Education

In their efforts to improve the social and economic status of their populations, many developing countries face new challenges arising from the weakening of public institutions, the digital divide, and the marginalization from the global “information society”. In the key areas of agricultural and rural issues, these countries struggle to keep pace with technological advances. Agricultural educational institutions in many countries lack resources and cannot adequately meet the demand for professional and technical skills. This presents a number of challenges for students in developing countries, including a limited choice of subjects and academic programmes, inflexibility in course selection and a lack of up-to-date educational material and trained personnel, which combined, significantly impair a student’s ability to learn.

Distance learning and e-learning offer traditional agricultural educational institutions the opportunity broaden learning opportunities by increasing outreach, course offerings and enrolment. Strengthening agricultural universities in developing countries through distance learning and e-learning will foster their ability to participate in and take advantage of global agricultural research networks, as well as build local knowledge for sustainable agricultural development.

The Programme is working to ensure that Internet-based technologies are applied wherever relevant and appropriate to enhance existing education in agriculture and rural development. The Information Management Resource Kit (IMARK) initiative, discussed in this site’s Capacity Building section, incorporates many generally accepted distance learning practices.