ABSTRACT
This paper examines what is being done in tropical French-speaking Africa and Madagascar to train the technical personnel necessary for the modernization of agriculture. These countries rely almost exclusively on traditional subsistence agriculture. The rural population accounts for 90 per cent of the inhabitants and the main sources of income and exchange and employment possibilities are based on agriculture. Thus improvements in the standard of living depend essentially on the transformation of this traditional agriculture into a market-oriented economy. Moreover, in these countries, very extensive underemployment exists in the rural areas and constitutes an important reserve for development. The poor utilization of this human potential to date calls for an increased awareness of development tasks. It also becomes increasingly important that groups of nationals be found who have received advanced training in the technical and human aspects of modern agriculture: suitable training must be given to these technicians in order that they may, in turn, train farmers and promote development.
