Malawi ’ s experiences with the implementation of pluralistic , demand-driven and decentralised agricultural extension policy

Clear agricultural policies and strategies are very crucial for influencing the performance of agricultural extension and advisory services (AEAS). Malawi has implemented its agricultural extension policy titled “agricultural extension in the new millennium: towards pluralistic and demand driven services in Malawi” for a period of seventeen years. The policy specified seven guiding principles which include provision of demand-driven extension services, ensuring accountability, promoting user participation in extension financing, ensuring resource sustainability, ensuring equal access to extension and advisory services, promotion of pluralism and provision of decentralised but well-coordinated AEAS. The study assessed the effectiveness of four of the seven principles in ensuring user access to quality AEAS. The study used a mixed methods approach which included action research, focus group discussions, key informant interviews and review of various documents. The results show that the four guiding principles which included pluralism, demand-driven services, decentralised coordination and user participation in extension financing had some potential for a positive influence on increasing access to quality AEAS. Pluralism helped in increasing number of service providers thereby increasing farmer access but did not influence the quality of extension. Most of the farmers are not demanding for services and most districts do not have functional District Agriculture Extension Services System (DAESS) structures. Most service providers are not using DAESS structures and this is resulting in poor coordination of services. Malawi should put more efforts in implementing the policy if its fruits are to be fully realised. Particularly, institutionalization of DAESS structures and ensuring their effective operationalization will help to ensure that the benefits of the principles of demand driven services and decentralised coordination are realized. The country also needs to train and engage more extension workers in order to increase farmer access to quality extension services.


