“Farmer-to-farmer videos as an effective tool for extension and advisory services.”
3RD November 2017; 8:30 – 11:00 HRS.
About Access Agriculture
Access Agriculture, an International NGO based in Nairobi, Kenya, was formed in 2012 as a direct outcome of an online survey jointly conducted in 2011 by GFRAS, Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) and the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC) that strongly recommended the need for a facilitative organization to support structured on-line viewing, downloading, and physical distribution of quality agricultural training videos in various languages. The Organization has a regional liaison office in Cotonou, Benin, mainly to take care of the Francophone constituency in West and Central Africa. In the last two years, Access agriculture has also established contact points in India and Bangladesh and is currently in the process of establishing similar contact points in Latin America, all with a view to promoting South-South exchange of quality farmer training videos.
Interventions by Access Agriculture in various countries have focused primarily on video-mediated extension, with farmers and extension agents as the main targets. The main objectives have been: i) orienting the demand for videos – production, dissemination and facilitating the use of farmer training films and videos in six African countries (Benin, Egypt, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, and Uganda); ii) capacity development– mainly of farmers and partners in the six countries on video production and translation into local languages; iii) knowledge management i.e. development and promotion of a website as a reference and repository for agricultural videos and use of social media in creating awareness and sharing of the videos; and iv) building partnerships with various actors and networks for the promotion of farmer training videos in the six project countries and internationally.
Through the organizational website (www.accessagriculture.org), Agtube (www.agtube.org), DVDs and CD roms, Access Agriculture provides a critical platform and necessary media to ensure availability and access to demand-led training videos by agricultural R&D staff, service providers, extension agents, communication professionals, and representatives of farmer organizations. The videos are all designed to support sustainable agricultural practices and agribusiness development in developing countries.
Access Agriculture has reached millions of farmers worldwide with practical agricultural technologies in local languages. Adoption rates for technologies delivered through farmer-mediated videos in local languages has been shown to be well above conventional extension methods. Buoyed by this fact, Access Agriculture is now well-positioned to up the game both in expanding the online repertoire of demand-led farmer-to-farmer videos downloadable in various formats and facilitating their widespread use to inform agricultural practices mainly in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Objective:
The objective of this side event is to showcase Access Agriculture’s experiences with farmer-to-farmer training videos in extension and rural advisory services. Thus, the side event is in direct support of the theme of the 3rd AFAAS Extension Week: “Scaling up Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA): Integrating Youth, Women, and the Digital Revolution.” The side event falls specifically under the Sub-theme (v) on (v) Knowledge Management and ICT tools for CSA.
Date: Friday, 3rd November 2017, 8:30 – 11:00 hrs.
Venue: (to be allocated)
Program:
8:30 – 8:45: Arrival and registration of participants – Ronald Udedi
8:45 – 9:15: An overview presentation on “Video-mediated learning” – Nelson Ojijo and Phil Malone
9:15 – 9:45: Access Agriculture in Malawi – Ronald Udedi and Phil Malone
9:45 – 10:15 Access Agriculture in Uganda – Grace Musimari
10:15 – 11:00 Responses from the audience, summary and conclusions
How to enroll
Please send mail with your personal details (i.e. full names, your organization, your role in the organization, and what you hope to achieve by attending the side event) to the following: nelson@accessagriculture.org; phil@accessagriculture.org