Africa’s Agricultural Future Will Rise Or Fall On Its Extension Workforce

By Dr. Fentahun Mengistu, Country Director, Sasakawa Africa Association – Ethiopia

On the outskirts of rural Ethiopia, a farmer tests a new seed variety under erratic rainfall. She is not watching policy documents or global summits. She is watching her harvest. And standing between her risk and her reward is one person: the agricultural extension worker.

Across Africa, agriculture remains the backbone of livelihoods, food security, and rural stability. Yet despite decades of policy commitments, millions of smallholder farmers still face low productivity, limited market access, and intensifying climate shocks. What is often missing from this conversation is the most decisive factor of all: the people who translate science into survival on the farm.

Today, Africa’s agricultural extension systems are chronically underfunded, overstretched, and structurally outdated. Many extension workers lack current technical training, lack climate-science grounding, and are tasked with supporting thousands of farmers without adequate tools. This makes agricultural transformation not just difficult but slow, fragile, and inequitable.

Since 1993, Sasakawa Africa Association has worked to close this gap through the Sasakawa Africa Fund for Extension Education (SAFE), upgrading the qualifications of mid-career extension professionals while strengthening hands-on training across 31 universities and agricultural colleges. These programs are not theory-based. They are anchored in Supervised Enterprise Projects (SEPs) that force future extension leaders to solve real farm problems under real market conditions.

In November 2025, Ethiopia took a decisive step forward during a National Forum of SAA Partner Universities, where new demand-driven curricula were launched in Crop Science Extension, Horticulture Extension, Animal Science Extension, and Natural Resource Management Extension. The results are already visible: 1,425 Extension Agents enrolled across three universities, 57 percent of them women. Three additional Agricultural Technical and Vocational Education and Training colleges are set to absorb nearly 1,500 more.

But scale alone is not enough.

The greatest bottleneck remains financing for practical training. SEPs are constrained by limited budgets, uneven employer participation, and fragmented curriculum harmonization. Without stronger public-private investment models, extension education risks producing graduates with credentials but limited real-world capacity.

The implications extend far beyond Ethiopia.

Across Africa, commitments under the CAADP Kampala Declaration call for inclusive, resilient, and sustainable food systems. Yet no declaration can succeed without a robust workforce that operationalizes it at farm level. Extension agents such as crop diversification, climate smart practices and market integration, are the delivery mechanism of Africa’s agricultural future.

Gender inclusion is not optional in this agenda. Women produce much of Africa’s food, yet they remain underrepresented among extension professionals. Ethiopia’s 57 percent female intake is strategic, not just symbolic. When women lead extension, household nutrition, adoption rates, and community resilience rise.

Africa’s agricultural transformation now demands a value-chain mindset. Extension professionals must advise not only on production, but also on Market systems, Agribusiness development, post-harvest handling and Sustainable natural resource management

This is how productivity converts into income and food security into economic security.

As Africa pursues the ambitions of Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals, extension education must be elevated from an afterthought to a national investment priority. Without skilled extension professionals, billions spent on climate adaptation, seed systems, and agrifood value chains will yield only partial returns.

Africa will not industrialize agriculture without professionalizing extension. Training, financing, and empowering this workforce is the economic infrastructure needed to scale.

The future of African food systems will not be built in conference halls. It will be built in extension classrooms, on demonstration plots, and through the hands of professionals who stand between innovation and the farmer. If we fail them, we fail Africa’s harvest.