Uganda - Extension, decentralization, and village participation

57137 Findings reports on ongoing operational, economic and sector work carried out by the World Bank and its member governments in the Africa Region. It is published periodically by the Knowledge Networks, Information and Technology Center on behalf of the Region Uganda : Extension, Decentralization and Village Participation In Uganda, efforts to decentralize the management of the extension service and to launch the Village Participation in Land Development exercise have led to a number of issues, outcomes and expectations. This overview looks at what can be realistically expected from the extension service (in terms of contact with farmers), from decentralization (in terms of management improvement), and from the Village Participation exercise (in terms of grassroots empowerment). Contact between farmers and extension staff While it would not be desirable, nor efficient, for the extension service to contact most farmers, it seems that many people feel that extension should do exactly that. Statements such as "the majority of farmers never see an extension agent" or "most farmers do not participate in contact groups" are used as illustrations of the ineffectiveness of extension. While it is true that extension should provide the vast majority of farmers with access to appropriate know-how to improve their productivity and income, direct contact with most farmers is not the most efficient way to achieve this. Field experience (in Uganda and elsewhere) illustrates that, in order for the vast majority of farmers to have access to new information and know-how, only a relatively small percentage of farmers have to be in direct and regular contact with the extension staff. What is "a relatively small percentage"? From experience, we learn that when about 25% to 30% of farmers are in regular and direct contact with extension, the majority of farmers will be aware of the messages being disseminated. This was confirmed in the recent Beneficiary Assessment (1997) in Uganda: "Of the 108 respondents who had reported attending a demonstration, 89 or 82.4% had given advice to other farmers on the practices learnt and of these, 67 or 75.3% reported the other farmers having adopted the advice given. Similarly, of 101 group farmers who had attended a training course, 79 or 78.2% reported giving advice to other farmers of which 63.2 % had adopted (the technology)". Thus, for an extension service to be effective in terms of contact with farmers - or, in other words, for the majority of farmers to benefit from the impact of extension - the front line staff has to be in direct and regular contact with no more than 25% to 30% of farm families. Increasing that percentage substantially would increase the costs - but much less the impact - of extension. With this in mind, one can estimate what would be an appropriate ratio of farmers/front line staff: given that one extension worker can contact daily about 20 to 30 farmers (through two to three group meetings), one staff can visit about 200 to 300 farmers regularly. Counting on the spread-out-effect, one extension staff can affect to about 1,000 farmers while being in direct contact with only 200 or 300 of them. Decentralization Recent efforts to decentralize the management of the extension service in line with the decentralization of the entire government structure has also created expectations, some of them probably realistic, others perhaps less so. There are a number of outcomes that can reasonably be expected from the decentralization exercise.