Tropentag, September 17 - 19, 2014 in Prague, Czech Republic "Bridging the gap between increasing knowledge and decreasing resources"

Enhancement of Quality and Extent of Extension Services of Angacha Woreda, Kembata Tembaro Zone

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences, Czech Republic

Abstract

The project “Enhancement of Quality and Extent of Extension Services of Angacha Woreda, Kembata Tembaro Zone”, financed within the Czech Development Cooperation, deals mainly with improvement of extension services, processing of agricultural products and breeding of small ruminants in Angacha woreda. The project was planned for the period 2011 till 2013 at first, but the implementation was prolonged till the end of 2015 in order to deepen the project sustainability and extent the outputs within the target group of development agents (DAs) and farmers of Angacha woreda. The project objective lies in the enhancement of the extension service capacities in terms of broader range and higher quality of extension services at Angacha woreda. In addition to the support of the five farmer training centres (FTCs), three other FTCs are included to the support in the period 2014 – 2015. Except for the material support of the eight FTCs, trainings of DAs of all 18 kebeles' FTCs at Angacha woreda is realised. The trainings are focused on transfer of innovations and strengthening the knowledge derived from the past trainings, concerning following topics: water harvesting and watershed management, breeding of small ruminants, beekeeping and processing of agricultural products. DAs are trained by local experts, according to their specialisation. Subsequently, the DAs train model farmers directly in the kebeles. Other activities concern support of newly established farmers' cooperative that will manage centre of processing of agriculture products (PC), animal breeding centre and beekeeping centre founded within the project. Machines and implements in the PC include oil pressing machine, hammer mill, stone mill, two moveable threshing machines, solar dryer, kocho squeezers, honey extractor and wax printer. Animal breeding centre is focused on insemination of local farmers' goat and sheep females by the improved breeds Boer and Dorper. The objective of the PC and animal breeding centre is to provide services not only for the members of the cooperative but for the local farmers as well. In the meantime, researches leading to two master theses, two Ph.D. theses and few scientific articles were supported by the project.

Keywords: Animal breeding, beekeeping, Ethiopia, extension services, processing of agricultural products

Contact Address: Kristina Rusarova, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences, Kamycka 129, 165 21 Praha 6, Czech Republic, e-mail: kristinarseznam.cz