The forum in Benin named as “The « Forum Béninois du Conseil Agricole » (FoBeCA) Benin forum for agricultural advisory services” hosted by Faculte des Sciences Agronomiques du Benin (FSA) – University of Abomey- Calavi (UAC). FoBeCA itself is an umbrella organization of agricultural advisory services (AEAS) providers, actors and stakeholders in BENIN. The Vision of the FoBeCA is that the Advisory service becomes a powerful tool for the promotion and development before 2020. It aims at playing an interface role between actors involved in advisory services. Benin – communities in departments of Atacora (North) and Couffo (South) – is one of the two pilot countries of the Post-Harvest Management Project (1st phase, 2013-2017) in Sub-Saharan Africa.
FoBeCA objectives are to:
- Have a forum of actors of the Agricultural Council in Benin ;
- Play an interface role between actors involved in advisory services such as farmers based organisations, government institutions, NGOs;
- Favour the harmonisation of concepts, methods and tools, mainly between the National system of extension, the Research – development, literacy for a better performance;
- Develop and promote appropriate approches of agricultural advisory towards different target groups ;
- Reinforce the role of farmers based organisations through adapted advisory services for farmers based organisations
- Engage in active Public-Private partnership, with RESCAR-AOC, AFAAS, GFRAS, IAALD, between projects and donors
- Favour exchange of strategic informations concerning markets and guarantee the norms and the quality of advisory services in Benin.
The actors involved in extension and advisory services, the most important are the public extension service having a national system with networks spread all over the country which include, the NGO, the private sector and traders (input suppliers included), farmers organizations, academia, researchers, and donors.
An interim committee has been put into place and comprises a Chairperson: the focal person, a vice chairperson, an organiser, and a secretariat
Immediate activities/action plan
- Development of policy brief on research results (political comments);
- Organization and restitution of results to CF stakeholders;
- Report to MAEP with recommendations;
- Communication during ministers’ council;
- Resource mobilization;
- Restitution of the new extensionist concept to CF;
- Identification of innovative extension approaches;
- Evaluation of extension system according to MEAS model;
- Development of communication strategy for CF;
- Execution of MOOS (new extensionist) model;
- Trainings on policy dialogue and knowledge management.
The focal person is Prof. Simplice Davo VODOUHE.