Ajfand Online

Rural Outreach Program's Participation in the International Training Program
on Competitive Agricultural Systems and Enterprises (CASE)

Participation from MoA and EAFF joined the ROP term because of the collaboration and good network that ROP has with the Government and other NGOs. Other countries that were represented were Ghana , Nigeria . Togo and Malawi . The program was sponsored by the International Centre for Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development (IRDC), on which the ROP founder, Prof. Ruth K. Oniang'o sits on the board.

Agricultural production and related industries already are, and will continue to be the backbone for economic growth and food security in most of the developing countries for the next coming decades. However, to support increasing rural and urban populations, agricultural production needs to intensify and become more market-oriented, both domestically and internationally. To accomplish this, there is an urgent need to identify promising ‘bottom-up' pathways of intensification and agribusiness development.

The training's objective was to develop skills to analyze and improve the design and implementation of regional strategies on competitive agricultural production systems and enterprises involving multiple stakeholders. It targeted professional development and private sector specialists involved in agricultural and agribusiness development in developing countries. New knowledge, tools and methods for agricultural and intensification and agribusiness development, including institutional and policy issues, were presented by IFDC and invited guest lecturers. Participants were able to strengthen practical skills through the analysis and elaboration of real-life cases, and through group and simulation games.

The training was based on CASE. It is grounded in experiential learning theories, and fosters agricultural intensification and market development by using a commodity chain approach. The central principal behind CASE approach is that the competitive advantages of particular regions can be greatly increased through a three-fold strategy: (1) Focusing on wee-targeted ‘industry' clusters (like groups of enterprises and facilitating services involved in particular commodity value chains located within the region); (2) Strengthening technical, managerial, and organizational capacities of the major stakeholders involved in input supply, crop and livestock production, post-harvest handling and marketing, and related business development services, and (3) Facilitating efficient linkages among them. The training was composed of inter-related modules;

• Development of competitive strategies at the enterprise level (including farm, processing enterprises, input dealers)

• Analysis of competitive and competitive advantages at the regional level by using porter's diamond of competitiveness and the concept of industry clusters

• Organizational Strengthening/Institutional Development (OS/ID): When markets are thin and poorly developed, the focus needs to be on innovative institutional arrangements to improve co-ordination among all actors along the commodity chain

• Communication for innovation: Facilitation of ‘experiential' and social learning, networking and lobbying

After the training, participants were able to analyze opportunities and constraints for commodity chain development within specific target regions and to develop and implement plans using technical, managerial and networking skills of the various stakeholders involved. The ultimate objective of this exercise was to develop proposals, (post-workshop) for agricultural intensification and competitive enterprise development. The group from Kenya chose to work on African Leafy Vegetables (ALVs).

Report on the INASP-HINARI Publishing Workshop
held at the Hotel Intercontinental on 21st and 22nd May 2006

• Journal of Civil Engineering Research and Practice of Civil Engineering – JKUAT

The main aim of the workshop was to attempt to explore ways of making African journals more visible and more used.

Philip Edge, a representative from CAB International, looked at ways that could be used to increase the visibility of journals. The various techniques that can be implemented to promote journals include:

This includes sending leaflets, catalogues, sales letters and postcards to those who enquire about the journal, names from the internet and the ‘missing key' customers who are those who should be receiving the journal but are not.

The main techniques that can be implemented include posting messages on listserves, linking with other key websites like AJOL and Bioline, and sending posters by PDF through e-mail. Links to the journal's website should be included.

Attending conferences can be expensive so one should aim to get maximum benefits. Strategies that can be implemented include having a desktop display, putting messages on delegates' notice boards, giving out free samples and making presentations about the journal.

The journal's network should be used to promote the journal. The Editorial Board members should hand out leaflets at meetings, institutions, etc, and also cite the journal from articles in other journals. Friendly authors could also do the same.

This can also be expensive so it is important to think about your niche and who you want to target.

Internet presence increases international visibility of ones' journal. One way is by being listed with a platform provider–a destination site that can encourage accidental discovery by users.

Abstracting and Indexing (A&I) services are also a free source of profile-raising for journals, but this requires a journal to be of high quality and also be delivered on a timely basis.

Open access Journals–Bioline, AJOL–are also a way through which journals can be made to be more visible.

Roger Stringer, a publishing consultant, looked at the reasons for making journals visible and the different means that journals can use to increase awareness of their content. It is important to evaluate the visibility of your journal as compared to competing journals and analyze the importance of promotion to your journal. The effect of journal promotion should be either short term, long term or both. Promotion strategy opportunities can be done for the following reasons:

Promotional plans are important because they increase the market of the journal. Promotion can be:

Leslie Chan, of Bioline International, spoke about being online and its advantages. Being online is important because researchers' behaviors are changing. Researchers are going to search engines and searching for what they want and downloading the results. So being available online increases visibility and also creates an enabling environment for research. Documents that are online should be archived in a repository so as to ensure that they are preserved for prosperity.

The formats that support being electronic include; pdf which needs Adobe software to enable a user to view the document and as such is closed; html which is advantageous because it is open and accessible to many users, and xml which is open and the user can copy and paste easily, unlike pdf. If a journal is online, it is important to be Open Archive Inventory (OAI) compliant because this enables easier access of by search engines.

Being online also creates a circle of accessibility and its advantages for the journal include;