Contact
Sofia Boqvist, Associate Professor
Programme Director of AgriFoSe2030
Dept. of Biomedical Sciences and Veterinary Public Health, SLU
Phone: +46 18-67 23 88, +46 72-240 34 94
E-mail: Sofia.Boqvist@slu.se
SLU news
Livestock extension services could improve rural incomes in West African countries
Published: 23 June 2020
In an AgriFoSe2030 project, activities in three West African countries on livestock extension services was investigated. The aim was to identify the strategic role that livestock extension could play for increasing agro-pastoral production, improving rural incomes and the joint management of natural resources. This project has inspired in a new committee for extension on technologies and innovations in livestock in Burkina Faso.
The project started in 2017 when questionnaires was sent to agricultural extension services providers and to farmers and producers who are recipients of the services in Burkina Faso, Mali and Benin.
– We revised these questionnaires after a course on theory of change and systematic review in Uppsala. After coming back to Burkina Faso, these questionnaires were translated to French and sent to collaborators in Benin and in Mali. The questionnaires were pretested during December, and after that the surveys started, says the project leader Dr Salimata Pousga, Polytechnic University of Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso.
The surveys were done in the three countries and was completed in July 2018. In 2019 the work with a scientific paper and a policy brief began after a research visit in Sweden.
The project inspired a new committee in Burkina Faso
The Department of Livestock Extensions in Burkina Faso supervised this AgriFoSe2030 study. In 2019 the Technical and Scientific Committee for Extension on Technologies and Innovations in Livestock started.
– We were very glad to hear that the forming of this new committee is partly due to the AgriFoSe2030 study, says Dr Salimata Pousga.
Important to consider livestock in extension programmes
Three persons from the project team participated in a meeting in May in 2019 in Ethiopia. They noted that the new Extension Model developed by Sasakawa for African Agriculture was focused only on crop production. The AgriFose2030 team suggested that Sasakawa should also consider livestock in the Extension Programme, especially for Sub-Saharan African countries.