eRAILS phase 2: National Facilitators Training

This week (28 November to 2 December 2011) the ZAR4DIN Coordinator, Mr. Davy Simumba, is participating in a workshop whose purpose is to familiarize and train national facilitators as well as some RAILS national focal persons on the principles and practices of the eRAILS 2 system, including: understanding the operation of the information exchange service; conducting an interview with a farmer and formulating a request; publishing the request on the RUN platform; developing the answer: make an interview with an expert, looking for additional information and formulating the response; explaining the answer to farmers and assessing response, etc. This is taking place at Hotel Katikomu, 70m from Kampala in Uganda. The African Development Bank Group is supporting the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) in its efforts to build the African agricultural research knowledge management capacity and the adoption and dissemination of proven agricultural technologies. This support is in the form of a grant facility to be implemented through a Bank project titled ‘Promotion of Science and Technology for Agricultural Development in Africa (PSTAD)’. The project has two major complementary components, namely 1) Knowledge and Information Management aimed at creating a functional African network for agricultural knowledge, information and learning system with the purpose of improving the access, sharing of research results on technologies and good agricultural practices, using a continental agricultural information system (AIS), while also providing support in ICT equipment and improved Internet connectivity avoiding duplication, and 2) Technology Transfer and Good Agricultural Practices, aimed at facilitating faster adoption of proven technologies by the farmers through the use of the platform approach. The establishment of the African network for agricultural knowledge, information and learning system is following a phased approach. The first phase has been successfully implemented through the establishment of the eRAILS platform (http://www.erails.net), which is an integrated tool allowing the 34 countries covered by the project, and even those not involved, to develop their national portals and institutional/individual information systems for knowledge sharing, access to technologies and learning. The phase 2 eRAILS is focused on content management, specifically on how the system can be used to allow information flow from the scientists or agriculture experts to respond directly to farmer’s needs. At the same time being able to collect information from farming communities. More specifically the objective of phase 2 is to: 1. Establish operational structure and resources within selected countries to coordinate and facilitate the targeted information and knowledge exchange beyond internet access. 2. Develop integrated information systems to allow eRAILS functionalities to accommodate information gathered from rural communities and shared to wider RAILS communities. 3. Build rural communities that integrate learning mechanisms within their community structure and invest in knowledge management. 4. Build relevant content within the eRAILS platform to strengthen its capacity as dynamic agriculture knowledge exchange platform. That farming communities are able to formulate questions for agriculture experts (including scientists) to respond. At the same time, increase research contribution to development and improve policy making in agriculture. Above all the project aims at the establishment of innovative services for efficient and effective farmer advisory service delivery at various levels i.e. community, national, sub-regional and regional level. In order to achieve these objectives, the project has organized a team composed of different task managers with specific roles in delivering the services to the farmers. These task managers include the Field agents, Local data entry agent, KMS agent, National facilitator National facilitator, etc. (for more details concerning their respective roles see: http://www.erails.net/FARA/erails2/erails2/the-task-managers/

PSTAD project Monitoring and Evaluation, Technical Backstopping of DONATA and Training of Trainers’ on eRAILS platform www.erails.net Workshop

The Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) in collaboration with the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Directorate of the Southern African Development Community (SADC/FANR) is holding a workshop on Promotion of Science and Technology in Agriculture Development in Africa project (PSTAD) Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E), Technical Backstopping of DONATA and Training of Trainers’ on eRAILS platform www.erails.net from 6-12^th July 2011, in Pretoria, South Africa.

The objective of the workshop is to empower focal points of RAILS and DONATA from SADC/FANR RAILS on the project M&E, technical backstopping for Innovation Platform for Technology Adoption (IPTA) and country portal administration. Participants will receive lectures and hands-on exercises on the effective use and management of the eRAILS platform as a tool for information and knowledge sharing. These trainers will in turn train other stakeholders within their respective National Agriculture Research Systems (NARS).

Zambia is being represented by Dr. Medson Chisi and Mr. Davy Simumba who are DONATA and RAILS focal point persons, respectively. In the next few weeks Zambia will conduct a training workshop for members of the Learning Team established under the framework of ZAR4DIN based on the approved Annual Work-plan and Budget for PSTAD project.

