African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services

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The African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS), is a continental organization for strengthening Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services (AEAS) in Africa. It operates within the framework of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), a venture of the African Union in the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). AFAAS is an autonomous subsidiary of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA).

Video African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services

Overview

AFAAS is the continental umbrella organization that aims at strengthening national AEAS in Africa. Its mission is to promote lesson learning and add value to initiatives in AEAS through policy advocacy and lobbying, sharing of knowledge and information through increased professional interaction among AEAS providers. Each member country is ultimately expected to establish a Country Forum (CF) through which its activities are to be implemented.

The agricultural body has the mandate to implement the agricultural advisory services aspects of CAADP, a programme of the AU. CAADP has four pillars, one of which (Pillar IV) addresses agricultural research, technology dissemination and adoption. AFAAS works in close collaboration with other continental and sub-regional bodies contributing to CAADP - most notably; those in the areas of agricultural research, organizing farmers and fostering private sector involvement.

Cognisant of the fact that the African Union Commission (AUC) recommitted itself to enhancing the CAADP momentum by adopting the Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods in June 2014, AFAAS reaffirmed its commitment to the cause by signing an MoU with the AUC in April 2015.

Maps African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services

History

The African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS) was initially formed as the Sub-Saharan African Network on Agricultural Advisory Services (SSANAAS). The SSANAAS was created at the first Regional Networking Symposium on Innovations in Agricultural Advisory Services, which was held in Kampala, Uganda in October 2004.The initial member countries were Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.

The second Symposium was held in September 2006 in Kampala. It brought together the additional African countries of Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda and Zambia; this brought the total of participating member African countries to fourteen. At this Symposium, it was decided that the network should go beyond Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and embrace the whole of Africa. This necessitated the change of the name to the African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services and AFAAS was consequentially legally set up as an NGO in Uganda and became the successor body to SSANAAS in 2011.

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Function

Vision

The Vision of AFAAS is: Agricultural Advisory Services that effectively and efficiently contribute to sustained productivity and profitability and growth of African agriculture for poverty reduction.

Mission

The Mission of AFAAS is to: Promote lesson learning and add value to initiatives in agricultural advisory services through sharing of information and increased professional interaction.

Goals and objectives

The main objectives of AFAAS are to:

• Ensure that CAADP Pillar 4 directly addresses the needs of African farmers as regards advisory services, contributing to making these services more effective and relevant.
• Mobilise and utilise synergies across Africa for advisory service development.
• Ensure the accessibility of appropriate and up-to-date knowledge on advisory services from a range of sources in Africa and internationally.
• Empower country level advisory service stakeholders to determine their own priorities and lead efforts to improve their national and local advisory service systems.
• Build partnerships at national, regional and international levels between agricultural advisory services and other institutions contributing to sustained growth and transformation of agriculture.
• Build a continental African organisation that can sustainably support national agricultural advisory services to continuously enhance their contribution to national, regional, continental and global development objectives.

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Member Countries

AFAAS has 13 country fora and is currently operating in 40 countries that include the following:

Country Fora

AFAAS supports the emergence of associations of AEAS stakeholders under a common umbrella where they can identify, from among the issues that AFAAS has to address, priority areas of concern that can be addressed through collaborative information sharing, joint activities and partnerships. The CF are necessary to enable AAS actors to relate to each other within a framework of a set of agreed principles, rules and well defined roles and responsibilities. AFAAS' Country Fora are established in 13 of the 40 member countries. .

Regional fora establishment

The West and Central Africa Network Agricultural and Rural Advisory Services (RESCAR-AOC) regional forum was formally launched during a workshop held in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire in February 2015. This was organized by CORAF in collaboration with AFAAS, GFRAS, and ANADER plus 70 participants.

Southern Africa Regional Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (SARFAAS) Interim Steering Committee (ISC) members met in Johannesburg in April, 2014.

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Projects

IFAD Project 1

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) gave a grant to AFAAS to help implement its strategic plan of establishing Country Fora in five countries (Burkina Faso, Malawi, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Uganda) and enhancing their knowledge management and information sharing mechanisms within the framework of the AFAAS strategic plan. The project's two interrelated components are:

• Establishing Country Fora
• Communication, Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM) for Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services (AEAS) Innovation.

Postharvest Management in Sub-Saharan Africa (PHM-SSA) project

This project is coordinated by HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation (HSI) and implemented in a consortium of FANRPAN (Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network), with AFAAS and AGRIDEA as further partners.

Phase 1 started in April 2013 and will end in Dec 2017. The project is localized in two pilot countries: Republic of Benin: communities in departments of Atacora (North) and Savalou (South) and Mozambique: communities in Northern provinces of Nampula and Cabo Delgado.

The project aims to improve food security of smallholder farmers in SSA through reduction of post-harvest losses of food crops (grains and pulses) by addressing major constraining factors of technology dissemination and adoption, knowledge and information sharing, rural advisory services (RAS) and policies related to PHM.

The project's interventions focus at two levels:

• Validation and promotion of PHM practices and systems at rural household and communities level through use of innovative RAS and private sector linkages,
• Linking national and regional level through active promotion of sharing and learning, capacity-building, and advocacy and policy dialogue related to PHM.

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Partner Organizations

AFAAS cohorts with the following and other organizations in fulfilling its mandates:

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See also

Agribusiness

Agricultural organization

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References

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External links

• Official Website
• Official Virtual Platform

Source of article : Wikipedia