Developing an outreach framework for strengthening university-farming community engagement for improved and sustainable livelihoods (SUFACE)

This project seeks to develop an operation framework where universities can work with rural farming communities to enhance productivity and competitiveness of smallholder agriculture, as well as responsiveness and impact of universities in agricultural development. The premise of the project is a paucity of information access and flow, and weak linkages between the university - farming community and other actors in agricultural development. The project will be create knowledge and information centres so that the University can proactively intensify its engagement with rural communities and will employ information communication technologies (ICTs) based mechanisms to enhance access and sharing of information. The appropriateness of this model will be tested within an action research framework to strengthen functionality of multi-commodity value chains of cowpeas, soyabean and rice, and will also entail building of strong partnerships along the research to development continuum and the capacity of rural communities to utilise access, utilise and intensify the use on technologies. Experiential learning approaches for University students and staff, and review the Faculty of Agriculture curricula for potential inclusion of experiential learning modules will also be undertaken to reorient the University to actively engage with rural farming communities. The project outputs will include; 1 PhD and 3 MScs students trained, 30 farmers trained on the use of ICTs for outreach, 2 information centres established, and 3 ICT based approaches for technology dissemination developed. The outcome of the project will be a responsive university research, training and outreach programme piloted and packaged for dissemination.