Policies and Capacities For Innovation
Effective policies and strong institutional capacities are essential for fostering innovation within agrifood systems, enabling their transformation toward sustainability, inclusion and resilience. In many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), challenges such as policy incoherence, reactive decision-making, fragmented governance, and insufficient capacity hinder the generation and scaling of innovative solutions.
FAO's Policies and Capacities for Innovation initiative addresses these challenges by enhancing the ability of various stakeholders—including governments, research institutions, the private sector, and local communities—to collaboratively design and implement effective innovation policies.
The initiative strengthens institutional frameworks, promotes cross-sectoral coordination, and builds capacities at the individual, organizational, and systemic levels, enabling the co-creation and adoption of context-specific innovations. It leverages a range of tools such as AIS diagnostics, foresight studies, capacity academies, and partnerships, as well as the Innovation Policy Labs (IPLs), a critical tool for facilitating collaborative policy-making and anticipatory governance.
Through its FutureFOOD-I Lab, FAO connects these elements into a forward-looking innovation framework, embedding UN 2.0 capabilities and helping countries translate innovation into national pathways for agrifood system transformation.
Turning Gaps into Gains
Through collaborative efforts, FAO supports countries in developing inclusive policies and robust capacities to generate and scale innovations. By fostering multi-stakeholder dialogues, providing technical assistance, and leveraging tools such as IPLs, FAO ensures that innovations are co-created, contextually relevant, and sustainable. IPLs bring diverse stakeholders together to co-develop evidence-based solutions, drawing on foresight, anticipatory methods and the full range of UN 2.0. capabilities to prepare for future challenges.