INTRODUCTION
Existence of clear agricultural policies and strategies has a major impact on the performance of agricultural extension services.Several authors have argued that countries that have enacted extension policies through their legislative systems tend to have properly organized and financially stable extension systems which have sustainably been effective in assisting farming communities to develop their agricultural systems (Hanyani-Mlambo, 2000;Oladele, 2011).The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 which established the Cooperative Extension System is one of the oldest and good examples of agricultural extension legislations that created a wellorganized extension system with good financing mechanisms and has had a very good impact on agricultural development in the United States of America.The Act provided for mutual cooperation between the United States Department of Agriculture and land-grant universities and colleges in conducting agricultural extension work in the states.It provided mechanisms for extension financing and operations.The Act is frequently applauded for providing a good educational linkage from federal government to rural communities, a characteristic needed in most developing countries.Other pieces of agricultural extension policy legislations normally commended for having similar impacts include the 1948 Japanese Agricultural Promotion law which created and provided funding for Japan's Cooperative Agricultural Extension Service as well as the 1957 Agricultural Extension law and the 1962 Rural Development Law in South Korea (Contando, 1997;APO, 1994).
Agricultural extension and advisory services (AEAS) in Malawi have gone through several changes.A number of authors have provided detailed descriptions of the changes (Dequin, 1970;Kettlewell, 1965;Masangano and Mthinda, 2012;Masangano et al., 2016;Mkandawire, 1987).The changes were mostly based on the historical conception that agricultural extension is a process of extending scientifically proven knowledge, practices and policies to users in order for them to use such knowledge for improving their agricultural production systems.This conception of agricultural extension was premised on the assumption that scientific knowledge was always better than farmers and other user's knowledge and experiences.The implication being that extension should be a top down process where farmers and users are at the receiving end.This conception of extension had a number of weaknesses including: (1) It usually did not take farmers interests and concerns into consideration; (2) It did not value farmer's knowledge and experiences and hence it was not possible to build on indigenous knowledge systems; (3) It very often promoted technologies which were not suitable under farmers' conditions; and (4) It was very narrow based because it was only concerned with farmers and producers without taking into consideration the extension needs of other value chain actors.
Evidence from literature shows that farmers' response to extension advice was generally low (Masangano, 1989;Carr, 1988;Mkandawire, 1988;Mkandawire and Chipande, 1988).The reasons for this low response included the fact that farmer needs and interests were most often not taken into consideration (Masangano and Mthinda, 2012) and that the technologies promoted were in some cases not suitable for the farmers (Carr, 1988).A good example occurred in the colonial period as well as soon after independence in the mid-1960s where extension promoted cash crops which were intended for export such as cotton and tobacco while farmers were more concerned with ensuring food self-sufficiency (Masangano and Mthinda, 2012).Extension in the 1980s on the other hand tended to promote capital intensive technologies which most low resource farmers could not afford (Carr, 1988).The result of this was that farmers tended to perceive that extension was for the resource rich and credit worthy club members only.Another weakness of the top-down system was the fact that valuable farmer knowledge and experiences were most often not taken into consideration in the development process.In addition to these weaknesses, the whole responsibility of extension service provision was left to the public sector and this had its own challenges.Public sector resources for extension were and are consistently shrinking.Despite the fact that the national budget has been increasing, spending on extension as a percentage of the agricultural budget has consistently been decreasing over time.This has resulted in a situation where the extension budget has only been sufficient to pay for staff salaries with very little resources left for operational costs.In 2010/2011 financial year for example, 96% of the spending for extension was on salaries.Government could not maintain provision of high quality extension services with the limited resources.In addition to all these weaknesses, research shows that farmer awareness of recommended technologies is low and this is a major cause for low adoption.A 2017 IFPRI study shows that adoption rate increases very significantly among farmers who are aware of the technologies being promoted.The study showed that adoption ranged from 4 to 35% among all respondents in the study but this range increased to 31 to 81 among respondents who were aware of the technologies in Malawi (Ragasa and Chiyu, 2017).
The introduction of multiparty system of government in 1993 together with the weaknesses associated with the extension systems at that time led to the introduction of an extension policy which promoted pluralism, demanddriven and decentralization extension services in 2000 (Masangano and Mthinda, 2012).The vision of extension as articulated in the policy was that all farmers should be *Corresponding author.E-mail: cmasangano@bunda.luanar.mw.
Author(s) agree that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License able to demand and have access to high quality extension services provided by those who are best able to deliver them (GoM, 2000).The policy has a total of seven guiding principles which were considered important for the achievement of its objectives and these include; promotion of demand-driven services, ensuring accountability, encouraging user participation in financing provision of extension services, ensuring resource sustainability, promoting the principle of equalization, promoting pluralism and promoting decentralized coordination.In addition to these guiding principles, the policy specified an institutional framework where among other functions, the Department of Agricultural Extension Services (DAES) which represents government at the central level, was supposed to play the key role of monitoring and enforcing minimum standards in order to ensure quality service provision (GoM, 2000).In addition DAES was supposed to come up with a policy implementation guide to be used for orienting relevant stakeholders on the implementation of extension services.Other roles of DAES included co-ordination of national stakeholders and facilitating the provision of preservice as well as in-service training of extension workers in order to ensure availability of an adequate pool of well qualified extension staff in the country.
Though not officially legislated through parliament, the policy received a cabinet blessing in 2000 and it has been in use in Malawi since then.It has provided guidance on the provision of AEAS for more than one and half decades.However, the effect and impact of the policy on the quality of extension service delivery have not been well documented.This paper provides evidence of such effect and or impact focussing on four of the seven guiding principles using data and information generated from a number of research projects and activities.The specific objectives pursued in the study were: (1) To assess whether the policy guidelines have been implemented.
(2) To assess whether implementation of the policy guidelines have led to improved quality of AEAS provision.More especially to assess whether implementation of the extension guidelines have led to: (a) increased availability of AEAS in the country and (b) a financially stable extension system.
The four guiding principles selected were pluralism, demand-driven services, decentralised coordination and provision of services at cost and they were selected because they were considered to have more impact on the objectives of the study.

