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I am Chimdo Anchala
I am working for an international NGO called Oxfam America. I am the coordinator for the national agricultural extension system strengthening project.
The Digital Green approach is based on a video produced on the problems faced by the farmer
and the farmer himself participates in the video
It will go back to other farmers as an improved learning to enable the farmer take an informed decision
In general, it is a tool that makes the agricultural extension system participatory, interactive, Demand-driven and ensures that technology dissemination is problem-solving,
We learned the digital green approach from India.
The Ethiopia agricultural extension policy encourages adoption of new technologies from other countries.
However, we didn’t copy and paste the entire digital green approach in a scale.
Since we didn’t know the approach, we took the time to first test and get insight on the effectiveness of the approach in three districts. two districts from Oroima region and one district from the southern region.
It is also to know the advantages and limitations of the approach,
the benefit to the farmer in particular and how the Ethiopia extension system can use the technology
The piloting phase aimed at responding to the above issues. We have got these important lessons from the piloting exercise.
We have got important insights on how the approach works,
How the farmer benefits and the impact of the approach in increasing productivity
How far it improves the conventional extension practice in the dissemination of expert agricultural knowledge and practices
We have also learned the challenges and possible solutions for future expansion of the approach
The first piloting phase was for learning the approach – be it to the extension worker or implementing partner
The next plan of the project will be on how we can expand and include other stakeholders in using this approach
And expand the learning from the piloting phase in the three districts to other areas – both horizontally and vertically – to the benefit of the farmer
There were also challenges faced like the limited capacity of the development agent and the lack of easy access to the equipment
We have designed strategies to minimize these challenges in the second expansion phase
The third phase will be a national level scale-up of the approach So that all levels of local administrations and farmer training centers benefit from this approach
There will be careful planning in terms of who should be responsible for the national scale-up and how we can sustain the technology
So that farmers use it and increase their production and productivity