Small-Scale Farmers' Education for Africa in the Twenty-First Century

Most of Africa's food is produced by the ordinary small-scale fanners. The twenty-first century will be both exciting and challenging for the well-prepared farmer. The excitement will be in the increasing market opportunities due to increasing population and urbanisation in Africa and globalisation in the world economy. The fears and challenges emanate from the state of preparedness of the farmer for this assignment, declining resources going into Africa's agriculture and increasing consumers' demands for better foods and higher quality. A lot of technologies passed to them through extension have had only brief adoption due to lack of sustainable policies. They have returned to their old crop varieties and practices that do not require external support. Agricultural programmes that have been very successful in other places have not produced similar results in Africa. Africa's agricultural problem is about eighty-ninety percent socio-political and ten-twenty percent technical. The paper calls for Farmers Education Programmes (FEP) that will focus on the real problems, and deal with issues that affect farmers' motivation, attitudes and behaviour. The FEP should have elements of civics, business and organisational skills, strong marketing extension, theatre for development, etc. Farmers-initiated, well-implemented FEP will assist the African small- scale farmers in the twenty-first century.