Building Agribusiness Capacity in East Timor (BACET) directly contributes to USAID/Timor-Leste’s agriculture and workforce development strategies for economic growth. Though categorized as a capacity building and workforce development activity, many of the key activities of BACET have included infrastructure improvements, which are longer-term in nature. Similarly, teacher training and changed teaching methods have long-term impact. 

The USAID Building Agribusiness Capacity in East Timor (BACET) program was extended for three additional years in September 2008. Land O’Lakes gathered feedback from the Ministry of Agriculture, USAID, teachers and students and immediately initiated enhancements to improve the curriculum previously developed to reinforce practical and market-oriented skills.

Africa Lead—Feed the Future’s Building Capacity for African Agricultural Transformation Program—supports the advancement of agricultural transformation in Africa as proposed by the African Union Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP). Simultaneously, Africa Lead contributes to the Feed the Future goals of reduced hunger and poverty by building the capacity of Champions—defined as men and women leaders in agriculture—and the institutions in which they operate to develop, lead, and manage the policies, structures and processes needed for the transformation process. 

Africa Lead II is a program dedicated to supporting and advancing agricultural transformation in Africa as proposed by the African Union Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program. Simultaneously, it contributes to USAID’s Feed the Future goals of reduced hunger and poverty by building the capacity of Champions—defined as men and women leaders in agriculture—to develop, lead, and manage the policies, structures, and processes needed for the transformation process. 

From November 1, 2012 to June 30, 2015, Michigan State University subcontracted Washington State University together with the University of Rwanda (UR)  in order to deliver a gender sensitive Masters of Science in Agribusiness program at UR. The project had three specific objectives, to strengthen the human and institutional capacity of UR in teaching and applied research in agricultural sciences; to promote and support women's access to graduate education in agricultural sciences; and to extend UR's knowledge about, and women's expertise in, agricultural sciences to the community.

Automation of essential processes in agriculture is becoming widespread, especially when fast action is required. However, some processes that could greatly benefit from some degree of automation have such difficult characteristics, that even small improvements pose a great challenge. This is the case of fish disease diagnosis, a problem of great economic, social and ecological interest. Difficult problems like this often require a interdisciplinary approach to be tackled properly, as multifaceted issues can greatly benefit from the inclusion of different perspectives.

This decision guide is intended to help extension professionals and their organizations make informed decisions about which extension method and approach to use for providing information, technologies and services to rural producers and to facilitate interactions and knowledge flow. Expected users include field-based rural advisors, extension managers and programme planners.

The New Extensionist is a global view of extension and advisory services (EAS) that reinvents and clearly articulates the role of EAS in the rapidly-changing rural context. It argues for an expanded role for EAS within agricultural innovation systems (AIS) and development of new capacities at different levels to play this role.

Following their first formation in Indonesia over 25 years ago, Farmer Field Schools (FFS) have served as a “proof of concept” of how transformative learning can help governments, donors and development stakeholders achieve development objectives. The FFS approach, which has now been used in more than 90 countries by more than 12 million small farmers (FAO, 2016), not only creates a space in which the practical needs of smallholders to solve production-related issues can be addressed but also fosters personal and community-level transformation through empowerment.

This brochure presents the Programme on Bridging the Rural Digital Divide, that begun in 2003 under the implementation of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The programme highlighted innovative approaches to knowledge exchange that were taking advantage of new (at that time) digital technologies, and that were based on synergies between information management and communication for development. At the time this was referred to as "information and communication for development"(ICD).