Essential Competencies of Frontline Agricultural Extension Professionals

 Suvedi, M., and Sasidhar, P.V.K. (Eds.). (2024). Essential Competencies ofFrontline Agricultural Extension Professionals. East Lansing, Michigan, USA: Alliance for African Partnership, Michigan State University. #461 pp.

This training manual was funded by Michigan State University through the Alliance for African Partnership (AAP) for a 2021 Partnerships for Innovative Research in Africa (PIRA) grant award titled ‘Strengthening Agricultural Extension Training in the MSU Alliance for African Partnership (AAP) Consortium Partners in Africa’. 

To serve farmers and agribusiness operators better, we need to prepare new generations of agriculture development professionals, change our extension curriculum and pedagogy and prepare competent extension professionals. 

To improve training of extension professionals, the editors of this manual conducted three comprehensive studies on essential competencies of extension professionals in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa: 

1. Assessment of Core Competencies of Livestock Extension Professionals in India (2016): USAID – MEAS Funded Project. 
2. Strengthening Agricultural Extension Training in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka and Nepal) - Process Skills and Competency Gaps in Undergraduate Agricultural Extension Curriculum (2020): Funded by US Department of State under Fulbright programme. 
3. Strengthening Agricultural Extension Training in Nigeria, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda, andKenya (2023): Funded by AAP-PIRA (Alliance for African Partnership - Partnerships for Innovative Research in Africa), Michigan State University. 

These studies identified essential job competencies of extension professionals, assessed whether these key competencies were covered in current UG extension curriculum, determined the gaps in essential job competencies of extension professionals and recommended competency-based curriculum with 11 process skills and core competencies and 97 subcompetencies for their inclusion in the UG agricultural extension curriculum.