Saturday, November 14, 2009

Our Teams Strategy to Move Farmers from Poverty to Prosperity

**When you think about TEAM MoFA's work in Ghana, what comes to mind??**

The Agriculture as a Business Curriculum??

Eat Ghana Rice Campaign?

Rice that is "so clean, clean, cleeeean"? (Ghana Rice Radio Jingle)

In my entirely unbiased opinion, I feel Team MoFA's strategy has **never been more sophisticated and exciting**, so I felt we just had to share it- hot off the press!

**WHY are we doing what we are doing?**

In the eloquent words of Sarah Grant: "We are driven by the injustices of poverty and by the untapped potential of humans in Africa. We are in this line of work for as long as this situation exists.
Specifically, for the farmers we work with, **we are driven by the idea of helping these farmers make more from their farm so that they can invest in their children and live the life they choose full of dignity and opportunity.**"

In my own words: we love and respect farmers and want to see them with more money in hand and more smiles on their faces.

**So... WHAT exactly we doing??**

We are now driven by 3 OUTCOME AREAS:

1. Quality extension services
2. Market level interventions
3. Learning systems within the Ministry

By **"Quality Extension Services"**, we envision AEAs (Field Staff) that have the capacity and resources to provide quality extension services to farmers; A quality extension program has AEAs enabled with the time to do extension work (instead of just fertilizer coupon distribution and data collection), a means of transportation (fueled up motorcycle) and the opportunity to continue developing the skills, knowledge and attitude to **do it well** (more than just technical skills, **a coach**, facilitator, linker wise in the ways of the market).

An example of what we are doing to achieve this outcome is the Agriculture as a Business curriculum which many of you are probably familiar with; we now see it as the BREAD AND BUTTER of our work- all OVS/JFS are implementing AAB within their districts because we feel the curriculum is a very tangible tool that AEA's can implement in the field with their farmer groups that truly helps farmers tackle farming as a profitable business venture.
However, we have recognized that we are capable of far greater changes within MoFA so we are moving above and beyond just AAB. Something I am very pumped about is our initiatives in Agricultural Colleges in Ghana. **On the Job Training with AEAs is great, but why not tackle the root cause- how AEAs are educated??** We are now working in the colleges to influence the curriculum to be more farmer-first, to equip graduates with business/market approach, and a teaching pedagogy that is more participatory- so we can see graduates enter the workforce with the skills and attitudes needed to best serve farmers.

The second outcome area, deals with MoFA implementing **""Market-Level Interventions""**... this stuff is super sexy in development- talk right now, but its still pretty intangible. So far, examples of this work include our promotion of the local consumption of Ghana rice, providing Market Information to AEAs and farmers so they know the most profitable market to sell their produce, and Ryan's Farmer Group Business Development Fund- as an OVS he recognized that AAB was great, but farmers still lacked the initial start up capital to implement new projects, so he is now providing small loans to qualified farmer groups.

Finally, lucky number 3 is institutionalizing ways for MoFA to be a **""Learning Organization""** . In order for MoFA to be a cutting-edge Ministry defined by revolutionizing extension that is bringing farmers from **poverty to prosperity**, they need to be reflexive, adaptable and innovative. We need to ensure that MoFA staff have the means (ie. Fuel Money to moto to field), opportunity (training on skill building), and motivation (internal and external) to perform.

Some of our new and exciting initiatives to accomplish this objective include experimenting with Performance Based Incentives - currently, rewards are non-existent so there is little/no external motivation to work hard; those select AEAs who are outstanding seem to be internally motivated... we feel that incentives linked to how an AEA actually performs, and public recognition and celebration of excellency in extension will drive higher motivation, pride and performance. Who doesn't love to be recognized? Be the Employee of the Month? Or receive a prize for their hard work?

Another really exciting initiative is the DDA Fellowship- a fellowship program to bring together District Directors from across the region to educate on leadership development, and diffuse best practices on how to lead a district to results, success and impact.

By developing and magnifying strong leadership at District offices, we feel **we are tackling the system from nearly every possible angle: with students before they graduate and become employed, on the ground with farmers being coached by well-trained, highly motivated and well-equipped AEAs, who are being led by outstanding Directors that recognize and encourage high performance!**

I could go on for 10 pages but for the sake of "brevity" (and so I don't further confuse you) I will end here! I hope this clearly outlined what is driving our work within MoFA in Ghana, and some of the new and exciting initiatives we are piloting as we head into 2010.

Please feel free to shoot us any questions/comments around this strategy.

With lots of love and warmth (literally) from Ghana,

Robin and the rest of Team MoFA

1 comment:

  1. Hey Robin,
    This sounds really exciting. Thanks for this outline and description. Personally I liked the 'what does this look like' parts. I feel like I have a way better idea of the direction of Agric in Ghana and when I think of what you have shared with the 'Quality Extension Services' I really get a better idea of what you might be doing...especially with the work at the colleges.

    I know sometimes EWB talks about the importance of learning and undestanding before intervening. How do you feel EWB or you are doing that now? What are some of the things EWB or you have learned and how well positioned do you feel EWB is for these three outcome areas?
    Lastly out of these three which area(s) are you focusing in?
    God bless you!

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