By Chinyere Anyanwu, [email protected]
As part of efforts to boost farmers’ productivity in the country, the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) said it has reached over 11 million farmers with new agriculture technologies through its agriculture extension model called Community Based Advisory.
This was revealed by AGRA’s Country Director, Rufus Idris, while receiving an award for the organisation’s contribution to development of agriculture extension services in Nigeria and Africa from Nigeria’s Minister of State for Agriculture and Rural Development, Senator Abdullahi Sabi, at the just concluded Africa-wide Agricultural Extension Week (AAEW) in Abuja.
Idris said the Community Based Advisory model has been able to close the gap between extension agents to farmers from one extension agent to 5,000 farmers to one extension agent to 500 farmers, adding that there are plans to further reduce it.
Idris said AGRA has been able to promote an agricultural model that has really worked. According to him, the agency has its 3.0 strategy where it intends to scale up some of the works that have been done in order to make more impact at a larger scale.
“We have been able to promote an agricultural model that has really worked, that is the community based advisory model which is mainly a model that is private sector-driven and to ensure that farmers at the last mile get access to extension services.
“So far, a lot of community based advisors have been deployed out there to support farmers and we have more than 11 million smallholder farmers that have now been reached through those avenues and now they have been able to access new technologies with other extension services as well,” he said.
He said AGRA has been able to significantly close the gap between number of extension service agents to number of farmers that are being served.
“It used to be one extension service agent to more than 5,000 smallholder farmers but we have been able to close that to one extension agent to lower than 500 smallholder farmers and we are working harder to see how we can further close that gap.
“We are also trying to reduce the distance that farmers have to travel to access inputs. In this, I believe, we have recorded significant achievement as well. We have reduced farmers having to travel more than 20km to access input. It has now been reduced to less than 10km for them to access inputs. We are still working to further reduce that as well,” Idris noted.
Reacting to the award from Nigeria, Idris said “it means recognition of the work that we have done for several decades in Africa, promoting innovative extension services, closing the distance between smallholder farmers and access to extension services, and also ensuring that farmers get access to innovative extension services that are not just public sector driven but more of private sector collaboration as well as ensuring sustainability in that particular process. “This means a lot, and it is also a call to do more because we still have a lot more farmers in Nigeria and Africa that are still struggling to access the right kind of extension services, so we are still working more.”