451 AG 32 AGRICLTURAL EXTENSION EDUCATION AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT

2014

The Millennium Declaration was adopted to motivate the international community and provide accountability mechanisms for actions taken to enable millions of poor people to improve their livelihoods. About seventy percent of the MDG’s target groups live in rural areas, particularly in Africa and Asia, and for most of the rural poor, agriculture is a critical component in the successful attainment of the Millennium Development Goals. Even though structural transformations are important in the longer term, more immediate gains in poor household welfare can be achieved through agriculture, which can help the poor overcome some of their critical constraints. Thus a necessary component in meeting the MDGs by 2015 in many parts of the developing world is effective productive agriculture-through its extension component. Agricultural extension in its broadest sense is considered an important instrument to support farmers’ efforts in agricultural development and poverty reduction in a changing world. Extension supports the MDGs in at least three areas-poverty reduction, gender equality, and sustainable environmental management. Extensions role as a facilitator, broker, coach, and even a partner in local rural development platforms and value chains represents an opportunity for rural change, innovation process and rural poverty reduction through its research and empowerment component. Extension messages now consider women farmers, groups and vulnerable individuals in its approach and models to reaching people. There is also urgent need for extension to allocate more resources and effort to educating farmers how to use sustainable natural and resource management practices and to adopt these practices continuously in order to cope with the impact of climatic and environmental change. This paper thus, using mainly literature from the web- discusses how extension functions in reducing poverty, ensuring food security, balancing gender issues and providing skills for sustainable natural resource management. KEYWORDS: MDGs, extension, poverty, sustainability, resource management, gender.

While agricultural extension services in Tanzania have mostly been provided and financed by the public sector, the landscape is changing with regard to the provision of extension services in the country. Observations reveal that several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and farmer-led initiatives have, over time, supplemented extension service delivery of the public extension services with cost-sharing, but these experiences have not been formally integrated into the extension system nor has their potential to reduce public expenditure and improve quality of extension service been considered. As the government continues to face financial difficulties, it has started to reconsider the issue of public extension service and is currently entertaining the possibilities of gradually divesting the public sector of extension, leaving the private sector and users to take an increasing responsibility. This paper brings to light major providers of extension services in Tanzania to help inform decision-makers on how various actors can support agricultural extension on a sustainable basis.

2021

The paper critically examines the agricultural extension theories and practice in sub-Saharan Africa, and gives a typology of extension theories and technology acceptance model. Over the years, a number of models have been used to enhance the effectiveness of extension services and service delivery. However, the function of theory in research is to identify the starting point of the research problem and to establish the vision to which the problem is directed. Extension science evolved from rural sociology and overtime extension has become more and more associated with social psychology and communication. Consequently, extension theory helps us to comprehensively understand the contextual factors of the innovation process and provides valuable insights into the factors that influence adoption and decision-making amongst smallholder farmers. The paper reviewed and analyzed the most accepted theories/models being used historically and currently for studying technology adoption decisions amongst smallholder farmers. These theories/models include:

Sumerianz Publication

East African countries referred to have the effective extension system in Africa. However, the agriculture sector has not shown significant improvement in production and bettering peoples' lives in rural areas. In Tanzania, agricultural extension system remains almost entirely financed by the public sector represented by the government through the Ministry of Agriculture. Extension services provided by the Government of Tanzania are publicly funded and, thus, free for farmers employing several extension systems and approaches including the gradual improvement in farming methods, the transformation approach, the settlement scheme and the Training and Visit (T&V) system. Decentralization of extension services in Tanzania introduced with the aim of bringing services closer to farmers. However, the impact of decentralization of extension services in improving farmers' lives has been perceived mostly with failure than with success. Additionally, performance of extension services in the country reported to be affected by numerous factors such as inefficient funding, poor organization at Local Government Authorities (LGAs), coordination and management, political interference environment, and weak linkage with research sector among others. In addition, the insufficient number of staff and poor infrastructures and facilities, government extension agents reach only 10% of the farming households, leading to dissatisfaction with rendered services among farmers. However, Government's apparent commitment to policies and strategies in transforming the agriculture sector as it employs more than 70% of its population. Thus, recently, the central government provided motor bikes, iPad and soil scanners to all extension workers throughout the country. Hence, this review on the performance of agriculture extension services under local government authorities was conducted to articulate challenges facing the system and propose solutions to achieve the traditional 'structural transformation' whereby increasing agricultural production provides a platform for manufacturing and economic growth.

Agriculture is generally referred to as the mainstay of African economy, the real driver of economic growth. Agricultural extension plays a critical role in African development by bringing the farming community information on new technologies, which they can adopt to increase productivity, incomes and standards of living. Therefore, extension staffs are key players in the development process. However, extension systems in Africa face numerous challenges, which, in turn limit their effectiveness in promoting smallholder farmers' productivity. This study by an emerging Africa Extension Reform Group (AERG) was carried out to determine issues and challenges facing extension personnel in Africa. The researchers interviewed 393 extension staffs at the district, sub-district and grass root levels in nine countries, namely, Ghana, Botswana, Tanzania, Cameroon, Senegal, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda, and Nigeria. Although the study is not generalizable to Africa or even the countries of s...

The Journal of Agricultural Extension, 2017

Agriculture is generally referred to as the mainstay of African economy, the real driver of economic growth. Agricultural extension plays a critical role in African development by bringing the farming community information on new technologies, which they can adopt to increase productivity, incomes and standards of living. Therefore, extension staffs are key players in the development process. However, extension systems in Africa face numerous challenges, which, in turn limit their effectiveness in promoting smallholder farmers’ productivity. This study by an emerging Africa Extension Reform Group (AERG) was carried out to determine issues and challenges facing extension personnel in Africa. The researchers interviewed 393 extension staffs at the district, sub-district and grass root levels in nine countries, namely, Ghana, Botswana, Tanzania, Cameroon, Senegal, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda, and Nigeria. Although the study is not generalizable to Africa or even the countries of study...

2018

Decades of agricultural research have led to the development of technological innovations and improved farming practices that hold a huge potential for increasing agricultural production and achieving global food security. However, the level of dissemination and adoption of this knowledge is still inadequate, especially among smallholder farmers in developing countries. In an effort to enhance the adoption of such technical innovations and improved practices, agricultural extension approaches like Farmer Field Schools (FFS) have been widely advocated. FFS are usually participatory and informal methods of training and assisting farmers in their own locality, to adopt and adapt new technologies that can improve their farming practices. The ASDP-L and ASSP projects were implemented in Zanzibar between 2007 to 2017, with an aim to contribute towards the Government initiatives to increase agricultural productivity and profitability, generate employment in rural areas and ensure national ...