Do donor funded projects enhance farmers innovative performance for productivity improvement? Evidence from capacity building interventions in Northern Ghana

This paper examines the extent to which farmers’ innovative performance gets enhanced or otherwise through participation in targeted donor-funded capacity building (CB) project interventions in northern Ghana, and the implications for agricultural productivity improvement.  Data were collected from 314 northern Ghana farmers, through the mixed method approach, involving the use of focused group discussions, desk review and cross-sectional data. The study showed majority of the respondents exhibiting high innovative performance, with statistically significant difference between the levels of participation and innovative performance of farmers. Although, farmer participation in the capacity building interventions influenced farmers’ innovative performance, not many (18.2%) of the farmers shared information on knowledge acquired, which affected the expected increase in yields of the participating farmers in the intervention. To improve farmer innovativeness, there is the need for the formulation of policies targeted at promoting more participatory approaches in the delivery of information to farmers. Future capacity building intervention designs should therefore concentrate on empowering farmers to utilize and share information to improve productivity. Key words: Capacity building, innovative performance, information sharing, knowledge and skills, yield, productivity.