DEVELOPING AND DELIVERING EXTENSION PROGRAMMES: HARNESSING TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT FOR AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION

ABSTRACT

Extension planners throughout the world face the difficult challenges of being creative in their programme development efforts and responsive to the needs of rural communities and farmers. A way to overcome these challenges is to look at different programme development ideas and approaches, analyzing how they function in practice, as well as their advantages and disadvantages. This presents an overview of the programme development process, with an emphasis on local-level extension work. First, it will look at basic concepts; discuss different ways of approaching the programme development process, and review current ideas. In the second part, a rationale for participatory planning will be discussed and a number of key aspects, such as priority setting, definition of objectives, and evaluation, will be stressed. The last part will summarize new roles, knowledge, and skills. It is important to emphasize that, although in the text we usually use the word “planning,” our discussion is centred on programme development globally, which we see as a set of dynamic cycles necessarily implying planning, implementation, and evaluation stages and activities, interacting and often overlapping, evolving along the programme process and according to the changing circumstances of the physical, socioeconomic, and political-institutional environment.