While education access has improved globally, gains are uneven, and development impacts driven by increases in education continue to be left on the table, especially in rural areas. Demand-driven extension and advisory services (EAS) – as a key institution educating rural people while providing agricultural advice and supplying inputs – have a critical role to play in bridging the education gap. This can help ensure that millions of young people successfully capitalise on opportunities in agriculture markets, as surveys in Rwanda and Uganda demonstrate.
A bilateral project between the Swiss Agency for Cooperation and Development (SDC) and the Nepalese government, which ran from 2016 to 2020 and covered 61 municipalities in provinces 1, 3 (Bagmati) and 6 (Karnali), with technical support from the Swiss NGO Helvetas, aimed to promote a multi-stakeholder approach to agricultural services in Nepal.
This guide is intended to assist facilitators in conducting a workshop with Extension and Advisory Service (EAS) providers for assessing their capacity needs. This guide has been compiled by the Centre for Research on Innovation and Science Policy (CRISP) for AESA with the assistance of a research grant from the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS).
In theory, under the federal structure agricultural extension services can serve communities better as it aims to be client responsive and accountable to its consumers at the village level. However, poor understanding of federalism that has only recently emerged from the persisting centralized and feudal conceptions, limited practices of democratic norms and values primarily due to the lack of understanding of local governance, and limited commitment of political actors and policy makers to federalism, may derail the good intentions behind federalism.
Undertaking Capacity Needs Assessment (CNA) is critical for organizing appropriate capacity development interventions. AESA organised four workshops on CNA of EAS in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal with the following objectives.
1. Identify capacity gaps among EAS providers
2. Finalise a methodology for undertaking capacity needs assessment.
During the period 2013-2019, the Agricultural Extension in South Asia (AESA) Network has served as a platform for collating the voices, insights, concerns, and experiences of people in the extension sphere of South Asia. Diverse professionals shared their concerns on the present and future of Extension and Advisory Services (EAS) in the form of blog conversations for AESA. Together, all of these individuals who are involved, interested and passionate about EAS, discussed ways to move beyond some of the seemingly intransigent problems that are hindering the professionalization of EAS.
During the last six years (2013-2019), the Agricultural Extension in South Asia (AESA) Network has served as a platform for collating the voices, insights, concerns, and experiences of people in the extension sphere of South Asia. Diverse professionals shared their concerns on the present and future of Extension and Advisory Services (EAS) in the form of blog conversations for AESA.
This paper offers a perspective on the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System. The first chapter gives an introduction to the subject and explains the role of SCAR and of the Strategic Working Group AKIS. The second chapter investigates the AKIS and their role in innovation, including the policy context of the European Innovation Partnership “Agricultural productivity and sustainability”. Chapter 3 discusses the relation in a globalised world between Agricultural Research (AR) and Agricultural Research for Development (ARD).
ICT-driven digital tools to support smallholder farmers are arguably inevitable for agricultural development, and they are gradually evolving with promising outlook. Yet, the development and delivery of these tools to target users are often fraught with non-trivial, and sometimes unanticipated, contextual realities that can make or mar their adoption and sustainability. This article unfolds the experiential learnings from a digital innovation project focusing on surveillance and control of a major banana disease in East Africa which is being piloted in Rwanda.
This document on Good Practices in Extension Research and Evaluation is developed as a hands on reference manual to help young researchers, research students, and field extension functionaries in choosing the right research methods for conducting quality research and evaluation in extension. This manual has been compiled by the resource persons who participated in the Workshop on ‘Good