Determinants of technological innovation on agricultural biomass: the case of Jatropha curcas in Burkina Faso.

Summary The development of biofuels supported by the international community has been booming since the early 2000s on a global scale to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, address the energy concerns of industrial countries and reduce energy poverty in the South. This strategy is facing several controversies regarding the socio-economic impacts of biofuels and the technological trajectories best suited to the development needs of sub-Saharan African countries. The objective of this thesis is to understand the determinants of technological innovation processes in biofuel production. The thesis poses two hypotheses for this purpose. The first hypothesis, structured by the intersection of transition theories and systemic analyses of innovation, is based on the institutional determinism of technological innovation processes that structure the emergence of the biofuel sector. The second hypothesis assumes that the emergence and development of the bioenergy sector is the result of micro-economic and territorial adoption conditions of energy crop production. The test of these hypotheses is carried out by mobilizing an analysis framework in terms of innovation systems in the case of the Jatropha sector in Burkina Faso. The results show that the emergence of biofuel technologies in Sub-Saharan African countries is linked to institutional changes induced by the energy and environmental crises. These institutional changes activate resources favorable to the emergence and dissemination of biofuel technologies. In Burkina Faso, these changes are driven by European policies and those of sub-regional organizations such as WAEMU and ECOWAS. Econometric modeling allows us to test the conditions for microeconomic adoption and implementation of biofuel technology innovations. The structural factors of the farm (land capital, food situation, perception), the proximity of the actors in the sector, and the institutional variables inherent in capacity building and skills appear to structure these adoption processes for Jatropha. Finally, this adoption depends on technological models that allow the integration of the phases of raw material production, processing and utilization from a territorial point of view in a mechanism that responds to the priority development needs of Burkina Faso.