Client reports

Jonathan Beynon, Stephen Akroyd, Alex Duncan, Stephen Jones

There is growing interest in alternative approaches to the standard model of a publicly-funded, publicly-delivered agricultural research and extension (R&E) system.  This book reviews some of the evidence and thinking on these approaches, and seeks to answer the following questions:

• How serious is the financing problem, and is it more acute in Sub-Saharan Africa than elsewhere?
• What is the appropriate role for the state in the financing of R&E services?
• How can the private sector contribute to providing R&E services, and what should the state do to support it?
• How can public R&E institutions ease financial constraints while improving the effectiveness of their services?

A key conclusion is that research and extension systems in SSA need to be devised from the starting point that they will only be effective, and public funds used cost-effectively, if the public role is defined so as to complement what the private sector can and will fund and deliver. 

An analytical framework is provided to guide discussion of financing options and mechanisms by which financing can be shifted towards service beneficiaries.  Consideration is also given to enhancing the effectiveness of those services that remain state financed, and to approaches by which service users can control or at least influence the spending of these funds.  A review of international experience is supplemented with case studies that illustrate reform processes in the finance and delivery of agricultural research services in Kenya and Zimbabwe, and of extension services in Chile.

The study is primarily focused on Sub-Saharan Africa, but a broad range of international experience was reviewed and the conclusions reached are of broad application.

Chapter 1: sets out the background and underlying rationale for the study, and provides an general overview of the findings and recommendations derived from the research.

Chapter 2: reviews available data on international trends in public funding of R&E and examines how SSA fares relative to other parts of the world.

Chapter 3: introduces some key concepts from welfare economics, particularly concerning public and private goods.

Chapter 4: reviews a range of alternative approaches to the financing (and to a lesser extent, delivery) of agricultural R&E services.

Chapters 5 and 6: present two case studies of reforms to the funding and delivery of agricultural research in Kenya and Zimbabwe, describing and assessing the responses of both public and private sectors to growing public funding constraints.

Chapter 7: examines the provision of extension services in Chile, focusing on the mechanics and consequences of contracting out service delivery to the private sector and the introduction of user charges.

Chapter 8: assesses the fiscal, efficiency and distributional impacts of the various options and the conditions under which each of these options are likely to succeed.  A series of policy implications and operational guidelines for future support to research and extension are then presented.

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to the many individuals from DFID, FAO, IDB, IFPRI, ISNAR, USAID, the World Bank, and a number of academic and NGO institutions, notably, but by no means only, ODI, Reading University and Michigan State University, who gave generously of their time and wisdom during the course of this study, and also to the many individuals in Chile, Kenya and Zimbabwe, especially from INDAP, KARI and DRSS, who contributed so much to the case studies.

Special acknowledgements are also due to Anthony Bebbington (then at IIED, now with the University of Colorado) and Octavio Sotomayor (INDAP, Chile) who undertook the Chile case study, to Stephen Mbogoh (University of Nairobi) and Godfrey Mudimu (University of Zimbabwe) who assisted so ably with the Kenya and Zimbabwe case studies, and to John Farrington (ODI) and Chris Garforth (AERDD, University of Reading) who provided such useful comments on earlier drafts.

Finally, the support of DFID, who funded the original research and the publication of this monograph, is gratefully acknowledged, although as always, the findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors.