7th GFRAS Annual Meeting

3 - 6 October 2016, Cameroon. This Annual Meeting on The Role of Rural Advisory Services for Inclusive Agripreneurship will gather participations from all regions, gender, ages, and sectors involved in agricultural and rural advisory services (RAS) to discuss, learn, exchange, and formulate recommendations on the roles and required capacities of RAS for supporting inclusive agripreneurship as important element of sustainable rural development.

Aside from this thematic discussions and related field trips on day 1 and 2, RAS networks and fora
will, on day 3, have the opportunity to learn from each other on how to strengthen their functioning to become stronger and more successful players in the agricultural innovation systems in their regions.

The meeting objectives are to:

• Provide a comprehensive understanding of inclusive agripreneurship and its relevance for food security, poverty reduction, and sustainable development, and identify factors that influence inclusive agripreneurship.
• Discuss the role of RAS and their capacities needed on the individual, organisational, and system level to strengthen inclusive agripreneurship, and provide recommendations on how those capacities can be strengthened.
• Discuss capacity needs and define ways forward needed in general to strengthen RAS networks and fora for them to become successful players in agricultural innovation systems in their regions.

Extracts of the side events:

• Innovative approaches for disseminating post-harvest management technologies and practices for achieving agripreneurship among smallholder farmers
  The key objectives are to bring together different stakeholders to; share visual and audio RAS approaches, tools and materials being used to disseminate good practices in PHM by the  stakeholders, learn about business models that they  use and that can be implemented to promote PHM technologies/innovations, create a regional PHM-RAS network and advocate for post-harvest management.
• Testing of the New Extensionist Learning Kit: The Agripreneurship Module GFRAS Consortium on Extension Education and Training
  The GFRAS Consortium on Extension Education and Training will convene a half day side event to test the Agripreneurship Module. 
• Scaling innovation in Africa by strengthening advisory services and policy dialogue CIRAD & AFAAS
  The objective of the side-event jointly is to discuss the action–research proposal Design of a participatory action-research proposal for scaling innovation in Africa (SCALINNOVA) 
• Developing a 'Last Mile' agenda for African Agriculture: Turning Knowledge into Farm-Level Impact through Innovation at Scale TEAGASC and PIM
  The objective of the side event is to share evidence-based knowledge and develop a research agenda to identify and address the critical constraints to achieving widespread farm-level impact in Africa and other poor agriculture-based economies through innovation at scale, within the context of the best-fit approach. 
• RESCAR-AOC international workshop : Improving Responsiveness of Agricultural and Rural
  
  Advisory Services in the Context of Climate change and Agripreneurship in Western and Central Africa - Better engagement with women, youth and Farmer organizations through knowledge management. RESCAR-AOC in partnership with GFRAS, GIZ, CTA, GWI, AFAAS, and MINADER/Programme ACEFA
  The overall objective of the workshop is to discuss requirements necessary to ARAS to provide more effective support for an inclusive management of climate change and agripreneurship development

Related: 23 August – 2 September GFRAS e-discussion on agripreneurship

"Because risks can be high and the process of moving agriculture towards entrepreneurship is very complex, it cannot be used as a one-size-fits-all solution to today’s challenges"

• Conditions for Successful Agripreneurship
• Summary e-discussion week 1
• GFRAS e-discussion on agripreneurship: Guideline(pdf, 195KB)
• GFRAS e-discussion on agripreneurship: Outline (pdf, 251KB)

Related: 

Social media: Shaping the future of agricultural extension and advisory services

Suchiradipta, B., and Saravanan, R.,  

GFRAS interest group on ICT4RAS discussion paper, GFRAS: Lindau, Switzerland.

2016, 38 pages

For agricultural extension and advisory services (AEAS), social media presents a huge scope not just to communicate to the farmers better and with efficiency, but also to act as innovation brokers in Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS). And not just for the organizations, social media has made it easier for farmers to communicate with extension professionals, experts and peers in real time. And with this increased potential to share views and ideas and easy access to information, discretion becomes important for organizations to maintain professionalism in a new social world.