Search results

Agricultural education and training (AET) institutions will play a strategic role in helping to prepare Africa’s rapidly growing youth populations for productive careers in agriculture and related agri-businesses. The purpose of this paper is to examine the magnitude of skills and youth employment needs emanating from high-population growth rates. It then explores how agricultural education institutions are responding to these challenges in four different countries at different levels of food system development: South Africa tier 1, Tanzania in tier 2 and Malawi and Uganda in tier 3.

Demographic and school enrollment data provide information on the magnitude of job market entrants at different levels of education while Living Standards Measurement Studies in the respective countries provide a snapshot of current skill requirements in different segments of the agri-food system. In order to evaluate AET responses, the authors have conducted country-level reviews of AET systems as well as in-depth assessments at key tertiary AET institutions in each of the four case study countries.

Growth rates in primary school enrollments are high in sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, because of budgetary constraints, transition rates decline rapidly – about 40 percent from primary to secondary and 7 percent from secondary to tertiary. As a result, substantial numbers of primary and secondary school graduates seek jobs.

The case study countries are limited to four. Had more financial resources and time been available, researchers could have spread further afield and in so doing increasing the precision of the results.

Estimation of the number of primary and secondary school leavers seeking employment because of failure to proceed to the next level of education. Estimation of the level of education shares in the various components of the agri-food system.

Food security for students is very important if they are to achieve both quantitative and qualitative success in their education and later career. Consequently, “food for education (FFE)” intervention is provided for poorer students who are in primary school in many developing countries. This has helped to achieve the objective of universal education. In absence of a food security programme from the secondary provision, students from poorer families are forced to discontinue their education. For this reason, the success of FFE intervention has been criticised as unsustainable. This paper aims to explore a food security model that can lead to the sustainable development of education in developing nations.

This qualitative study collected primary data from students who were being educated in Bangladesh and receiving “FFE” intervention. In total, 576 respondents (equal number of boys and girls) were selected from six schools located in urban and rural areas. Secondary data were accessed from the archives of the Bangladesh Bureau of Educational Information and Statistics (BANBEIS) and the World Bank. The paper adopts a descriptive analysis method for primary and secondary sources to report the findings.

Free schooling supported by “FFE” intervention is the key to achieving education for all (EFA) targets. Since its inception, 93% of students who received an FFE intervention have at least completed their primary school education. The success of FFE has encouraged the government to provide a massive intervention strategy which began in 2011. This helped to achieve the EFA target. Despite this success and while nearly 18% of FFE-intervened graduates have completed their secondary education, none went to higher secondary school, let alone tertiary level. The lack of food security was the main reason for youths not continuing with their further education.

The “FFE” programme may work well for children who are being educated since they do not shoulder any family responsibility. In reality, teenagers and adults in emerging nations should devote themselves to ensuring there is enough food for their families. This research presents a new policy option, labelled as “education for food (EFF)”, in order to retain this group in the education system. Being an advocacy model, this may trigger a discourse on how to create a balanced society where both hunger and education are taken care of and problems are solved.

The paper sets out to analyse the quality education curriculum innovations that have been implemented in Kenya since independence in 1963. The purpose of the analysis is to assess the success and or failure of the innovations and determine the lessons learned that can inform future design and implementation of curriculum innovations designed to improve the quality of education.

This was a desk review of curriculum policy documents and related research literature. The documents analysed included various education commission reports produced by education commissions, committees and task forces appointed to inquire into education and make recommendations to government; primary school syllabuses and related research literature.

The review has revealed that the curriculum innovations recommended and implemented in Kenya have targeted the attainment of the goals of individual and national economic development; national identity and unity; socio-cultural, moral and ethical development; cognitive development and globalization; and psycho-social skills development. Many of the innovations have not been implemented effectively. Impediments to effective implementation have included hasty implementation, limited in-service training for teachers, inadequate ongoing professional support for teachers, and inadequate resources.

Achieving effective curriculum innovation is not easy. It requires greater participation in curriculum decision making, patience in training those in various levels of the curriculum implementation process and enormous resources.

In adopting content analysis as a methodology, the paper constitutes a unique contribution to the study of curriculum innovation in Kenya.

The global expansion of primary and secondary education is accompanied by globalization of stigma of a type that did not exist before in the areas reached by the modern, rational, and secular education during the past decades. International organizations and national governments have established the number of years, age, grade conditions, and the level of knowledge that should be acquired for each stage. Often, children are classified in dichotomous categories such as enrolled–non-enrolled, completed–not completed, successful–not successful, wastage–not wastage, and so forth. As a result of this, children who leave primary school before they have finished the stipulated grades/number of years run the risk to be defined as “not fully competent” culturally and economically, not only from the “modern” perspective but from the “traditional” perspective and to be labeled and stigmatized. With the massive expansion of primary and secondary education, the number of “failing” students is increasing, especially in very academically oriented and selective education systems such as that in Senegal.