METHODOLOGY
The study was conducted using a mixed methods approach under a number of research and development projects and forums.One of the projects under which part of the study was conducted is the "Support to Agricultural Extension and Training Services programme (SAETS)" which was implemented with financial support from the Government of Flanders.An action research approach was used in this programme and the main objective was to pilot test implementation of the policy guidelines titled the District Agricultural Extension Services System (DAESS) implementation guide while observing and drawing lessons from the implementation process.The study was conducted in Chipala and Kaluluma Extension Planning Areas (EPAs) in Kasungu district as well as in Emfeni and Luwerezi EPAs in Mzimba district.The study started with a community and contextual analysis using one meeting which involved staff from Kasungu and Mzuzu Agricultural Development Divisions (ADDs), action planning using district stakeholder workshops conducted in Kasungu and Mzimba districts followed by implementation and experimentation activities as described in more detail by Masangano et al. (2016).
Additional data and information was collected through consultations using focus group discussions (FGD) and key informant interviews (KII) which were conducted under a project titled "Integrating and Strengthening Capacity of Farmers into District Stakeholder Panels for Improved Agricultural Extension Service Delivery in Malawi" which was also implemented with financial support from the Government of Flanders.The consultations were conducted with senior staff at DAES Headquarters and in three districts of Rumphi, Mzimba and Kasungu.In addition to district level stakeholders, consultations were also conducted with stakeholders at EPA level in one EPA in each of the three districts.Table 1 provides details of the number and type of stakeholders consulted.
Data and information was also generated though a review of papers from six of the eight Agricultural Development Divisions2 (ADDs) of the country.These are papers which were submitted and some of which were presented at the Malawi Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (MaFAAS) extension week in 2016.The ADDs which submitted the papers are Blantyre, Karonga, Kasungu, Lilongwe, Salima and Shire Valley.Other additional data and information was generated from a review of MaFAAS reports on district visits which were conducted in the following districts: Rumphi, Nkhatabay, Ntcheu and Mulanje.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
There is a general agreement among various stakeholders consulted that the country came up with the right type of policy which is in accordance to the multiparty democratic dispensation in which Malawi is also promoting decentralised governance system.The change to multiparty democracy brought with it societal changes such as various types of freedoms like freedom of choice and freedom of expression.The introduction of demanddriven and pluralistic extension system is in tandem with these freedoms.The principle of demand-driven services created an environment which provides an opportunity for farmers and other users to demand the type of services they want.Demand-driven AEAS are more likely to address felt needs of farmers and other relevant stakeholders.The AEAS are therefore more likely to be perceived as being more relevant by the stakeholders and thereby enhancing the usage of such services among among farmers and users.The policy is also in tandem with the market liberalisation process which took place under the structural adjustment programmes of the late 1980s to the early 1990s (Easterly, 2003).Market liberalisation created opportunities for a diversity of market demands.Farmers have a wider choice of what to grow and produce thereby creating a wider diversity of extension demands.
The principle of pluralism on the other hand allows many service providers to participate in service provision thereby creating an opportunity for farmers and other users to choose the service providers they want to receive services from.Pluralism also results in a diversity of service providers thereby creating a better environment for responding to the diversity of extension demands.It has also created opportunity for diversifying sources of financing and resourcing extension services thereby helping to mitigate the challenge of shrinking public sector resources for extension.
However, the results of the study show that achievement of the vision of the policy and its objectives is mixed.There are significant achievements in some of the principles and objectives of the policy but not for others.Subsequently, the results of the study for four of the seven guiding principles are presented by addressing three questions; (a) whether the country has implemented the guiding principle, (b) whether the implementation of the particular guiding principle has led to an increased availability of AEAS, and (c) what impact the implementation of the particular guiding principle is making.

Pluralism
The principle of pluralism was introduced as a way of responding to some of the challenges that extension was facing.Both the liberalisation and democratisation processes that Malawi went through from the 1980s to The main public sector organisation providing agricultural extension services is the DAES under the Ministry of Agriculture Irrigation and Water Development (MoAI&WD).The Department has approximately 2000 field level extension workers who operate in sections at the EPA level.This is against a requirement of about 3,500 implying a staff vacancy of about 1,500 field level extension workers.
Each EPA is sub-divided into sections and these sections are manned by the field level extension workers.The number of sections per EPA varies depending on the geographical coverage and the number of farmers ranging from a minimum of five up to a maximum of twenty five.The staff vacancy of over 1,500 is a major constraint to the provision of quality extension services in the country.NGOs are another category of AEAS providers which have increased very significantly since the introduction of pluralism in Malawi.There are two types of NGOs including international and local ones.Based on the data presented in Table 2, it can be estimated that about 60% of all the AEAS providers operating in Malawi are in the category of NGOs and other civil society organisations.The NGOs are operating in all the districts of the country despite the fact that they are not equally distributed.Some districts have more concentration of them than others.Most of the NGOs operate in relatively smaller geographical areas but with relatively better concentration of physical and financial resources for operating the extension programmes.One major challenge however is that most of these NGOs do not have adequate and well trained staff of their own.They most often rely on government extension staff especially those belonging to DAES to implement their activities.This has been a major concern considering that DAES itself does not have adequate staff to implement its activities.The private sector includes institutions such as input suppliers like seed companies, fertilizer and chemical companies, marketing organisations, banks, producer companies and media houses.Most of the companies provide extension and advisory services (EAS) designed to promote their line products while the producer companies tend to provide services in situations where they use out-grower schemes.The extension and advisory services in this case are designed to promote production of high quality produce from such out-grower schemes.Similarly, marketing institutions provide EAS designed to promote production of high quality produce as demanded by the market.Commercial banks on the other hand provide agricultural loans to their clients and they provide EAS designed to assist them increase production of high quality produce from their enterprises.This helps the clients to increase profits thereby reducing the likeliness of default among them.The main media houses in the country like the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) and Zodiak Broadcasting Services (ZBS) mostly work in collaboration with other organisations which sponsor them to air AEAS related programmes through radio or television.
Farmer organisations on the other hand mostly encourage farmers to organise themselves into various forms of groups in order to take advantage of various group strengths like bulk purchasing and marketing as well as other value addition activities.These farmer organisations provide extension services to their members in order to enhance their productivity and improve quality of their produce.The other categories such as research and academic institutions as well as donor funded projects are also involved in the provision of AEAS in order to ensure achievement of their research and development objectives.
Overall, Malawi has successfully established a pluralistic agricultural extension and advisory services system where players from a diverse background are involved in the provision of AEAS.The major challenge however is that the increase in the number of service providers has not necessarily resulted in an increase in the number of extension staff.Shortage of extension staff is a major strain on the provision of good quality extension and advisory services in the country.The staff to farmer ratio is very low hovering around 1:3500 as opposed to the mid 1980s under the block extension system, a modified training and visit system, where the staff to farmer ratio was as high as 1:800.The low staff to farmer ratio means that most of the farmers are not able to access extension services thereby putting into question the assumption that introduction of pluralistic AEAS would result in increased accessibility and improved quality of the services.Another weakness is that the AEAS providers tend to focus on providing production related messages, technologies.Little attention is given to value addition messages and technologies.Issues such as processing, packaging, marketing and transportation are not emphasised and the result of this has been marketing of raw produce which tends to fetch low prices.

