Low cost drip irrigation in Burkina Faso : unravelling actors, networks and practices

Title: Low cost drip irrigation in Burkina Faso: Unravelling Actors, Networks and Practices In Burkina Faso, there is a lot of enthusiasm about Low Cost Drip Irrigation (LCDI) as a tool to irrigate vegetables, and thus improve food security, solve water scarcity and reduce poverty. Already for more than ten years, development cooperation donors, policy makers, and kit designers have invested in the technology, funded its dissemination, and encouraged farmers to adopt it. Yet, there are only very few farmers who are using the technology in their fields. This study shows that this is because the funds for paying the technology mostly do not come from them, but from external donors. For LCDI promoters and disseminators, LCDI is also importantly a tool to survive or make profits. For this, they need to continuously re-assert the success of the technology through reports and stories. Farmers agree to play this game, as they hope and do receive other benefits by associating themselves with LCDI projects

Enhancing rural learning, linkages, and institutions: the rice videos in Africa

Africa Rice Center (WARDA) facilitated the development and translation of 11 rice videos. From 2005 to 2009, WARDA partners translated them into more than 30 African languages. Open-air video presentations enhanced learning, experimentation, confidence, trust, and group cohesion among rural people. The videos strengthened capacities of more than 500 organisations and hundreds of thousands of farmers. WARDA’s integrated rural learning approach also helped women to access new markets and credit. Learning videos allow for unsupervised learning; unleash local creativity and experimentation; facilitate institutional innovations; and improve social inclusion of the poor, youth, and women

Evaluation participative de l'impact de la vidéo sur l'étuvage amélioré riz avec les femmes au Bénin

peer reviewedUsing the sustainable livelihoods framework to evaluate the impact of a farmer-to-farmer video on the improved rice parboiling technology, women in Benin rated financial, social, human, natural and physical capital stocks for the baseline year (2006) and the impact year (2009) on a 0–5 scale. Women who had watched the video and those who had not, but who lived in the same villages, perceived a significant improvement in four out of five livelihood capitals while processors in control villages did not perceive any significant change. Apart from testing the sustainable livelihoods conceptual framework as a participatory impact assessment tool for video-mediated rural learning, this study shows how farmer-to-farmer training videos helped to improve multiple livelihood assets.Learning local rice processing through video and rural radio and outcomes on practices, rural livelihoods and markets in Beni

Comparaison de la vidéo avec les formations classiques dans l'apprentissage de la méthode améliorée d'étuvage du riz au Centre du Bénin

This article deals with the comparison of the conventional training based on two day community workshops and farmer-to-farmer video used as methodologies for the dissemination of improved rice parboiling process in Benin. From November 2007 to May 2008, we interviewed 160 women and 17 women groups who had been exposed to both, one or other of the methodologies. Data were analysed using ANOVA and logistic binomial regressions. Video reached more women (74%) than conventional training (27%). The conventional training was biased by participant selection, stakes in per diem payment and monopoly by the elite class. Video helped to overcome local power structures and reduced conflict at the community level. More than 95% of those who watched the video adopted drying their rice on tarpaulins and removed their shoes before stirring the rice, compared to about 50% of those who received traditional training and did not watch the video. Group use of the improved equipment was significantly higher for those who watched the video (pB0.05). By 2009, the various rice videos had been translated into over 30 African languages by Africa Rice Centre (Africa Rice) partners and involved 500 organizations and over 130,000 farmers. This study helps to give a better understanding of the role that farmer-to-farmer video could play in agricultural extension. This comparative analysis is an opportunity for a better understanding of how farmer-to-farmer video improves farmers’ practices and attitudes in agricultural technology dissemination

The conundrum of low-cost drip irrigation in Burkina Faso: why development interventions that have little to show continue

Through a case study in Burkina Faso, this paper interrogates the persistence of development projects that promote low cost drip irrigation even though the prophesized widespread adoption of this technology by smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa has remained elusive until now. The enduring image of “drip kits” as effective tools to alleviate poverty in an environmentally sound way is the result of the active efforts of a tight network of enthusiastic research and development actors. Rather than “field evidence”, what sustains development projects promoting drip kits is a skillfully framed interpretation of what these could achieve (their potential) and a lack of downward accountability of the international development sector