In colleges of agriculture leadership education is one area of study where enrollment and demand are outstripping the capacity of institutions to deliver the coursework. However, few faculty members are prepared to teach leadership contextually based in agriculture. Responding to this challenge, the Leadership Education Institute (LEI) for faculty in colleges of agriculture was created. The primary goal of the project was to prepare agricultural faculty to teach leadership as a secondary discipline. This multi-year project, funded by a USDA Higher Education Challenge Grant, was a collaboration of faculty from Oklahoma State University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the University of Georgia. The project resulted in directly impacting food and agricultural sciences education at 10 institutions across the nation by improving teaching competency of leadership education faculty in colleges of agriculture.

African agri-food systems are undergoing major structural change in response to growing urbanization, rising incomes and shifting patterns of food consumption. The purpose of this paper is to explore four major dimensions of this surprisingly rapid structural shift in African food systems.

This chapter synthesizes the six chapters and in addition discusses future implications for agricultural education and training (AET) in Africa.

AET institutions face multiple pressures as a result of these ongoing changes. High fertility rates have produced a youth bulge that currently strains educational capacity at all levels and places huge pressures accommodating 700 million youth job market entrants over the coming 30 years.

Countries vary considerably in a number of socio-economic and political dimensions making it difficult to completely generalize on each and every issue. Cross-country comparison to the level of determining which country is better than the other in many of the variables is difficult.

Synthesis of key parameters to consider in increasing the relevance of AET institutions in Africa.

Iraq with a population of approximately 13 million in 1980 is one of the capital (oil) rich countries of the Arab region, and shares with them the objective of a fast pace of economic development. Such Arab states may be characterised by the existence of a large and expanding government sector, ambitious industrial development programmes and the pursuit of an increasing standard of welfare and income for their inhabitants. Since about 1970 Iraq's economy has been radically transformed and change is continuing. The demand for labour has grown commensurately with the successive national development plans of the decade. Meeting these increased labour requirements presents formidable tasks for policy makers and planners in Iraq as in other Arab countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the career trajectories of 66 distinguished African agricultural professionals in order to explore how agricultural education and training (AET) institutions can better motivate and prepare youth for productive careers in Africa’s rapidly changing agrifood system.

Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with these role models, the paper explores the answers to two critical questions: How can Africa motivate its youth to consider careers in agriculture and agribusiness? How can AET institutions better prepare youth for productive careers in agribusiness?

Rural youth enter agribusiness careers in response to clearly perceived rural needs coupled with demonstrable profitability of modern agricultural and agribusiness opportunities. In contrast, urban youth embark on agricultural career paths in response to inspiring science education, particularly practical applications in biology, coupled with emerging awareness of the range of professional opportunities afforded by modern agribusiness and commercial agriculture.

The study relies on the basic premise that seasoned, successful professionals – from the private and public sector – can offer useful insights into ways of improving job preparation training for the youth of today seeking careers in the food system of tomorrow. The approach assumes that the role models have both the practical experience and forward-looking vision necessary to identify key elements of preparation likely to benefit future job market entrants.

This paper relies on primary interviews with distinguished agricultural professionals from 14 different African countries.

According to a survey of professionals in agricultural education, The Journal of Leadership Education (JOLE) is a new and primary outlet of leadership education research and professional scholarship. The purpose of this study was to assess five years of JOLE’s primary and secondary research theme areas, frequent primary and secondary research themes by year, prolific authorship, and research methods and types using a mixed-methods design. A compilation of the research results is reported. Research themes appear cyclic and add little to improving an apparent lack of research continuity. Research must continue to determine cycle depth and the influence on research in leadership education as an integrated specialization area of agricultural education. This research may be used comparatively with the National Research Agenda to determine where future research should be focused.

In recent decades, the responsibility for the financing of compulsory education in rural China has rested with townships and villages which, with limited tax authority and uneven revenue capacity, increasingly relied on a plethora of arbitrarily imposed fees for funding. To reduce farmers’ fiscal burdens, in 2000, the central government installed a series of rural taxation reforms. Correspondingly, the central government shifted the administrative responsibilities of rural compulsory education to the county level in 2001, and implemented a series of policies to make up for the loss of revenues to education. Using a provincial-level dataset from 1998 to 2006, we examined whether and how the rural taxation reforms affected the adequacy and equity of compulsory education finance in China, addressing related theoretical and policy implications from the perspective of intergovernmental fiscal relations.