Responding to key gaps in Africa’s Higher Agricultural Education: Lessons from the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture

In 2014, African Heads of State and Government signed the Malabo Declaration, signaling a change in gear in the implementation of the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program (CAADP) and related processes in Africa. The road from Maputo to Malabo has witnessed important changes in various trends. Changing trends include population growth, youth employment prospects, on-farm production as well as post farm value addition practices by small scale farmers, among others. Parallel to this has been the growth evolution of the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) network, as a platform organization for facilitating the transformation of Africa’s agricultural higher education. The paper discusses key issues in Africa’s higher agricultural education sector in light of RUFORUM’s role in support of the African Union led CAADP agenda. The paper follows the growth of RUFORUM, identifying key drivers for its evolution. RUFORUM was created to support African Universities to support the implementation of national CAADP investment plans. RUFORUM’s growth and future direction is guided by important lessons for enhancing agricultural transformation in Africa. These include increasing engagement of the private sector, paying greater attention to partnerships to enhance scaling of best practices, increasing academic mobility and use of ICTs to improve higher education quality and staffing at universities. A key element is producing graduates who are not only employable, but increasingly able to create employment opportunities that are linked to value addition in the agricultural sector but also willing to work in rural areas for community transformation.