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The 7th Africa-wide Agricultural Extension Week slated for the 12th to the 16th of May 2025 is an opportunity for the exchange of information and knowledge among countries and other stakeholders in farming.
This was revealed by Dr. Silim M. Nahdy, the Executive Director of the African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS) who highlighted that extension activities encompass different approaches, variable successes, and failures hence the need for a forum where stakeholders can exchange information and knowledge.
Dr Nahdy said due to the lack of such fora, agricultural extension services were stagnant, leading to repeated failure while prescriptions kept on coming from outside without any internal input from it.
“The account is thrashed on you and you have no option but to take it. Therefore, the concept of the extension week was conceptualized with the idea that we have to know what is happening on the ground, what is succeeding, where is it succeeding, why is it succeeding, how can we learn from it, and how can we learn from each other.
“Secondly, when you look at universities, they are well connected. They know a professor who can do what, he’s a specialist in this and so on. So the researchers and professors are very well networked. They know who is who and so on but in extension, nothing. So one of the ideas is that at least they go and network and they know who is who, where, and so on and they know who is an expert in this, who is a professional in this, whether you are a professor at the university, whether you are a private sector, whether you are in the media, whether you are a government employee and so on. At least you can start communicating with each other and exchange information on this platform,” he said.
The Extension Week comes at a time when there are major challenges that face agriculture and yet extension is at the center of the implementation of agricultural activities
“During the Extension Week, if a challenge has come, which is global or continental, stakeholders come to know about it and can start devising what they want to do. They discuss their interventions to resolve such issues. Even before AFAAS came about, Extension Week was conceptualized along those lines,” he added.
The provision of extension services tied to research and development will improve the capacity of smallholder farmers to increase agricultural production and productivity.
Some of the key partners include the Malawi Ministry of Agriculture, the Malawi Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services, the CAADP XP4 Programme, the European Union, and IFAD, among others.
