The what, who, and how of shaping change in African communities through extension

This paper provides positive examples of shaping change in African rural communities. First the author discusses perceptions of change and what change really is. Education, extension, and learning are all about change. We need to move beyond simple information, technology transfer, and ‘old-school’ top-down training as means of bringing about change, to real learning opportunities that are empowering, grassroots-based, and holistic. Different frameworks for change in rural areas, including the technology transfer paradigm and the innovation systems approach, are discussed. The paper then discusses who needs to change, and stipulates that people at all levels of development need to change. It is not only rural communities or the poor who should change, but also the educators, practitioners, researchers, and politicians. Skills needed by change makers and by communities in order to effect beneficial change are given. These skills go much beyond technical aspects, and include features such as critical thinking, problem-solving, decisionmaking, and creativity. The paper then discusses how change needs to occur. Using examples gained through field and desk research over the past five years, the author discusses extension and education initiatives that have been bringing about change in African rural communities. These change initiatives attempt to be sustainable, holistic, grassrootsand demand-driven, and sensitive to culture and gender. The examples fall into three levels: community, organisational, and institutional. The community-level examples are focused on individuals and groups. Organisational examples typically involve one particular organisation, while the institutional examples are broader and may include changes across several different organisations. The initiatives focus on several issues surrounding change: empowerment issues using the farmer field schools approach at the community level, cultural and gender issues in providing rural services at the organisational level, and various trends in extension in Africa at the institutional level (involving multiple organisations). While change is very important for improving incomes and livelihoods in rural communities worldwide, practitioners, policy makers, and researchers have not always gone about bringing about change in the right way. Change has been implemented in top-down ways, or imported from another part of the world without regard to local conditions. Thus communities and others have not made beneficial changes in the long run. Based on some examples from Africa, the author discusses some of the new approaches to positive and lasting change in rural communities. The aim is to improve education and extension approaches worldwide.