The Sub-Saharan African smallholder agricultural sector faces multiple and usually complex challenges, which can potentially be overcome by collective action. Smallholder farmers and other value chain stakeholders can tackle temporal, structural and contextual challenges by joining multi-level innovation networks to benefit collectively from shared information, knowledge, improved capacities and economies of scale in a process of innovation. Ambidexterity is a capability of innovation networks to balance exploration and exploitation dynamics in an innovation process, and is applicable at multiple levels: individuals, leaders, champions, teams and clusters. In the paradigm of open innovation, these levels become intertwined in hybrid social structures of innovation netchains. The objective of this paper is to describe the roles and identify the stakeholders that play those roles in an innovation process. We present case studies on farmer groups who participate in collective action and we compare multi-stakeholder platforms with other configurations of actors that tackle challenges in potato netchains in three Sub-Saharan African countries. We track and analyse innovation trajectories for six cases adapting netchain analysis techniques linking roles with the challenges faced at particular stages of each innovation trajectory. We find three management designs for fostering exploration and exploitation: (1) exploratory or exploitative management designs for small innovation networks; (2) exploitative management designs for larger networks; and (3) ambidextrous management designs for multi-stakeholder networks. Traditional roles played by managers are identified to manage exploration and exploitation in an ambidextrous way, but also evidence of roles of civil society actors facilitating collective action for the emergence of multi-stakeholder cooperatives. Since ambidexterity is about dynamism, we identified three types of mobility to be fostered when tackling challenges in an innovation process: (1) mobility-dynamism of the innovation process over time; (2) structural-knowledge mobility in innovation networks; and (3) boundary mobility.

Goldin and Winters, 1992). Structural adjustment policies often tied aid to the privatisation of the delivery of services in sub-Saharan Africa. With a weak private sector many nongovernmental organisations-both international and local-were founded or expanded to fill the gap (Bratton, 1989). Systems of innovation therefore changed from centralised systems of national agricultural research institutions and extension services to a variety of service providers, with the entry of many new research and development stakeholders (Anandajayasekeram, 2011). In Uganda for instance, decentralisation reform has transferred the coordination of developmental projects from central to local governments. The former top-down approach in Uganda has changed to a bottom-up approach that has to be coordinated with community international and even virtually, and within value chains to form 'netchains' (Lazzarini et al., 2001). Netchains include farmers, researchers, traders, transporters, processors, finance institutions, international non-governmental organisations. 1.2 Innovation networks tackling food insecurity and poverty of family farmers in sub-Saharan Africa Over the past decade there have been an increasing number of initiatives that are testing strategies or intervention approaches to enhance farmers' capabilities (See case studies of CFS, 2015). These initiatives involve different configurations and levels of innovation networks, and also aim to foster some capabilities of family farms. Some initiatives seek to develop organisational and knowledge capabilities like in Farmer Field School networks, or Village Information and Communication Centers (Pérez Perdomo et al., 2009), in which farmers have the opportunity of learning by doing and sharing knowledge. In these initiatives farmers join "communities of practice" (de Jager et al., 2009, Pérez Perdomo et al., 2009, Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) as part of local small innovation networks. Chapter 1 5 Initiatives based on the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) that combine information systems using internet platforms and mobile phones, might foster information and communication capabilities of farmers to share market information and prices of commodities. Mobile phones are facilitating linkages of farmers to local, national and international markets. In the Philippines, Uganda, South Africa and Kenya 1 farmers get information by voice and text messages on markets and prices, daily or seasonal weather forecasts, the production of pesticides and even use internet for sending money to relatives. These new ways of sharing knowledge and social interaction mediated by the use of ICTs facilitate more participative and open approaches for fostering capabilities for innovation. While an increasing number of farmers have access to ICTs due to ubiquity of media and access to the technology, there are still factors that limit their use; such as a limited knowledge in the use of ICTs, costs of services of internet, and language limitations (Pérez Perdomo, 2003, Parkinso...

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