Commentary :
Sustainability and resilience reinforcement drive farmers in Africa to innovate, to enhance their own practices and make the best from use locally available resources. Social innovation may be defined as all new know-how that tackles existing social, economic and environmental challenges for people’s advantage. In Benin, the pig value chain (PVC) is a leading chain at the national level. Nevertheless, the recurrent African swine fever epizootics since 1997 as well as the lack of organization of PVC actors have been undermining the sector. Therefore innovations, both of technical and organizational natures, are needed to help the sector taking advantage of the present rise in pig meat consumption. The Q-method is a tool mobilized in social sciences to investigate the discourses at play on complex topics in a particular social setting. It is here proposed to use this approach to characterize the perceptions of innovations along the PVC in the Ouémé and Plateau provinces in South-east Benin. Firstly, a list of statements about innovations’ origins, benefits, risks, and social impact was established through focus group discussions (3 groups of 5 persons). Fifty-five statements were selected based on the level of agreement between actors, estimated through the calculation of the Kendall’s coefficient on proportional piling exercises. Then, 25 actors along the PVC were selected for individual interviews and statements classification along an 11-grades agreement scale (from -5 to 5). The eigenvalues of the three factors identified are respectively 0.98, 0.92 and 0.97. The 3 discourses vary by their level of optimism, criticism and cautiousness facing innovations. The first discourse may be qualified as an "optimistic discourse on present innovations". The second envisions "innovations as an ineffective linear, top-down process", while the third focuses on the link between "innovations and failing institutions". This study should usefully shed light on the factors to take into account in the organization of actors to foster innovations facing the present PVC challenges in Benin.