National Agricultural Information Services to use SMsize Internet based platform to improve farmer productivity in Zambia

Despite its potential, the agricultural sector in Zambia has performed below expectations. One of the factors that have been repeatedly mentioned as responsible for this dismal performance has been weak research-extension-farmer linkages.
However, this will be a thing of the past as Zambian farmers will soon be using their mobile phones to send questions on the problems they face in carrying out their farming activities and receive answers within shortest time possible.
With financial and technical support from the International Institute of Communication for Development (IICD), the department of National Agricultural Information Services (NAIS) is developing an Internet based platform where farmers will be able to use mobile phones and send questions on the most pressing problems they are faced with in their farming activities to NAIS and receive appropriate answers within the shortest time possible.
This SMsize platform allows farmers to send their questions on mobile phones in form of SMS to the platform and receive answers to their questions.
The platform will be accessed by NAIS programme producers and agricultural specialists and other identified stakeholders so as to give appropriate answers to the farmers’ questions.
Once finalized, the system will help improve the feedback system between farmers, programme producers and the agricultural specialists in the Ministries of Agriculture and Cooperatives and Livestock and Fisheries Development and other relevant agricultural institutions in the country.
Each SMS on the system will cost 900 Zambian Kwacha and this will reduce the current expenses farmers are incurring to post or send their discussion report forms for possible solutions to their farming problems.
Extension and information service provision plays an important role in agricultural development in any country. In recognition of this fact the Zambian government has since independence in 1964, made an effort to establish an effective extension and information system in the country. The overall objective of this information provision service is to provide information to farmers so that they can make informed decisions that will improve their production and productivity in order to reduce poverty through income generation and food security (Ministry of Agriculture Food and Fisheries, February 2001). The extension-information provision has been done through person-to-person (farmer-extension officer) contact and mass media. The extension officers are the front line implementers of the extension system of MACO. However, these officers are few, outstretched and de-motivated. It is currently estimated that there is an average of one officer to 1,000 farmers (National Agricultural Information Services, September 2002). This, coupled with the HIV/AIDS pandemic, has led to limited person-to-person extension and information service. Notwithstanding, extension officers of the Department of Agriculture still remain a critical information link between researchers and farmers.
Zambia has quite a long experience in agricultural information delivery services through the use of mass media such as radio/television broadcasts and printed materials including newspapers in parallel with the mainstream extension services. Broadcasting services of agricultural radio programs targeting local small-scale farmers was initiated as early as the mid-1960s with assistance from UNESCO. A number of radio listening groups called ‘Radio Farm Forum Groups” were set up in rural communities all over the country and they were encouraged to listen to the radio programs with the motto of ‘Listen, Discuss and Act”. Since then, the Zambian Government has continued to produce agricultural radio programs through NAIS, although direct assistance of the Government to the listening farmer groups, such as free provision of radio sets and batteries, has largely been withdrawn. NAIS also remains engaged in producing agricultural TV programs, publishing of magazines, newsletters and posters to provide the farming communities as well as other stakeholders with various kinds of agricultural information.

Figure 1: Figure 1: Basic Element/Components in an Agricultural Extension System

The current extension methodology, Participatory Extension Approach (PEA), is about the improvement of the information services to the farming community and the extension officers in particular.
At Radio Farm Forum (RFF) level, farmers gather and listen to agricultural technical information that is broadcasted on radio. After the broadcast, the RFF members discuss the topic which they have listened to and relate it to their local situation. As a group, they ask each member how well he or she has understood the broadcast.
After the discussions, farmers feel in a feedback form commonly referred to as a proceedings and discussion report. The main features of this form are: Name of the forum, district, province, date of broadcast, subject/topic of broadcast, main points raised on the programme, questions raised by members on the subject of broadcast, decisions taken by members on the subject, actions taken by members on previous broadcasts and opinion of members on the quality of the programme.
After farmers fill in this proceedings and discussion report form, where possible, it is handed over to the Camp Agricultural Extension Officer (CAEO) for onward delivery to the District Agricultural Information Officer (DAIO) who then posts the discussion report form to the Radio Programme Producer at national level.
Where the agricultural camp is not manned, the farmers have to post the discussion report themselves or physically deliver the report to the DAIO.
This system of communication has proved to be time consuming and costly on the part of the farmers as it takes not less than two months in most cases for farmers to feedback on the questions asked on each broadcast or any other urgent problem faced by the farmers.

Happy New Year

Happy new year to all of you ZAR4DIN members, I am hoping we will be able to interact more and do a lot of work in the network this year. I look forward to a time when ZAR4DIN will be so big and highly sought after, not all this in one year off course but every step we make counts...

God bless you all....