Agriculture is the largest employer in the world, providing livelihoods for the majority of the world’s poorest people. As the backbone of many developing country economies, agricultural development becomes synonymous with global development. Research and development efforts to improve agriculture have been ongoing for nearly a century, but with new and ever-changing global challenges, agriculturists need to be equipped with the right information to tackle those challenges. Through advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs), most of the information needed is available on the internet. But the sheer volume and uncertainty about accuracy makes getting correct and credible information very difficult. Web portals aim to resolve this situation. They are specially designed single access points to information collected from diverse sources.

Radio is considered one of the oldest information technologies, and is one of the most popular in the developing world, partly due to its accessibility and affordability. While many rural people own a radio, those who do not may access programming through family, friends, or neighbours. Traditionally, radio has been seen as a one-way communication tool, providing information, news, and entertainment to listeners. However, when integrated with other communication tools (such as mobile phones) it can serve as a two-way platform for dialogue, to further discussions about topics that interest listeners, and to create entertaining and interactive programmes. For farmers, radio has the potential to help connect them to technical specialists, policy-makers, other farmers, suppliers, or buyers. Radio, and particularly participatory, demand-driven radio programming as a tool for extension, complements existing agricultural information systems that emphasise interaction among stakeholders (farmers, public and private knowledge brokers, market actors, researchers, policy-makers, the financial sector, etc.) where no single actor is the expert. More so, radio programmes in vernacular languages provide new communication channels and space for dialogue for communities in more remote areas, or of varying literacy levels.

The Government of Ethiopia is highly committed to sustainably increasing agricultural production to meet the growing demand for food, industrial raw materials, and foreign currency earnings. In order to respond the growing demand of different stakeholders, there is a need of dynamic and proactive extension system. Rigorous and vibrant extension system is a key policy instrument for necessary behavioral and attitudinal changes and creating demands on national agricultural extension programs. Agricultural extension has been emphasized by development experts as crucial in achieving agricultural development, poverty reduction, and food security.  By recognizing this, the government of Ethiopia has made great efforts to transform the agricultural sector mainly by strengthening its extension services as part of the general agriculture policy reform. In spite of considerable efforts made to improve the extension system of the country in the past, the system is not bringing the desired results. Thus, it is of paramount importance to prepare a full-fledged extension strategy which takes into consideration the growing demand of agricultural development and that also shows the future direction of the extension services.

While much has been written about the importance of mainstreaming gender in agricultural value chains (and the challenges inherent in doing so), relatively few studies have provided details on cases in which gender integration 1 has been successful. This study, therefore, presents a collection of experiences in which rural advisory services (RAS) were able to successfully mainstream gender into agricultural value chains, categorised in terms of “best-fit practices”. While the examples presented here cannot be precisely replicated in other contexts, they provide general guidance for organisations that implement programming related to agricultural value chains.

While much has been written about the importance of mainstreaming gender in agricultural value chains (and the challenges inherent in doing so), relatively few studies have provided details on cases in which gender integration 1 has been successful. This study, therefore, presents a collection of experiences in which rural advisory services (RAS) were able to successfully mainstream gender into agricultural value chains, categorised in terms of “best-fit practices”. While the examples presented here cannot be precisely replicated in other contexts, they provide general guidance for organisations that implement programming related to agricultural value chains.

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Linking agricultural extension and advisory service (EAS) with participatory learning and action on nutrition and health has the potential to improve the sustainability and impact of food and agricultural programmes on nutrition and household food security. Due to their established structure/network and their greater reach to the community of whom they often already have the trust, agricultural extension and advisory workers (EAW) are probably the best resource to help achieve nutrition security through nutrition education to farmers. In order to do so, the extension workers must receive nutrition and nutrition education training. This desk review aims at mapping how nutrition is currently being mainstreamed into agricultural EAS preOservice and inOservice training and to give recommendation on the way forward.

This Handbook provides a step-by-step roadmap designed to equip aspiring ICT entrepreneurs, with the information and knowledge they need to start an ICT-based business in the agricultural sector, outlining key opportunities and challenges that will be encountered along the way. Using real-life examples, it provides strategies and pathways for averting common mistakes faced by early-stage entrepreneurs. Topics covered include agricultural value chains and their stakeholders, ICT business challenges, eff ective business plans and models for designing, funding and scaling ventures.

This document on Good Practices in Extension Research and Evaluation is developed as a hands on reference manual to help young researchers, research students, and field extension functionaries in choosing the right research methods for conducting quality research and evaluation in extension.

Young people are the future. But all too often in today’s world young women and men are marginalized and excluded – from decent employment and from crucial decisions about how to address the big challenges that face us all. Their voices are rarely heard in democratic debate and their needs and views are rarely reflected in policies and programmes.

Yet more than ever the world needs young people’s ideas, their talents and their energy. In rural areas, we particularly need their drive and innovative skills to sustainably produce the food required by an increasingly populous and urbanized world.

Young people aged 15 to 24 make up 17 per cent of the developing world’s population. In the least developed countries alone, 15.7 million young women and men will join the working age population every year between 2010 and 2050.

Many of them will live in rural areas and work outside the formal sector. Today in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, 62 per cent of young people work on family farms, where they are often unpaid and unprotected. Given the sheer numbers of young people reaching working age, the potential of a so-called “demographic dividend” is great, but so is the risk.

Integrating young people into productive society boosts their countries’ economic growth while also contributing to political stability and social harmony. If we fail to bring young women and men into the economic mainstream, we will lose the contributions of this generation while raising the likelihood of social unrest.

 Well-functioning rural-urban linkages are indispensable to create decent work for all. In Sub-Saharan African countries, the increasing demand for high-value primary and processed products in urban areas can offer multiple employment opportunities for rural youth. It is therefore necessary to promote integrated approaches aimed at enhancing mutually beneficial rural-urban flows of goods, services, capital and labour, particularly along agri-food value chains.

Given the context of transitions related to rapid urbanization, the roles that rural economies and societies will have to play (particularly smallholder farmers and other rural producers) in creating sustainable and inclusive food systems, in generating employment and incomes and in contributing to more balanced, equitable and mutually reinforcing patterns of rural-urban development in Africa require the attention of analysts, policymakers and development programmes in the years ahead. Addressing challenges related to a bulging population of young people will be particularly important in any work on the rural-urban nexus, in which youth migration plays critical roles.

While entrepreneurship has been talked about since many years, agripreneurship is something which we started discussing only recently. The characteristics of Agripreneurs have been discussed in this blog and argues the need to encourage, support and promote agripreneurship by extension and advisory service providers has been emphasized.