Provision of demand-driven extension services
Another guiding principle promoted in the policy is provision of demand-driven services.This guiding principle was articulated in recognition of the weaknesses of the previous extension systems whereby farmer's needs, interests as well as constraints were not considered when designing interventions.Demand-driven extension services are designed to empower farmers and users by changing their status from simply beneficiaries to being clients and or customers, thereby making them more in control of the services.Demand-driven services are more likely to be in accordance to farmers' needs, interests and more likely to take into consideration their constraints.Providing AEAS which are demanded by the users increases the likeliness of providing services which are relevant to users thereby making them more willing to use such services.It was also expected that with the introduction of multiparty democracy in the 1990s, where people have freedoms of choice and expression and also considering the demands associated with market liberalisation, the demand-driven extension services would be more appropriate.It was therefore assumed that demands for extension services would be very high.This is however not the case.Most of the farmers are not able to demand for extension services.The results of the study show that only a few farmers especially those who are organized and in most cases better resource endowed are the ones demanding and especially so in districts where DAESS is working.One reason suggested by some respondents during FGDs and KIIs was that farmers were not adequately sensitized on the policy change.An IPFRI study conducted by Ragasa and Chiyu (2017) came up with similar findings where they noted that farmers were not adequately sensitized of the technology options available.The KII results also showed that most of the extension workers did not see their role in facilitating farmer articulation of demands.This was also due to limited understanding of the principle.One key informant argued that "extension workers need to work as marketing people by promoting the technology options in the same way a sells officer would be promoting a product for sale".Masangano et al. (2016) observed that the facilitation role of extension workers is very crucial for the generation of farmer demands.Extension workers need to create awareness of the technology options available among farmers.Efforts to encourage farmers to individually demand for services have in most cases not worked except in situations where they have been organised into some form of groups.The results of the action research have however demonstrated that farmers have the ability to articulate their demands when they are organised in forums such as village agricultural committees (VACs), area stakeholder panels (ASPs) and other such forums.Of cause as Masangano and others (2016) observed, most of the demands tend to be for physical assets rather than services and that response to such demands is sometimes not available.It is very important therefore, to organise farmers into various forums and farmer groups if they are to be successfully encouraged to demand for services.The District Agricultural Extension Services System (DAESS) which was introduced is a very effective way of ensuring that all the farmers are organised in the country.Farmers should also be encouraged to organise themselves into special interest groups such as commodity based farmer clubs, associations and cooperatives.

