SARFAAS has a new strategic plan

The vision of SARFAAS is to become a Regional Forum that enhances food and nutrition security and development through effective and efficiently coordination of Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services (AEAS) delivery systems in the Southern African Region and SARFAAS mission is to facilitate and promote the establishment and strengthening of Country Fora (CF) to put in place effective and efficient AEAS that ensure alignment, better coordination and stronger oversight.

For the year 2019 – 2023, the specific objectives of SARFAAS are:

1. To strengthen the capacity of country level advisory service stakeholders in determining own priorities and in improving their advisory service systems;
2. To build a Southern Africa Regional organization  that  can  sustainably  support national agricultural extension and advisory services to continuously enhance their contribution to national, regional, continental and global development objectives;
3. To ensure the availability and accessibility of appropriate and up-to-date knowledge on advisory services from a range of sources in Africa and worldwide;
4. To build strategic partnerships at national, regional and international levels between agricultural extension and advisory service, research and other institutions contributing for sustained growth and transformation of agriculture;
5. To ensure that agricultural extension and advisory services (AEAS) actively contributes to the attainment of CAADP Plan of Action;
6. To Advocate for and promote the development and harmonization of agricultural extension curricula and evidence-based policies in the region

Thanks to the Last Mile Programme and the CAADP XP4 project, SARFAAS will be able to work on objectives 1, 2, 3 and 5. To reach objective 4, SARFAAS has already proposed that some ex officio members join the elected board (SARFAAS Constitution): one representative from GFRAS, one representative from AFAAS, one representative from CCARDESA and one representative from SASAE.

One major focus of SARFAAS starting this year 2020 will be to ensure effective linkage, coordination and implementation of AFAAS projects while working on the strengthening and structuring of SARFAAS Secretariat and Network.