Australian Development Gateway

The Australian Development Gateway (ADG) strives to support members of the development community in their efforts to reduce poverty and enhance sustainable development in the Asia Pacific region. The site has been created with participation from members of government, private, academia and non-government organisations. User feedback mechanisms have been incorporated to guide future directions of the site. The site is optimised for low bandwidth access to enable the widest participation throughout the Asia Pacific region.

Skip to content

ADG channels:

Information by sector: Agriculture

Sub navigation

ADG TOOLBOX

Agricultural technology

ICTs: transforming agricultural extension? (pdf 530kb)

This paper reports on the 6th Consultative Expert Meeting of the ACP-EU Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation Observatory (CTA) on ICTs. The summary report provides an outline of the main issues, developments and trends in agricultural extension, as they relate to ICTs, with a special emphasis on improving rural livelihoods. The report draws on the presentations, case studies and discussions from the CTA Observatory.

Participants drew attention to the fact that extension is being compelled to change from a process of technology transfer (research to farmer) to a process of facilitating and brokering a wide range of communication, information and advocacy services.

Given these trends, participants focused on the following topics:
- Assessing the role and potential of modern ICTs in the context of changing paradigms and emerging new actors
- Identifying challenges and constraints on the increased use of ICTs in agricultural extension
- Articulating common principles, and developing a framework for the application of ICTs to improved pro-poor extension
- Establishing an inventory and state-of-the-art assessment of the use of ICTs in agricultural extension, including a collection of success stories and examples of good practice from ACP countries
- Specifying the implications for CTA's priorities and future interventions.

 

Footer: