Experiences of governments/JICA/Tottori-University tripartite cooperation in capacity development on dry land agricultural technologies

摘要

Dry land agriculture faces multi-faceted challenges including inter alia scares water resources for crop and livestock production,accompanying risks of land degradation,and attendant socio-economic instabilities.The governments of countries with sizable dry land areas have been struggling to cope with adverse effects of inappropriate irrigation practices while supporting livelihoods of the people.In this fight,international cooperation has always been a part of it,and human resource development and institutional capacity building to ultimately assist producers with improved technologies are among the most important components of this cooperation.In this context,some thirty,largely African and middle-eastern countries have been working with Japan International Cooperation Agency(JICA)and Tottori University(TU)of Japan in training their human resources in dry land agriculture technologies in the past twenty years,by way of 3-4 month long training workshops on land degradation evaluation,desalinization techniques,comprehensive water management,farmer support activities,etc.However,training a few technical personnel cannot easily meet the requirements of a country and not all the international development agency's experiences are readily applicable to the realities of diverse country situations.Therefore,the author is analyzing the experiences of this tri-partite collaboration in capacity development in dry land agriculture to identify successful features and challenges for technical cooperation endeavors.Suggestions include that networking of ex-participants as change agents would be an encouraging mechanism for further promotion.