Linkage of Higher Education with Agricultural Research, Extension and Development in Ethiopia
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Linkage of Higher Education with Agricultural Research, Extension and Development in Ethiopia Kassa Belay Department of Agricultural Economics, Alemaya University, P.O. Box 138, Dire Dawa, Ethiopia. E-mail: [email protected]
High-level agricultural manpower training in Ethiopian institutions of higher education (AIHE)specializing in agriculture and related fields was studied. The study reveals that high-level agricultural manpower training began in the early 1950s and that, at present, the country has seven institutions of higher learning, which train students in agriculture and related fields. The results of the study show that the AIHE have contributed to the agricultural sector through training highlevel agricultural professionals, enhancement of indigenous research capability, and generation and dissemination of technologies. The study also reveals that a host of factors have put a stranglehold on the training process and the professional competence of agricultural graduates. Moreover, the results shed new light on the programmes of study, which were found to be unable to respond to the labour market requirements and current rural realities due to lack of relevance o f the curricula, which are no longer able to produce graduates who could deal with the wider problems of rural development. Higher Education Policy (2008) 21, 275–299. doi:10.1057/palgrave.hep.8300139 Keywords: agricultural education; agricultural extension; agricultural research; education reform; linkage; program expansion
Introduction The Ethiopian economy is predominantly agricultural. Consistently, over 45% of the GDP and over 90% of exportable commodities are accounted for by the agricultural sector. Moreover, this sector provides employment for about 85% of the labour force (Belay, 2004b). However, Ethiopian agriculture is characterized by very low productivity. The low productivity of the agricultural sector has made it difficult to attain food self-sufficiency at the national level. One of the major obstacles for the rapid development of the agricultural sector in Ethiopia is the scarcity of skilled and experienced labour. In this regard, agricultural institutions of higher education (AIHE) are expected to play a leading role in training skilled labour that can serve as a catalyst in identifying root causes for low agricultural productivity, devising appropriate remedial measures to surmount problems of food self-sufficiency and improving the traditional farming practices. Yet no major effort has been made to assess the
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importance of these institutions in developing the agricultural sector or to look at factors contributing to their actual performance. This paper addresses issues of high-level agricultural manpower training, research and extension in AIHE in Ethiopia. In this study, agricultural higher education is understood to include diploma, first degree (BSc and DVM), second degree (MSc and MVSc) and terminal (PhD) degree programmes offered in institutions of
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