The 6th Africa-Wide Agricultural Extension Week (AAEW 2023) was held in Abuja, Nigeria, on 5–11 November, co-hosted by the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development and the Nigerian Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (NIFAAS). The AAEW is a biennial flagship event of the African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS), which brings participants from across Africa and globally to deliberate on strategic issues in agricultural extension and advisory services in Africa. The theme of the 2023 event was “Harnessing Agricultural Extension & Advisory Services in Scaling Regenerative Agriculture and Nature-Based Solutions for Food-System Transformation in Africa”, and various AAEW activities were pointed out ways to promote and scale this approach.
The Prolinnova Subregional Coordinator for West & Central Africa (SRC-WCA), Paul Jimmy, attended the event on behalf of the Prolinnova network. This was an opportunity to present Prolinnova’s experiences in promoting local innovation and farmer-led participatory innovation development (PID). He gave an oral presentation based on Prolinnova Working Paper 38 entitled: Institutionalising Participatory Innovation Development in a nongovernmental and a governmental organisation in northern Ghana. This attracted several questions revealing keen interest and yielded a fruitful Q&A session.
Other major activities during the AAEW included panel discussions, oral or poster presentations, side events by partner organisations (on farmer extension, AGRA etc.), exhibitions by partner organisations and projects, and a field visit to three agricultural centres. Paul visited the ‘’Be The Help Foundation Agroforestry Centre’’ in Gwagwalada, a Local Government Area in the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria, which promotes agroforestry-based production systems.
Paul also took part in the NIFAAS General Assembly the day after the AFAAS event. This gave him an opportunity to introduce the Prolinnova network to NIFAAS members and to invite them to join Christogonus Daudu (Ahmadu Bello University in northern Nigeria) and others who expressed interest in reviving the Prolinnova Country Platform (CP) that had operated in Nigeria from 2008 to 2016. A WhatsApp group was set up and discussions are underway to achieve this. The contact person for Prolinnova in Nigeria, the former CP coordinator Yemi Adeleye, is part of this group.
