Malawi’s decentralized agricultural extension delivery system: the approaches, services offered and linkage of actors
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Date
2023
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Publisher
AJOL
Abstract
Agricultural extension is central in the agricultural development process. Generally, Malawi
has continuously been reforming her extension services in order to increase accessibility and
uptake of technologies by farmers. The study on which the paper is based aimed at determining the
strength of linkages of different actors in the Malawi’s decentralized extension system. The study
adopted the cross-sectional research design whereby a structured questionnaire was used to collect
data from 150 randomly selected smallholder maize farmers in Mangochi district. Supplementary
data were collected from 10 focus group discussions and 9 key informant interviews. IBM-SPPS was
used to determine descriptive statistics. Social network analysis was used to determine the strength
of linkages between actors in the agricultural sector. Findings show that the government, private
sector and lead farmers are interconnected in the provision of agricultural extension services
to smallholder farmers. It is concluded that the district has strong linkages of the three main
actors in the provision of coordinated and uniform agricultural extension services to smallholder
farmers. Therefore, there is need for the government and other agriculture sector stakeholders to
build the capacity of the frontline extension staff on approaches that can help farmers practice
what is taught using farmer field schools which are currently underutilized. In addition, all the
extension service providers need to mobilize resources to strengthen Malawi’s district agricultural
extension structures specifically, at the Traditional Authority and Group Village Headman levels for improved coordination and linkages.
Description
Tanzania Journal of Agricultural Sciences (2023) Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 444-457
Keywords
Agricultural sector, extension services, linkages, smallholder farmers, Malawi, DAESS
Citation
https://www.ajol.info/index.php/tjags/article/view/266593