Abstract:
Studies have been conducted in Africa to assess extension officers’ perception towards their
roles, however, little is known on agricultural extension officers’ perception on their roles as per
government job description in Tanzania. The study was therefore conducted in Simiyu Region
to assess the perception of agricultural extension officers towards their roles. A cross-sectional
survey design was used whereby a structured questionnaire was employed to collect data from 100
randomly selected Agricultural extension officers (AEOs). The collected quantitative data were
analyzed by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences computer programme (SPSS). On
the other hand, the content analysis was used to analyze the collected qualitative information. The
findings show that most of interviewed AEOs perceived their roles namely, advisory, organizational,
educational, technical, facilitation and intermediation as important. However the AEOs perceived
the existence of difficulties in fulfilling the roles. These include agricultural extension officers
overloaded with non-extension tasks like tax collection that hinder them to perform their technical
roles; lack of in-service training which results to low level of competence in performing their
mandated roles; inadequate logistics such as motorcycles, vehicles, just to mention few, These
results to EAOs blamed for not performing their roles. Based on these findings it is recommended
that there is a need to work out with all aspects that affect performance of the AEOs’ mandated
roles as follows: AEOs concentrate more on their mandated roles and not non extension work,
organize short and long term training to improve their knowledge and skills.
