The global ambition to eradicate extreme poverty as outlined in Agenda 2030 will not succeed with business-as-usual approaches. The G7 Ministers responsible for humanitarian action and development assistance endorse the following principles to guide and accelerate innovation for development impact:

• Promote inclusive innovation, with a focus on supporting the poorest and most vulnerable to have lasting development impact. Gender analysis is valuable in this regard. Women and adolescent girls, including those with disabilities, should play a decisive role in the design, testing, learning and adoption of innovative solutions, and should be engaged as both recipients of innovation and by supporting them with tools and resources as innovators.

• Invest in locally-driven solutions and support and encourage local innovators and their partners in developing countries, including by sharing talent and resources from global networks with them;

• Take intelligent risks by experimenting and using rigorous data, while ensuring that we do no harm, and investing more boldly once initial steps yield stronger evidence of the demonstrated impact and financial viability through proof of concept;

• Use evidence, including disaggregated data, to drive decision-making to improve impact and cost-effectiveness by developing clear metrics early on and measuring progress against milestones on an ongoing basis to help identify the most effective innovations and the remaining gaps;

• Seize opportunities to learn quickly, iterate and ensure the impact of promising innovations before scaling them up by also acknowledging failure and inefficiencies;

• Facilitate collaboration and co-creation across public, private and civil society sectors and coordinate the application of scientific, technical, social and business innovations to leverage intellectual, financial and social resources from all, and share data, standards, results and learning widely;

• Identify scalable solutions, including technologies, that demonstrate high potential to achieve and sustain significant impact and cost-effectiveness, and open the potential to reach millions of people in need in developing countries; and,

• Integrate proven innovations into organizations’ larger programming by removing the internal and external barriers to using these solutions in current and future projects, and support the acceleration of growth and impact of proven innovations.

The full declaration is available here. 

Dans cet ouvrage, intitulé « Système d’innovation agricole: Guide stratégique et pratique de conseil agricole« , Dr Amadou Ndiaye aborde les fondamentaux (formes, domaines et processus) de l’éducation agricole et caractérise l’éducation non formelle à travers les acteurs, les principes, le processus, l’activité et le programme. Ensuite, il présente l’innovation (concept, production/ gestion, diffusion/adoption, évaluation) et le concept de conseil agricole. Enfin, il aborde le métier (principes méthodologiques, processus, activité et programme) et la performance du conseiller agricole en se basant sur les modèles d’analyse systémique du développement agricole et rural (SDAR).

M. Ndiaye produit un guide stratégique et pratique. Il comble un vide en mettant le focus sur des éléments exceptionnellement abordés dans les parcours de formation agricole surtout en Afrique francophone mais pourtant nécessaires à la performance du conseiller agricole. En capitalisant ses expériences de conseiller agricole et d’enseignant/chercheur, il fait oeuvre pionnière qui permettrait de penser et d’élaborer des stratégies pour une meilleure professionnalisation du métier de conseiller agricole.

l’ouvrage peut acheter en ligne sur le site de la maison d’édition: http://www.editions-harmattan.fr/index.asp?navig=catalogue&obj=livre&no=59447

Préface de l’ouvrage

4ème de couverture

Le Centre de ressources de l’ICRA propose de nombreux documents sur la production, la transformation et le stockage des produits agricoles. Il met également à disposition plusieurs outils de vulgarisation et de formation sur le coton et d’autres cultures.

Pour y accéder: http://www.icra-edu.org/ressources

This document presents results of an assessment of the Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services in Senegal conducted  by the Feed the Future program Developing Local Extension Capacities (DLEC)  It is a desk review of the extension and advisory services (EAS) system in Senegal. It also provides an assessment of the Feed the Future Naatal Mbay project’s EAS strategy and makes recommendations for strengthening it. The document uses the “best-fit” framework to examine the services from a systems perspective, looking at six EAS characteristics – the governance structures and policy environment; organizational and management capacities and cultures; advisory methods; market engagement; livelihood strategies; and community engagement.

Some key findings include the following:

• The lack of a guiding comprehensive national extension policy, resulting in a low profile, limited funding, and weak coordination of extension
• The presence of producer organizations (POs) and federations of POs, which show promise for sustainability and scaling of EAS approaches
• A low use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially compared to other countries assessed under DLEC

Recommendations include

• Develop an extension policy and strengthen coordination of providers
• Organize a national meeting for extension and advisory services providers on the role of farmer trainers in extension
• Increase the testing and use of ICT methods in extension and support existing programs
• Increase the number of female farmer trainers, by providing gender training to those selecting farmer trainers, targeting women’s groups, promoting couples to take on the position of farmer trainers instead of just the man, and ensuring that work and training conditions are conducive to female participation

Finally, with regard to Naatal Mbay, the report recommends further documenting the achievements of Naatal Mbay’s extension and capacity strengthening approaches and (a) assess key factors contributing to project achievements thus far, (b) analyze remaining challenges, (c) propose ways to improve performance in meeting project goals and (d) determine pathway to sustainability so that extension and capacity strengthening mechanisms can continue to help producer networks, organizations and rural households to continue accruing benefits after the close of the project.

The full version of the report is available here: DLEC-Senegal-In-Depth-Assessment-Extension-Final