The Country Director of Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa, AGRA, Rufus Idris, has revealed that over 11 million farmers have been reached with new agriculture technologies through AGRA’s agriculture extension model called Community Based Advisory.
He made this disclosure while receiving an award for AGRA contribution to development of agriculture extension services in Nigeria and Africa from Nigeria 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 5000 farmers to one extension agent to 500 farmers, and there are plans to further reduce it.
Idris said AGRA has been able to promote an agriculture model that has really worked.
He said they have their AGRA 3.0 strategy where they intend to scale up some of the works that they have done and make more impact at a larger scale.
“We have been able to promote and agriculture 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 extension services.
“So far, a lot of community based advisors have been deployed out there to support 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 5000 smallholder farmers, 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, 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 that distance between small holder farmers and access to extension services and also ensure that farmers get access to innovative extension services that are not just public sector driven but more of private sector collaboration as well that ensure 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”.
