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Ashton Mutyavaviri
INSTEAD of promoting generic education that is inapplicable to local contexts, African schools and universities in agricultural districts or provinces should study local food systems, pests and diseases first before thinking about external markets.
Knowledge Transfer Africa (KTA) chief executive officer Dr Charles Dhewa said African formal education systems should assist with promoting indigenous seed and related inputs that have guarantees in terms of performance, shelf life and other valuable quality aspects, which are currently not aggressively promoted.
Dr Dhewa said universities should be working with communities in identifying local resources and guiding industrial development so that science is used to enable communities to combat uncertainties against all kinds of shocks including droughts.
“Adaptive challenges like climate change, geopolitical tensions and economic disruptions demand that schools and universities lead communities in learning, experimenting, collaborating and finding fresh consciousness that is more adaptive and resilient,” said Dr Dhewa.
He stressed that African schools and universities can be part of this positive trajectory if they move away from vanity research that does not solve real African challenges.
Efforts to advance African food can be promoted but as long as key barriers like the absence of appropriate mechanisation in producing and processing the food are not addressed, consumers will continue complaining about the presence of soil in the grain, he observed.
One of the major reasons parents and guardians send their children to school and university is to harness the power of knowledge in achieving better lives at both individual and community level.
Added Dr Dhewa: “For African education to not continue to be like a Ponzi scheme from which parents and guardians do not get any return on investment, the education system should speak to local contexts right from primary level.”
It appears the formal education system is designed for learners to regurgitate information obtained in text books with such information not translatable to local contexts in which most challenges are becoming more adaptive than technical.
“Unfortunately, the African formal education system has not been good at generating approaches that adequately transition communities beyond solutions that replicate the status quo.
“Otherwise, food insecurity and malnutrition would be things of the past if formal education systems focused on generating relevant knowledge to address these age-old African challenges,” added Dr Dhewa.
The continued absence of technologies for mechanising the production of indigenous food should have been addressed if the formal education system was relevant to local challenges.
Diverse indigenous plants, grasses and fruits can be identified and production boosted so that they can be available at scale for value addition enterprises.
The KTA boss highlighted that consistent accessibility of indigenous inputs would increase adoption and utilisation.
A major competitive advantage for conventional industrial agriculture is ready availability of inputs.
While industrial inputs may not be ideal, being readily available increases their utilisation. This is because the industrial system has ensured the same inputs are available throughout the country.
However, that is not the case with indigenous seed and other related inputs that remain localised and not properly packaged to be easily accessible.
It is unfortunate that African universities have not been able to adapt Western knowledge and use it to advance industrial growth of indigenous food systems and medicines, starting from production all the way to the market.
Rather than getting communities involved in gruelling studies through farmer field schools trying to produce compost and other inputs at individual level, these initiatives should be institutionalised at community level in order to achieve economies of scale.
That way, farming communities become implementers of bigger initiatives at industrial level.
Online Reporter