MECS Programme Working Paper
This paper provides a first attempt to map several characteristics of Tanzania’s e-cooking socio-technical innovation system. The ‘map’ consists of visualisations of the actor-networks and actor-relations in the system along with elaborations on who the actors are, the extent and nature of their interactions, sketches of significant projects, and discussion of emerging issues relevant to the further development of the innovation system. It also includes some summary attention to the context and enabling environment of the e-cooking socio-technical innovation system. Based on this characterisation, we conduct a sociotechnical innovation system analysis to determine the system’s strengths and weaknesses and, building on this analysis, derive several recommendations we argue the MECS Programme could implement to further its aims more effectively.
The paper is primarily concerned with assessing the state of play in the current e-cooking socio-technical innovation system in Tanzania with a view to offering thoughts on how it can be nurtured, strengthened and evolved so as to better achieve transformations in clean cooking that work in the interests of poor and marginalised groups in the country. As such, the paper is intended to be most useful to practitioners working on e-cooking in general and the broader MECS Programme in particular.
Available at: https://mecs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Byrne-et-al-2020-Tanzania-ISM-MECS-format-200809-1.pdf
Author(s): Rob Byrne, Elsie Onsongo, Beryl Onjala, Jacob Fodio Todd, Victoria Chengo, David Ockwell and Joanes Atela