ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of agricultural extension and its linkages with research from the perspective of the World Bank, with emphasis on the African situation. An historically informed review of West African agriculture indicates that many different systems of agricultural research and extension have been preached, and some have been practised in the region over the years. The Bank has continued to give strong support and impetus to the search for innovative approaches in extension, to the efforts for eliminating the chronic organizational weaknesses that have plagued extension services, and to sound policies for linking agricultural research to extension work and to farmer needs. While positively attempting to link extension to other aspects of overall community development, this approach has diluted the specific agricultural extension responsibility of the village agent with a long, diffusely defined list of the tasks.
