The presentation focused on how communicative competence has changed since the first Green Revolution. The role of technology transfer in the first Green Revolution was found to be a key factor in the diffusion of innovations. The U.S. Land Grant University was given as a model of institutional innovation in the process of building communicative competence. The presentation then shifted towards the transition to complex adaptive systems resulting from shifts in science and learner-focused scholarship, leading to the need for a series of differentiated revolutions in Africa. The importance of adaptive management was stressed. The presentation reviewed the role of stakeholders and actors in the development of networks and community participation in conservation agriculture. Networks were presented as modes to analyze how actors could participate in the learning processes and capacity development in the adoption of conservation agricultural innovations. Findings were presented from social network analysis of several rural communities in Africa produced evidence that a network approach can make valuable contributions to technology development and spontaneous adoption on a community scale.