Assessing and Strengthening Malawi’s Pluralistic Agricultural Extension System: Evidence and Lessons from a 3-year Research Study on Agricultural Extension

On November 13, 2019 IFPRI is organizing a project closing and dissemination event to present findings from a 3-year research study conducted by IFPRI, with funding from the Government of Flanders, CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions and Markets (PIM), GIZ, and USAID Strengthening Agricultural and Nutrition Extension (SANE).

Launched in July 2016, the 3-year evidence-based policy support project set out to analyze the demand for and supply of agricultural extension services in Malawi in order to design and undertake activities to strengthen the capacity of service providers to address farmers’ demands for information. The project collected two rounds of nationally representative household data, two rounds of focus group discussions, census of extension service providers in 15 districts, and a series of in-depth interviews. The research team and graduate students produced more than 10 peer-reviewed publications under this project, which have been presented in a series of seminars and conferences in Malawi and internationally.

This project was implemented in partnership with the Department of Agricultural Extension Services (DAES), LUANAR, Wadonda Consult, Donor Coordination for Agriculture and Food Security (DCAFS), and the Malawi Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (MaFAAS).