CHAPTER 5: Conclusion
CHAPTER 5: Conclusion I.
Scaling up
In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of producers covered by advisory schemes is still very low overall. Which raises the question of scaling up those schemes in all regions and for all types of producers. Donors and States too often look for THE successful scheme to expand throughout an entire territory, or THE most appealing method to replicate on a large scale (CEF and managerial advisory services for AFD, farmer field schools for the FAO, etc.). But scaling up will not be successful and should not be attempted if it consists in expanding just one model. The integrated system for agricultural advisory services (ISAAS) gets around that issue. The idea is to make use of the multitude of existing approaches and schemes in the field (instead of singling out just one), while taking charge of the support functions that contribute to the performance of the all the different schemes in the field. The idea is therefore not to scale up a single scheme, but to scale up using many different schemes that are built on, coordinated, put into synergy, monitored and audited by an NAAS/ISAAS, each of which responds to specific challenges linked to a particular context and each of which makes use of the comparative advantages of a particular operator. Once the above conditions have been accepted, there are several ways to scale up:
Better segmentation of the different types of advisory services: There must of course be advisory services for everyone (therefore normative and probably prescriptive), but there must also be jointly designed advisory services that aim to build the capacities of farmers and, over the medium term, to promote autonomy with regard to advisory services. The three main approaches of advisory services are technology transfer (e.g. technical extension services), technical assistance (e.g. advisory services for family farms) and improving and coaching “learning to learn” programmes (e.g. functional literacy and all types of capacity-building for producers). Functional literacy and technical extension services certainly cost less than advisory services for family farms. Certain types of advisory services may therefore offer greater coverage than others. Make use of local human resources: In many advisory services promoted by FOs, there is a peasant-farmer instructor (indigenous instructor or peasant-farmer relay) who assists or relays the information provided by the salaried advisor (cacao cooperative in Ivory Coast; APROSA, FEPAB, UGCPA and FNGN in Burkina Faso; Cap Magalasy in Madagascar). In the latter case, the advisory operator considers that for basic advisory services (technical advice / extension), the peasant-farmer instructor can replace the advisor. In CEF experiments, the peasant-farmer instructor may fill out (or help fill out) monitoring documents for the producer. Using the peasant-farmer instructor is always seen as a way to expand the action (= reach more producers), at the risk of the salaried advisor becoming a supervisor and becoming less and less invested in the field. Make use of NICT. NICT also offers important possibilities for scaling up, making it possible to: reach a large number of producers and advisors instantly, interact through social networks, etc.
87 | TECHNICAL REPORTS – No. 55 – MAY 2022
