Reports

The Gambia is a tiny country in West Africa that relies heavily on small-scale agriculture, yet faces numerous difficulties and constraints in its agricultural system. Crop yields for staples such as groundnuts and maize have been declining over the past thirty years, as soils have grown depleted, crop diseases have spread, and the threat of climate change now looms large. While such challenges have steadily grown both more severe and more complex, however, the country has suffered from serious underinvestment in agriculture: for more than a decade, research has dwindled as key experts have left the system.

A group of some twenty farmers, researchers, government officials and private industry representatives are gathered around a table at the Botswana College of Agriculture to figure out a roadmap for how they can work together.

Botswana is a diamond-rich, sparsely populated country known for raising fine beef cattle. This group, however, is concerned with the small livestock, such as sheep and goats that most small-scale farmers rely upon to supplement subsistence farming.

In East Africa, the three countries where the Strengthening Capacity for Agricultural Research and Development in Africa (SCARDA) gave support—Burundi, Rwanda, and Sudan—are all grappling with their own conflict-related challenges. While Burundi and Rwanda have been striving to reconstruct themselves after disastrous periods of genocide and civil war, Sudan, a country torn by long-standing and interlocking conflicts, split into two countries in 2011, when the southern region voted to secede from Khartoum.

As the most densely populated country in the world, Rwanda is currently considered to be food-secure, but faces steep food security challenges because of its population density and its reliance on small-scale agriculture: some 85 percent of the population currently depends directly on farming, and given the scarcity of land, the average holding is only 0.7 hectares.

I come from Sudan a naturally well endowed country, and with a little extra human effort supported with modest finance, can be a large producer and
exporter of a multitude of agricultural products. Also, it is the largest country in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and moreover, is a riparian country since the River Nile runs through it. We as Sudanese students are very privileged to have received the opportunity to be trained and involved in Master degree programmes in some of the leading Eastern and Central Africa (ECA) universities. We were trained under the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) programme on Strengthening Capacity for Agricultural Research and Development in Africa (SCARDA), implemented by Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (hence called ASARECA); other colleagues received training support from Development Partnerships in Higher Education Project (DelPHE) and the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM),  the network of 29 African universities.

The Strengthening Capacity for Agricultural Research and Development in Africa (SCARDA) programme was conceived with the purpose of strengthening the institutional and human capacity of African agricultural research and development systems to identify, generate and deliver research outputs that meets the needs of poor people. One of the key outputs of the programme is that the Tertiary Agricultural Education (TAE) and training institutions are empowered to match the capacity building offered to changing market demand. In the SADC region, the African Network for Agriculture, Agroforestry and Natural Resources Education (ANAFE) was tasked by SADC Secretariat to carry out the “Tracer Study” to identify key skills gaps in graduates from agricultural faculties who are employed in a range of public and private organizations in Botswana, Lesotho and Zambia. The main categories used in the study were employers and employees. Three questionnaires were prepared and used in the study. The questionnaires were for graduate employees, employers and farmers/farmer organizations. This common methodology was used across the three countries. Data were collected from March to November, 2010. Collected data were analyzed in Excel®. Reports were validated through country level workshops involving all key stakeholders. Across the three countries a total of 389 respondents (299 graduate employees, 63 employers and 27 farmer organizations) completed and returned the questionnaires.

The main objective of this study is to evaluate the qualitative demand for agricultural graduates at all levels of training in four countries of the  CORAF/WECARD region, namely Congo (Brazzaville) The Gambia, Ghana and Mali. The output of the study is expected to contribute to the improvement of agricultural education and training institutions for a better development of human capacities.

The most important development challenge today, mostly for developing countries, is the creation, dissemination and use of relevant knowledge.The economic liberalization policies which are widely adopted throughout Africa aim to improve efficiency throughout the economy. Agricultural graduates have to become more efficient in the way they relate to farmers, especially small farmers1, and to all employers including the private employers and civil society. Agriculture, like all economic sectors, has to become more demand- and knowledge- driven.The World Bank (2007) notes that  “agriculture has been neglected by both governments and donor community, including the World Bank.” To address this neglect, the “new look” agricultural graduates need to be able to work with markets and interact with a wide range of private and public sector stakeholders.

This paper traces the employment of agricultural graduates over the last decade in Mali, Congo Brazzaville, Ghana and Gambia, as well as competencies and skills offered by agricultural training institutions. As in the pre-structural adjustment period of the 1980s agricultural graduates were employed mainly by the public sector, but in the last 10 years civil society organizations, agribusiness and farmers’ organizations have entered the market for agricultural graduates. Some of the key competence required by these employers includes agricultural engineering and farm machinery; agricultural economics with emphasis on farm management; innovation systems and value chains; and communication including report writing and ICT skills. Further, farmers’ organizations look for agricultural graduates with good interpersonal skills; exposure to participatory technology development and dissemination; and appreciation of socio-cultural contexts.

This study was conducted to trace agriculture graduates from 1993 to 2008, with the view of generating relevant information that could possibly feed into curricula review to ensure that agricultural training institutions are able to produce graduates better suited for the job market. Specifically, the study sought to:

• assess the nature of agricultural training provided by Agricultural training institutions;
• assess the degree to which the training of agricultural graduates equipped them for their job performance;
• assess the demand for agricultural graduates, and
• capture the perspectives of agricultural graduates on their training and the job market.

The study relied on both secondary and primary data. Secondary data were obtained through a critical review of relevant documents including the Basic Statistics published by the Universities as well as Curricula of the Agricultural training institutions for the various agricultural training  programmes. The secondary data were complemented with primary data obtained through a combination three main techniques:

• Questionnaire survey of agricultural graduates
• Face-to-face key informant interviews using an interview guide
• Direct observation

This review is an information resource for development practitioners, development agencies and funders of development activities who have an  interest in assessing capacity for agricultural innovation in developing countries, including the developing regions of sub-Saharan Africa. In the context that further investment in the agricultural capacity of developing countries is recognised as a development priority, the review explores what is known about the “tools” (i.e. concepts and methods) which are available to guide assessment of innovation capacity in these countries. Given the perceived limitation of past investments focused mainly on developing agricultural research capacity, the review specifically explores tools for assessing the capacity of multi-stakeholder initiatives which include a wider range of “innovation actors”, including agricultural researchers.

The methodology for the review was a two-stage literature search using the Google search engine to identify the available published information. This was complemented by interviews and/or email exchange with practitioners working in or managing multistakeholder agricultural projects in sub-Saharan Africa focused on promoting innovation and with a capacity development component. The author’s direct experience of undertaking capacity assessment and capacity development work in SCARDA was a further information source.

The search for available literature revealed an abundance of information on capacity assessment tools and also a useful body of literature on approaches to supporting agricultural innovation in a multi-stakeholder setting. Strong support for the idea of investing in agricultural innovation capacity was evident in the literature, even when there was no clear consensus on definitions of capacity. There was very limited information on capacity assessment tools specifically designed for multi-stakeholder agricultural innovation in a developing country context.