| According to some anthropologists, the local group is a necessary condition to develop any farming innovation. The fish innovation in Africa is not an exception, especially when initiated by smallholders. A rereading of the innovation mechanisms in an extension project's frame, initiated by a NGO in Cameroon but also in Guinea and Ivory Cost, enables to note the effectiveness of the fish-farming innovation analysed. Next, from the economist's point of view, the paper identifies then studies the role of the local group in the fish innovation. Besides classic benefits already described (that is cost cutting and improvement of inputs and services availability), this study shows that the local group of innovators and candidates to the fish innovation holds other critical positions, in acquiring knowledge and know-how and their turning into competencies in particular. And yet these functions prove themselves to be crucial for the success of the setting up of a new viable and perennial economic activity. Fish farming approaches hardly take them into account in the investment cost estimation and even less in the opportunity cost determination that means that kind of innovation for the farmer. This contribution emphasizes the overall underestimation of new activity development costs for the farmers. We can check it especially in the case of the fish farming in Africa where many promotion approaches in rural environment are limited to physical investments, completed if necessary by standardized trainings. Secondly, it refers to the matter of the composition of innovative smallholders' networks and of their links with local societies. Finally, this rereading calls into question the farmers' innovation capacity in an environment where the national and international instances don't pay attention to this capacity. |
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1Marc Oswald 2