Decentralised coordination
Another guiding principle of the policy is decentralised coordination.This principle is two pronged in its design It is designed on the one hand to promote decentralisation of agricultural extension services in the country while on the other hand it is designed to promote provision of well- Masangano et al. 191 coordinated extension services.Malawi adopted a decentralisation policy and its associated local government Act in 1998 (GoM, 1998a(GoM, , 1998b)).Decentralisation is one of the public sector reforms which were promoted and implemented in most developing countries beginning from the late 1980s (Chasukwa et al, 2014;World Bank, 2000).The proponents of decentralisation argue that it helps to improve the delivery of public services thereby increasing economic and social welfare of the people and also promotes involvement of local people in decision making thereby empowering the citizenry (Prud'homme, 2010; Swanson and Rajalahti, 2010).Nambiro et al. (2006) found that increasing level of decentralisation in agricultural extension resulted in increased access to extension services as well as enhanced level of awareness of different channels of delivery of extension services among farmers.The Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems (AKIS) Thematic Team of the World Bank on the other hand, argued that decentralisation of agricultural extension and research seeks to increase user participation and to make programmes more accountable to users (World Bank, 2000).One of the requirements of the decentralisation policy in Malawi is that the role of providing services such as agricultural extension and advisory services be moved from the central to the district level.Implementation of this principle was facilitated by coming up with DAESS guidelines (GoM, 2006) as described in detail by Masangano et al. (2016).All districts are supposed to establish functional DAESS structures.Two of the DAESS structures to be established at the district level include the DAECC and the district stakeholder panel (DSP).A review of ADD reports presented at the 2016 MaFAAS extension week shows that most district have established these structures as in Table 3.The challenge, however, is that the structures especially the DSP are not functional and the most cited reason is that operations of the DSP are costly.
The major purposes of the DAESS structures are to provide a forum for farmers to articulate their demands, involving stakeholders in decision making at decentralised level and facilitating coordination of AEAS service provision in the districts.DAECCs are composed of representatives of service providers while DSPs are composed of both farmer representatives and service providers.Non functionality of DSPs means that farmers do not have a good forum for articulating their demands nor participating in decision making at the district level.Consultations with key informants and focus group discussions revealed that most service providers do not follow the DAESS guidelines nor use the DAESS structures when implementing their extension activities and this results in poor coordination of AEAS services.
An important requirement for pluralistic and decentralised extension services is establishment and implementation of effective coordination mechanisms.Heemskerk and Davis (2012) argued that despite the benefits that pluralistic AEAS have, coordinating the activities of different organisations having a wide diversity of mindsets and worldviews is a major challenge.Poor coordination of the activities of most service providers has therefore been identified as one of the major challenges affecting the quality of extension and advisory service provision in the country.

