Strengthening agricultural education in Africa: The approach of the Forum for Agricultural Resource Husbandry

The attainment of sustainable food security in sub-Saharan Africa requires the efforts of a large cadre of well-trained agricultural resource speciali sts familiar with the constraints and perspectives of smallhold farmers and experienced in interdisciplinary problemsolving. The Forum for Agricultura l Resource Husbandry (FORUM) was initiated in 1992 by The Rockefeller Found ation to stabilize Faculties of Agriculture in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, U ganda and Zimbabwe by providing resources, mission and peer support, leadin g to knowledge contributing to improved lives of smallhold farmers. The foc us of this effort is improvement in the quality of training at the Master o f Science (M.Sc.) level. The FORUM is a competitive grants programme with w ell-defined objectives, proposal requirements and technical review procedur es. Applicants must not only identify an approach to better understanding a nd improving a smallholder cropping system, but also to show how M.Sc. stud ents play a central role in research. To date, 56 grants providing US $4.6 million were awarded to 40 Principal Investigators at nine universities res ulting in scholarship opportunities for 121 students and the publication of 55 scientific papers. Mechanisms for improving M.Sc.-level agricultural ed ucation include distance learning in biometrics, presentation of awards to winners of student competitions, collaboration between universities in stud ent supervision and comparison of M.Sc. programmes between universities. Th e FORUM approach is easily replicated and other organizations interested in strengthening the abilities of African universities to undertake relevant agricultural research are encouraged to design similar programmes.