The Sudan Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (SUDFAAS) was endorsed by stakeholders in June 2011as the national stakeholders’ forum in Sudan and affiliated to AFAAS. SUDFAAS is an umbrella organisation of agricultural extension and advisory services (AEAS) providers, actors and stakeholders in Sudan. The forum was launched in May 2014 with support from the African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MOAF). Following the launch of SUDFAAS, an Interim Committee (IC) was elected by the forum. The IC is composed from five members representing ARC, extension administration at federal level, University of Khartoum (U of K), micro-finance, and Arab Sudanese Seeds Company (ASSCO). In addition MOAF was selected as the host institution. The forum through its members, promote some of the newly released technologies through demo farm namely the seed priming and micro-dose fertilizers using NPK.
The vision of SUDFAAS is “to provide an autonomous professional agricultural extension and advisory services that efficiently and effectively contribute to sustained growth and transformation of agriculture”. The key mandates of the forum as to advise the MOAF on agricultural extension and advisory services activities and take over the writing of the policy on agricultural extension, address gaps in AEAS supervision and help MOAF maintain quality control, and advocacy. It should also act as a link between research and extension especially between Agricultural Research Centres (ARC) and AEAS providers.
The SUDFAAS objectives include:
- To provide a forum for professional in AEAS;
- To support capacity strengthening in all aspects of AEAS;
- To promote exchange or share of information;
- To influence policies and initiate/implement programmes relevant to AEAS;
- To promote partnership and linkages with the country’s CAADP Processes and other networks and stakeholders; and
- To identify and support action research in AEAS.
- Develop a draft constitution;
- Mobilization, sensitization and awareness campaigns in 19 states and 3 major agricultural schemes, and launch the country forum;
- Follow up and approval of extension policy;
- Raising awareness and scaling up of extension policies at different levels;
- Capacity building in KM for all stakeholders;
- Scaling up of ICT uses among stakeholders;
- Promotion of the new extensionists concept;
- Identification of additional potential stakeholders.
The immediate activities/priorities of SUDFAAS include:
Contact person: Mahmoud Mekki, mahmoud.mekki@gmail.com.