2 Objectives and methods

The overarching objective of the surveys was to establish the trends in forestry education, in order to understand better how education systems are coping with the challenges of building human resource capacity for a changing forestry sector.

The specific objectives were to:

• Provide an overview on the number of forestry graduates in the two regions over the ten-year period 1993-2002.

• Understand the way educational institutions are responding to the changing roles of foresters, particularly through curricular development and review.

• Capture the funding environment for forestry education over the same period.

• Set and prioritize forestry education needs.

• Make appropriate recommendations.

Hopefully, the results will sensitize stakeholders to the need to undertake more extensive and deeper analyses of education and training needs, content and relevance of curricula, and forestry education delivery mechanisms.

The principal methodology used was a questionnaire survey. A sample questionnaire is included as Annex 2 to this report. For each participating country, a national coordinator was identified and made familiar with the questionnaire. Each of the participating institutions was contacted and requested to fill in the questionnaire. For Africa, respondents were requested to provide additional data available, especially in the form of reports, brochures, curricula and learning materials. Where needed, additional data and verifications were collected through interviews.

The survey targeted universities and colleges offering forestry programmes in sub-Saharan Africa and in Southeast Asia. Twenty institutions in Africa and 35 in Southeast Asia were included, representing a sample of key forestry institutions in the two regions. Initial data on institutions, available via records kept with the ANAFE and SEANAFE networks, were used to select the institutions. The list of institutions that participated in the survey is shown in Annex 1. Some institutions offered more than one forestry programme, bringing the total number of programmes sampled to 29 and 61, respectively, in Africa and Southeast Asia (Tables 1 and 2).

Data were analyzed using Excel software to facilitate easy presentation of trends by charts. The analyses were done separately for the two regions, to expose five key areas:

• Forestry graduation 1993–2002

• Employment of forestry graduates

• The changing roles of foresters

• Resources, facilities and funding

• Priority needs

It is important to note that the participating countries and institutions have large differences among them in terms of size, population, resources, history, etc. Regional averages may therefore be misleading as they could mask the huge gaps among countries. For the purpose of this analysis, specific national examples, whenever relevant, were provided.

The surveys were financially supported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and implemented in December 2002 in Africa and in May and June 2003 in Southeast Asia, by the African Network for Agroforestry Education (ANAFE) the South East Asian Network for Agroforestry Education (SEANAFE), respectively.

Table 1: Institutions and programmes surveyed in Africa

Table 2: Institutions and programmes surveyed in SE Asia