22 pages, While climate change threatens global food security, health, and nutrition outcomes, Africa is more vulnerable because its economies largely depend on rain-fed agriculture. Thus, there is need for agricultural producers in Africa to employ robust adaptive measures that withstand the risks of climate change. However, the success of adaptation measures to climate change primarily depends on the communities’ knowledge or awareness of climate change and its risks. Nonetheless, existing empirical research is still limited to illuminate farmers’ awareness of the climate change problem. This study employs a Bayesian hierarchical logistic model, estimated using Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) methods, to empirically determine drivers of smallholder farmers’ awareness of climate change and its risks to agriculture in Zambia. The results suggest that on average, 77% of farmers in Zambia are aware of climate change and its risks to agriculture. We find socio-demographics, climate change information sources, climate change adaptive factors, and climate change impact-related shocks as predictors of the expression of climate change awareness. We suggest that farmers should be given all the necessary information about climate change and its risks to agriculture. Most importantly, the drivers identified can assist policymakers to provide the effective extension and advisory services that would enhance the understanding of climate change among farmers in synergy with appropriate farm-level climate-smart agricultural practices.
23 pages, Increasing doctoral degree holders in Sub-Saharan Africa may significantly impact the quality and quantity of undergraduate and graduate programs. Research capacity is crucial to successfully completing a thesis or dissertation and obtaining a graduate degree. Unfortunately, in Sub-Saharan Africa, many students abandon or delay their degrees at this stage due to limited research and writing skills. This study aimed to identify the most critical thesis and dissertation (TD) research needs of masters and PhD students from Sub-Saharan Africa. Thirty-eight skills were identified from the literature and presented to agricultural education and extension/leadership students. Borich (1980) and Witkin (1984) needs assessment models were used to ascertain the perceived importance and extent of students' knowledge of TD topic areas. The top identified needs were extracting a manuscript from a thesis, writing a journal article, choosing inferential statistics, deciding the descriptive statics, and what to review in the literature. A total of 15 items were identified as critical needs using the Witkin model. The findings identified challenges and opportunities for improving Sub-Saharan African graduate students' research knowledge and TD performance, implying that combining the two models to identify training needs may produce more comprehensive results than using only one methodology.
O'Gorman, Melanie (author / University of Toronto) and Centre for the Study of African Economics, Oxford, UK
Format:
Conference paper
Publication Date:
2006-07-20
Published:
United Kingdom
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: C28215
Notes:
Posted online at http://www.csae.ox.ac.uk/conferences/2007-EDiA-LaWBiDC/papers/295-OGorman.pdf, Presented at the "Economic development in Africa" conference from March 18-20, 2007 at Oxford University.
7 pages, Agricultural extension is the medium through which external agricultural technologies have been transferred to and transplanted in Africa to improve agricultural performance. Over a period of close to a century, different agricultural extension models have been proposed but their structure and content has virtually been the same: top-down, linear, non-participatory transfer of technology with no feedback loops for reverse diffusion. This presumably explains the poor performance of Africa’s agriculture and the scale of food security challenges facing the continent. In this review paper, we trace the history of agricultural extension and examine various agricultural extension delivery models to identify their major strengths and weaknesses, using Ghana and Burkina Faso as case studies. We then review the most recent literature in the field about the philosophy, scope, content, delivery, and outcomes of agricultural extension. The conclusion that agricultural extension has consistently remained out of sync with the needs and aspirations of stallholder farmers was reached. Smallholder farmers are now calling for new agricultural extension delivery models that are truly farmer-led, indigenous knowledge-based, context-specific, culturally-relevant and environmentally-sustainable to guarantee efficient farming systems into the future.
5 pages., A simple random sampling technique was used to select 169 extension officers to examine their level of awareness of information communication technologies in North West Province, South Africa. Data were collected with structured questionnaire and analysed using frequency counts, percentages and multiple regression analysis. The results show that majority of the extension officers were male (76%) with the mean age of 44.6 years, married (79%) and 82.5% were Christians. Forty one percent of the extension officers had Diploma as their educational qualification and a mean of 16.7 years as working experience. The results revealed that out of the 37 ICT tools listed, extension officers indicated high level of awareness of nine tools, which include mobile phones (1.79), computer (1.68), internet (1.77), overhead projector (1.62), fax machines (1.60), organization e mail (1.58), fixed telephone (1.52), personal email (1.52) and organization website (1.50). Significant determinants of awareness level were were religion (t = 1.91, p = 0.58); constraints to ICT use (t = 1.78, p = 0.78); importance of ICT tool (t = 1.93; p = 0.63) and 2 were significant at 0.05% which were competence on ICT use (t= 3.50; p = .001); (t= 2.0, p = .003). The study recommends that more information communication technologies should be made available to extension officers, so that they will become more aware of the use of ICT in extension work as tools that can gather and disseminate agricultural information.
International: Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation, ACP-EU, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 153 Document Number: D11614
Notes:
3 pages., Online from publisher., Author addresses "large gap between African extension services ... and the number of farmers being reached." ... "Africa's existing mobile network (currently the second biggest mobile market in the world) could be better utilised to bridge this gap and provide mobile-based agricultural information, advice and support to smallholder farmers."
