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IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF CTA TRAINING PROGRAMMES ON ICT APPLICATION AMONG AGRICULTURAL SCIENTISTS IN AFRICA

Authors: I.S. Baning, P.A. Adewuyi, O. Obanyi and P. Ifejika

Objectives

• Identify the categories beneficiaries of CTA Training Programmes among ARS
• Determine assess to ICT facilities by the ARS
• Determine the knowledge levels of the beneficiaries
• Assess the application of knowledge gained from the training programmes by the beneficiaries
• Identify constraints to the application of the knowledge acquired and the way forward

Introduction

African scientists, in general, are known to be far behind their counterparts on other continents in their access to published information. The reasons are numerous but prominent among them are

• Lack of ICT facilities
• Lack of skills to use the ICT facilities by most scientists even where they are available

CTA, in pursuance of its mandate, has assisted agricultural workers within the ACP countries with information on production technologies, conference proceedings and most importantly training programmes in ICT to enable the beneficiaries to access the vast global resources of information. While these training programmes, supported by CTA, have been organized in many ACP countries one would want to pause and ask if these programmes have made any impact in Africa with emphasis on the activities of Agricultural Research Scientists (ARS). The ARS were chosen as the target of this study because as generators of knowledge they should be more abreast with developments elsewhere (through improved access to information ) in order to avoid re-inventing the wheel with the meager resources at their disposal.

Methodology

Surveys would be conducted with a questionnaire online in selected African countries that have benefitted most from these training programmes within the last three years. Information on these beneficiaries can be sought from CTA headquarters. A sample of 20 ARS per country would be targeted. Some of the information to be collected would include:

• ICT facilities accessible to the ARS
• Reliability of the facility
• Level of ICT literacy of the beneficiary and other resource persons available
• ICT tools most frequently used (in order of importance)
• What these tools are used for (brief description)
• Sources of information accessed
• Frequency of usage of ICT facility (Number of hours per week)
• Cost of usage of the facility
• Constraints to the use of available ICT facilities
• Impact of ICT on the output of the ARS eg. Number of extra publications, technologies developed
• Suggestions to make ICT more attractive to use

Expected Outputs

• ICT facilities available to ARS would be documented
• Level of competence in ICT usage would be estimated
• Impact of CTA Training programmes in ICT would be ascertained
• Strategies to make CTA Training Programmes more beneficial would be developed