable … Automation would be very useful because most of the time when I take care of the mushrooms, I cannot notice every error. DF25.

These findings indicate that pragmatic legitimacy, like the other forms of legitimacy, require time and interaction with the innovation to be accorded. Additionally, its assessment is malleable over time since it can be accorded at the inception of an inclusive innovation initiative and later withdrawn when it fails to meet the needs and expectations of the targeted farmers.

Discussion

Our objective was to elicit the criteria that farmers as targets of inclusive innovation initiatives use to assess the legitimacy of these initiatives. Our findings demonstrate that across all the forms of legitimacy identified by Suchman (1995), the assessment of legitimacy is not constant, and an innovation initially considered legitimate may lose its legitimacy at a later time. Respondents therefore needed time to evaluate the morality and ethics of the organisations involved and its actions (moral legitimacy), to understand and apply the promoted innovations (cognitive legitimacy), and to evaluate the usefulness of the innovation (pragmatic legitimacy). Second, we find that farmers attach importance to aspects related to procedural elements of legitimacy such as inclusion in managing the initiatives prompted and participating in the development of the innovations. Finally, our findings indicate that ‘intimacy’ in inclusive innovation processes such as close geographical proximity and close interaction between an organisation’s senior management and farmers is an important dimension of legitimacy since it creates trust and therefore reduces or eliminates uncertainty over the innovations introduced. We further discuss these findings below.

Agency and autonomy of targeted actors in inclusive agricultural innovation

Actors within the agricultural sector such as the state, farmers in rural areas, research organisations, and providers of various agricultural technologies and services have different interpretations and meanings that they attach to practices such as planting, harvesting, milking, and labour (Abdulai 2022). These differences in interpretations have been referred to as epistemological divides and the imposing of one interpretation over another has been labelled as epistemic injustice (Ludwig and Macnaghten 2020; Peddi, Ludwig, and Dessein 2023; Valkenburg et al. 2020). Inclusive innovation interventions select groups of people that are excluded from innovation for various reasons and target them for inclusion through various approaches. However, the selection of targeted actors, as well as the design and implementation of such interventions are still rooted in a top-down paradigm where interpretations about agriculture and development are likely to be created by influential actors such as researchers or the state and assumed to be universal and neutral (Minh et al. 2014; Valkenburg et al. 2020).

There is, therefore, a risk that narratives conducted about inclusive agricultural innovation differ from the meanings that targeted actors attach to agricultural innovation. Our findings demonstrate that targets of inclusive innovation interventions are not passive recipients of such interventions and have a set of criteria through which to assess whether such interventions are appropriate and legitimate. The elicited criteria for the case of farmers in Uasin Gishu include for instance appropriate ‘sites’ for knowledge exchange, sufficient time for interactions and perceived competency of the organisations involved. It has been pointed elsewhere that there are three possible outcomes as a result of the assessment of interventions by targeted actors. They are either accepted when they are considered to be legitimate, rejected when they are considered illegitimate, or modified when there is an opportunity to make them legitimate (Benouniche, Zwarteveen, and Kuper 2014; Cleaver 2001; Osei-Amponsah, van Paassen, and Klerkx 2018). A key aspect of inclusive and responsible innovation in therefore an understanding of the perspectives of targeted actors in such processes to ensure that they are either aligned to the proposed interpretations of problems and solutions or can be modified to make them aligned, for which there are several methods available (see de Boon, Sandström, and Rose 2022, for an overview).

Time, stability, and change in inclusive innovation processes.

Innovation concerns change in existing technologies, expertise and social structures and therefore depicts a dynamic environment with uncertainty (Godin 2017). There have therefore been several approaches being promoted and experimented with over time by different organisations regarding inclusive innovation (Opola et al. 2021; Pansera and Owen 2018). It takes time to realise the success or impact of such interventions (Ribeiro et al. 2018). In this study, we demonstrate that a level of stability over this time is required for innovation and change processes to be considered legitimate to targeted actors. This is because these actors need an opportunity to interact with the innovations and the organisations promoting it to assess their legitimacy. This presents a paradox in inclusive innovation interventions. On the one hand, organisations are constantly changing and adopting their approaches to best suit the ever-changing needs and interests of the group of actors that they target (Córdoba, Jansen, and González 2014; Kilelu, Klerkx, and Leeuwis 2014; McKague and Oliver 2016; Rusca et al. 2015). On the other hand, targeted actors require stability, such as minimal change in programme structures, governance regimes and the types of knowledge and technologies being promoted, to assess and accord legitimacy to such initiatives.