Provision of services at cost
Provision of services at cost is a principle which has been very highly contested from the time the policy was first introduced.This principle was introduced with the recognition that it is impossible for government to continue to provide high quality services when public sector resources for extension are shrinking.The total agricultural budget has consistently been above 10% of the total national budget which is in line with CAADP commitments.The relative expenditure in extension has however been decreasing due to other competing priorities in the agricultural sector.It is therefore proposed that extension services which promote private interests need to be financed using private resources.Financial participation in extension and advisory service provision has several other advantages.It fosters empowerment and creates a sense of ownership among farmers and users (Katz, 2002;Neuchatel Group, 2002).Katz has argued that farmers who pay for extension services develop some sense of ownership which normally puts them in a position to demand for services and fight for greater influence on the services.Financial participation actually helps to transform users from just being merely beneficiaries to clients.Financial participation by users also promotes accountability of service providers to users (Katz, 2002;Neuchatel Group, 2002) and this normally leads to the provision of good quality and effective services.Users including farmers will usually not express any concern when they receive services which are not useful to them, if they have not participated in financing such services because they feel it is somebody's money being wasted.If they participate in financing the services on the other hand, even if their contribution is as low as 5%, they will demand for services which are useful to them, thereby resulting into better quality services.In this regard, financial participation of users forces service providers to be accountable (Katz, 2002).
The third advantage of financial participation by users is that it contributes to financial sustainability.As already observed earlier, public sector resources are continuously shrinking as demands for such resources continue to increase.This is leading to provision of poor quality services.Financial participation by farmers and other users can in practice take several different forms such as paying of user fees, contributing to publicly funded services, indirect payments like membership fees, levies, earmarked taxes and service level agreements where service providers receive a share of the profits.
Despite the strong resistance to the principle, the study has revealed that certain categories of farmers are already paying for extension services.There are several examples cited through the KII and FGD consultations.These include: (1) Tobacco farmers who pay for extension and advisory services through a levy deducted from every kilogram of tobacco sold through Auction Floors.This levy is paid to the Agricultural Research and Extension Trust (ARET), the organisation which provides research and extension services to the tobacco farmers.
(2) Smallholder sugarcane growers who pay a levy for every kilogram of sugar to the Illovo Sugar Malawi.Illovo sugar is a company which grows sugarcane and manufactures sugar in Malawi.It also uses out grower schemes to increase its production in order to satisfy its market demands.
These out grower schemes are organised into smallholder cane growers associations (5) Catholic Relief Services (CRS) has been working with several NGOs which have been promoting and implementing the private service provider (PSP) model.The NGOs recruit and train selected community members and there after they train them and commission them as PSPs to provide extension and advisory services to farming groups such as village savings and loan (VSL) as well as agribusiness groups.The groups pay the PSP for providing services to them and study results show that farmers are very willing to pay for services which result into a financial benefit.
Examples 1, 2 and 3 show how farmers are paying for extension and advisory services through levies, example 5 is showing how farmers are paying for such services through membership fees.The last example is mixed where in some cases, farmers pay through membership fees while in other cases farmers pay an agreed contribution as group to the PSP.Some of these user participation in AEAS financing schemes have resulted in increased production and incomes for farmers.Examples of such include the smallholder coffee farmers of the Mzuzu Coffee Planters Cooperative Union, Smallholder Sugar Producers under DCGL and KCGL as well as the milk producers under SHIMPA, CREMPA and MDIFA.One obvious implication is that, farmers are more likely to participate in extension financing when they are organised and operating in groups.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
From the results of the various studies, implementation of the four guiding principles of the policy have had mixed results in the sixteen years.Table 4 shows the assessment of achievement in terms of the objectives of the study.Decentralisation and coordination have in this table been separated for purposes of clarity in reporting but they are classified as one principle in the policy which has been referred to as decentralised coordination.The table shows that most of the guiding principles have been implemented with limited success.More efforts are required to fully implement them if the benefits of the policy are to be realised.There is potential to increase availability and access as well as to improve the quality of AEAS in Malawi.It is therefore strongly recommended that all the relevant stakeholders including service providers in Malawi be encouraged to put more efforts in implementing these instruments.There is specifically need to: (1) Address the challenge of shortage of field extension workers in the country.One way of addressing this is recruiting school leavers from rural areas and training them on the job.This approach has a lot of potential as shown by the results of the pilot initiative which was done under the SAETS Project.Similar initiatives are already being pursued by government through other donor funded projects.The working and living conditions of extension staff in rural areas need to be improved in order to ensure more staff retention in the rural areas.
(2) The other extension service providers need to be encouraged to recruit their own extension workers to work in rural areas to supplement those provided by government.
(3) Farmers need to be encouraged to organise themselves in various forms of groups in order to empower themselves and have a valued voice.The study has demonstrated that various farmer groups and organisations tend to be more aware of the technology options available and are better able to articulate their demands and service providers tend to listen to them much better when they are organised.The study has also demonstrated that farmers tend to participate in extension financing more easily when they are organised.
Establishment and implementation of DAESS needs to be enhanced.All districts need to establish functional DAESS structures and all AEAS service providers need to use DAESS system in implementing their extension activities.This will help to empower farmers and improve coordination of AEAS activities thereby improving access and quality of extension service provision in the country.
Other technical departments in MoAI&WD provide extension services mostly in collaboration with DAES.These include Department of Land Resources Conservation, Department of Animal Health and Livestock Development, Crops Department, Irrigation Department and Fisheries Department.In addition there are other ministries and departments outside MoAI&WD which provide extension services for promoting their areas of focus which are related to agriculture.They include such ministries like the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism which is implementing an agricultural programme titled "Rural Livelihoods Economic Enhancement Programme (RLEEP)", the Ministry of Natural Resources Management, Ministry of Gender and Social Welfare, Department of Environmental Affairs, Department of Forestry and Department of Nutrition, HIV and AIDS, Green Belt Initiative of the Office of President and Cabinet.

Table 1 .
The Number and Category of Respondents at each Site.
FGD stands for focus group discussions and KII stands for key informant interviews.

Table 2 .
Categories of AEAS Providers Operating in Malawi.
organisations, donor funded projects, international research centres and academic institutions.Table2provides information about the categories of AEAS providers operating in the country as according to a database of members of the Malawi Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (MaFAAS).

Table 3 .
Status of DAESS structures at District Level

Table 4 .
Assessment of achievement of the three objectives.