Management framework of on going self-sustaining agricultural extension system and training of farmer promoters and farmers in Rwanda

This study reviews the organizational setting of the self-sustaining agricultural extension system adopted by the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources in Rwanda. The main objective of the self-sustaining agricultural extension system is to make the farmers themselves to act as the resource persons without having to depend on people from outside. This report deals about the strengthening of the different aspects of self-sustaining agricultural extension systems like Institutional development of self-sustaining agricultural extension system Improving the supply of relevant services to respond to the farmers, Capacity Building of FFS farmers and FP farmers, Evaluation of performance of farmer groups, Capacity development of critical mass of frontline extension and Extension Methods used. The self-sustaining system was provided with stakeholder’s collaboration with sound purposes, which resulted in meeting the expected results like crop productivity. Stakeholders offered 74.2% of information to farmers through training of farmers. It was found that 40.8% of the training mode was village mobilization meeting. Stakeholders used 83.9% of the training by group meeting and 42.9% was done by the Farmers Field School (FFS) plots. The survey identified that 87.2% farmer promoters were in groups while 65.3% of the farmers were in self-sustaining extension groups. The study revealed that 75.6% farmers were attending the regular meetings conducted and 34% farmers attended the regular monthly group meetings. The Local Government Extension staff trained 64.6% of Farmer Promoters in extension systems among them 72% of the trained Farmer promoters established the demo plots. The success of the self-sustaining extension system in Rwanda is mainly due to its 91% of the farmers visited the demo plots at least one time in the season and 82% of the farmers used improved seeds.Keywords: Self-sustaining– agriculture – extension system – Training Farmers – Rwand