In its quest to improve adoption of agriculture technology in rural communities in Nigeria and Africa, the Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA) has developed different extension models to ensure the scaling up of agriculture technology transfer in different communities in Nigeria and other African countries.
The Director, Strategic Partnership at Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA), Dr. Mel Oluoch, made this known at the Africa-Wide Agricultural Extension Week (AAEW), themed ‘Harnessing Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services in Scaling Regenerative Agriculture and Nature-Based Solutions for Food System Transformation in Africa’.
According to Oluoch, SAA partners with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security to scale technologies that have been developed by research institutes to ensure they reach every single farmer, adding that they leave extension agents behind whenever the association wants to leave an area to encourage sustainability.
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“Our model is very simple; we have several strategic pillars on which we work: the first is regenerative agriculture, where we focus on crop productivity enhancement; the second is nutrition-sensitivity agriculture, where we promote nutrition-focused agriculture interventions, including post-harvest.
“The third is market-oriented agriculture, where we work with farmers to grow crops for sale and not only for home consumption; the fourth is capacity building, where we partner with nine universities in Nigeria and thirty-one universities in total around Africa to train agricultural extension agents to help scale up these technologies.
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He explained that SAA works together with the farmers to figure out what their needs are and what their challenges are and try to remove all the constraints causing these challenges, and that this has enabled the association to put many technologies that are need-based in the hands of farmers by supporting the universities to train them at the grassroots in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture.
