Sisay Yehuala’s research while affiliated with University of Gondar and other places

Ethiopia is an agrarian country and agriculture is the backbone of its economy. Because of this fact, the government of Ethiopia has devised Agricultural Development Led Industrialization (ADLI) as the country's overall economic development policy and the country has been investing appreciably towards agricultural growth. Particularly for the last 15 years, public investment towards the expansion of higher education, research and extension in agriculture and natural resource management has been so enormous. These higher education and research institutions are expected in turn to play a great role in stimulating rural transformation. In reality, however, they are not sufficiently responsive to rural transformation especially in addressing problems and priorities of resource poor small-scale farmers. Thus, to assess the needs of trainings that are more responsive to rural transformation including inter-and trans-disciplinary trainings in higher education and research institutions is a paramount importance. To this effect, survey studies were conducted to collect primary information from focus group discussions and key informant interviews. Checklists and semi-structured questionnaires were also developed for respective groups of discussants and respondents. Stratified and purposive sampling technique was dominantly employed during the survey studies. Most respondents regardless their backgrounds were unaware of the term inter-and trans-disciplinary. This was because different stakeholders used to work independently which they had no experience how to integrate work in to a common goal. So, awareness on inter-and trans-disciplinary training/research can be created by practically involving stakeholders how they are working with in and across disciplines in which understandings change in response to the perspectives of others. Respondents who have awareness of the term inter-and trans-disciplinary training agreed with the relevance of inter-and trans-disciplinary training/research for addressing farmers' problems in stimulating rural transformation. Therefore, putting in to practice and giving emphasis on inter-and trans-disciplinary training/research in each stakeholder will much contribute to rural transformation.

This study examines the readiness of higher education and research institutions in the Amhara Region, Ethiopia, in establishing inter-and-trans-disciplinary (ITD) trainings/research. Specifically, the study looks at the strength, weakness, opportunity and threat variables that could promote or impede the establishment of responsive trainings and researches which are relevant to smallholder farmers. The study draws on the data gathered using structured questionnaire conducted in the higher education’s (Bahir Dar and Gonder Universities) and research institutions (Amhara Region Agriculture Research Institute [ARARI] and Gonder Agriculture Research Center) in the Amhara Region. Sample sizes of 90 respondents were selected using purposive and stratified sampling techniques. Data were analyzed using statistical package for social sciences version 17 (SPSS-17). Results of the SWOT analysis indicates that concerned institutions should capitalize on their strength to exhaust opportunities and work on their weaknesses to convert threats to opportunities, so that their system will be responsive to the needs of smallholder farmers. Therefore, to respond to the complex needs of the society in the face of the rapidly changing environment the higher education and research institutions in the Amhara region should work on the development of ITD training/research. The study came up with many conclusions which includes: higher education institutions should work on creating environs that promote accountability, strong relationship with stakeholders and good research culture; better resource utilization or fund rising scheme should be employed to alleviate infrastructure/facility supply gap; local higher education institution instructors should be capacitated through the provision of on job training so as to alleviate quality problem; the government should play a great role in creating awareness on the side of students starting from primary school level by mainstreaming agricultural related contents in the curriculum so as to increase student’s interest to join agricultural academic programs at the university level; and the government should work on promoting agricultural related private investments to absorb unemployed professionals.

Ethiopia is an agrarian country and agriculture is the backbone of its economy. Consequently, the government of Ethiopia has devised Agricul- tural Development Led Industrialization (ADLI) as the country’s overall economic development policy. For the last 15 years, public investment towards the expansion of higher education, research and extension in agriculture has been so enormous. In reality, however, these higher edu- cation and research institutions were not sufficiently responsive to rural transformation. Thus, to evaluate the role of higher education and research institutions in stimulating rural transfor- mation and to identify main training constraints accountable for their poor performances in institutional learning and rural transformation is of paramount importance. To this effect focus group discussions and key informant interviews were conducted. Stratified and purposive sampling technique was dominantly employed during the survey studies. The result of the study has shown that higher education and research institutions were less responsive to address the actual problems of small-scale farmers and they were limited by a number of constraints/ challenges to address the actual problems of farmers. The major constraints were, to list some, limited involvement in research and extension works by the university staff, students limited practical attachments of the training pro- grammes with farming communities, limited infrastructures and facilities and limited availability of contextualized learning resources. In address- ing the aforesaid constraints/challenges, the uni-versity staff should proportionally allocate time in the research and extension activities on top of practical teaching supported by local research results and experience; involving students on practical attachments both in their academic and vacation time; giving emphasis on basic training preparation like fulfilling libraries, la- boratories, demonstration fields and transportation facilities; and lastly to revise the existing curriculum in to the direction of solving the real problems of the Amhara region then the country Ethiopia. Keywords: Rural Transformation; Higher Education; Training Constraints; Competency

Higher education and research in Ethiopia is going through a decisive phase of reform and expansion. As a system it is increasingly required to respond and gear adequately to the development needs of the society and the country. This change is taking place through a government-led radical review of the system's status and challenges, and by devising mechanisms of consensus building, as well as ownership and overcoming the resistance to change. Higher education and research institutions of Bahir Dar and Gondar Universities and ARARI, in Ethiopia are not satisfactorily responsive to rural transformation in addressing problems of small-scale farmers. This calls for responsive education and research that addresses farmers' constraints. Thus, to survey the suitability/ap-propriateness of the current training programmes of higher education and research institutions to address the actual problems of farmers is of paramount importance. To this effect , tools such as interview guide, checklist and questionnaires were put to use for data collection. Primary data was collected from observation , focus group discussions and key in-formant interviews. Descriptive statistics for quantitative data and triangulation for qualitative data were the prime techniques for data analysis. The result of the study shows that university heads, instructors, students, research heads, researchers and employees rated the suggested mechanisms, namely "inviting speakers from industries and farming community", "visiting guest lecturers" and "special entrepreneurial project", as the top most important for ensuring training and research closely to the reality in the society of Amhara region in facilitating agricultural growth and rural transformation. Besides, employers and farmers responded that fresh graduates are deficient with relevant technical skills because of less emphasis on experiential learning on higher education. Therefore, the curriculum for the training should give much weight to incorporate these suggested mechanisms and the higher institutions curriculum should be arranged in such a way that the trainees could obtain appropriate technical know-how.