The implication of this paradox of stability and change in innovation processes is that inclusive innovation interventions can simultaneously be legitimate and illegitimate to the targeted groups of actors. First, an innovation or organisation perceived to be legitimate at a particular point in time may later be considered illegitimate or vice versa at a different point in time after assessment of it has been adequately made by the targeted actors. Second, within the targeted group of actors, some subgroups of people may consider it to be legitimate while others may consider it illegitimate depending on the criteria that is important to them. Finally, while an inclusive innovation intervention might be legitimate is some aspects, such as pragmatic legitimacy, it may be illegitimate in other aspects, such as moral legitimacy. It has been suggested that one-size-fits all approaches in inclusive innovation interventions are seldom useful and there is need to develop and employ different solutions to different contexts (Birner et al. 2009). Our findings demonstrate that such context specific approaches make it a challenge for the innovations to be assessed by the targeted actors due to inconsistency over different contexts and time.

‘Do it together with us’: the value of procedural legitimacy

It is pointed out that within innovation processes, there is a preference towards ‘scientific’ or ‘formal’ science, technology, and innovation in comparison to knowledge or innovation that is considered ‘Indigenous’, ‘local’, or ‘informal’ (Fressoli et al. 2014; Pandey and Sharma 2021; Pansera and Martinez 2017). Science is often used to legitimise interventions and technologies (van der Velden et al. 2023), but since actors that are targeted with inclusive innovation interventions are likely to be people with little formal education or training, their participation and contributions to innovation processes are often dismissed as failing to meet the criteria for rigorous science and innovation (Neef and Neubert 2011). On the other hand, targeted actors such as rural residents with little formal education may dismiss ‘scientific’ innovations, technologies, and services as untrustworthy and alien to their needs, routines, and practices (Neef and Neubert 2011; Nyadzi et al. 2022). Our findings demonstrate that participation of targeted actors in innovation processes is a key aspect of making inclusive innovation interventions morally appropriate and trustworthy to targeted actors. Meaningful participation is enhanced through for instance choosing the right ‘sites’ and methods for knowledge exchange, close geographical proximity, and frequent and informal interactions with the targeted actors.

A key debate among researchers and practitioners of participatory research and development approaches has been whether the participation of targeted actors in such processes is in itself an end goal for the targeted actors or a means to more tangible outcomes for these actors (Neef and Neubert 2011; Tritter and McCallum 2006). Acute wealth and social inequality still exist in a lot of countries and participation of the less wealthy and less influential members of society in development interventions can be an important steppingstone towards tangible outcomes such as equal distribution of resources and power. However, our findings demonstrate that participation can also be a valuable end goal in itself. Ownership and control over development processes is a key element of a legitimate intervention to targeted actors even if this does not lead to tangible benefits to their day-to-day lives. We therefore align our discussion to the calls for the recognition and participation of targeted actors as a key element of ethical, just, and legitimate innovation processes, rather than a means to attaining tangibles outcomes (Brownsword and Goodwin 2012; Pandey and Sharma 2021). This broader perspective on inclusive innovation that includes both the process and outcomes of innovation may be instrumental in departing from a technology-push paradigm that is still dominant in many innovation and development interventions especially in less-industrialised countries. More broadly, bringing in insights from inclusive innovation can also help in shaping more appropriate and context specific responsible innovation processes in less industrialised countries (Doezema et al. 2019; Wakunuma et al. 2021).

Concluding remarks

We started by claiming that there is lack of sufficient criteria for the assessment of inclusive innovation by the actors that are targeted with such interventions such as smallholder farmers in rural areas. We have demonstrated that ownership and control over innovation processes, geographical proximity between targeted actors and organisations promoting inclusive innovation, use the correct procedures and ‘site’ for innovation and quality of social interactions between different actors are some aspects that determine whether inclusive innovation interventions are legitimate to the actors that it targets. We also demonstrate that while inclusive innovation involves change, this change needs to occur within structures that are stable over time for them to be legitimate to the targeted actors. For example, well-established programmes such as universities can be easily assessed for legitimacy compared to programmes which have specific time periods or are under time-bound governance regimes. A limitation in this study was the focus on farmers that were targets of inclusive innovation interventions under specific programs. We did not, therefore, examine whether and to what extent the criteria used by farmers differed from the criteria that the organisations involved used in seeking and evaluating legitimacy. Additionally, this limited our findings to criteria elicited by farmers that were under the three programs mentioned in this study, rather than by smallholder farmers in general.

Acknowledgements

This study was conducted as part of PhD research under the 3R Kenya project at the Knowledge Technology and Innovation Group, Wageningen University, Netherlands. The project was funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Nairobi, Kenya, within the framework of the Agriculture and Food & Nutrition Security program, whose support is appreciated. The authors also acknowledge feedback received on an earlier version of this paper from the participants of the 2020 Journal of Peasant Studies Annual Write-shop. We also acknowledge the insights and suggestions provided by the editors and anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Responsible Innovation to an earlier draft of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Netherlands Embassy in Kenya.

Notes

1 While Suchman uses the term ‘audience’, this creates a contradiction in inclusive innovation literature since it implies an excluded group of people.