Our Mission Statement

The mission of ANAFE is to improve the quality, relevance and application of agricultural education in Africa.

Our Vision

A vibrant network leading in agricultural education for development.

Our History

In the late eighties, African colleges and universities teaching Agriculture and Natural Resource sciences realized that there were policy and institutional barriers to the establishment of Agroforestry education.

There were challenges relating to where within the academic programmes and how such an integrated programme could be introduced and managed.

Following a series of education workshops supported by ICRAF, the colleges and universities agreed to establish a network to facilitate an effective exchange of ideas, and share experiences on the teaching of integrated agricultural programmes. The idea was developed into a project proposal, which was funded by Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) beginning in May 1992.

ANAFE was launched at a meeting held at ICRAF headquarters, 19-21 April 1993. The launching meeting was attended by 17 universities and 12 technical colleges teaching land-use disciplines in Sub Saharan Africa. At the launching workshop, members defined the objectives, priority activities and procedures for establishing and managing the network. The network is hosted at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Nairobi, Kenya.

The overall objective of ANAFE at that time was to promote the incorporate Agroforestry into agricultural programmes. Agroforestry, an integrating approach to farming and natural resources management was then not well understood and did not have natural niches in academic programmes. With time, more Colleges and Universities picked up Agroforestry, but e new problem emerged – many new areas of scientific and technological development such as biosciences, climate change and management of agriculture environmental services were emerging as important as well. With pressure from society to achieve more through agriculture and natural resource management in Africa, ANAFE had to expand its mandate.

At the fourth General Meeting in April 2003, members of ANAFE recognized the need to reform all agricultural and natural resources education programs to make them responsive to development needs. This would require among others, education policy changes, strengthening the content and delivery of education programmes, establishing nurturing linkages among education, research and extension and building a culture of sharing information and expertise among educational programmes and training institutions. ANAFE launched a new programme dubbed ‘Improving agriculture and natural resources education in Africa – a stitch in time’

The new goal of ANAFE is to improve in a sustainable manner the contribution of agricultural education to social and economic development of the African peoples.

Our Objectives

The goal of ANAFE is to improve in a sustainable manner the contribution of agricultural education to social and economic development of the African peoples. This will be achieved by implementing the following objectives:

1. To facilitate/guide the transformation of land use education programmes as well as the teaching and learning processes into more integrative and effective approaches for solving real development problems
2. To strengthen the capacity of institutions of learning involved in land use sciences and technology in Africa and develop mechanisms that enhance and sustain collaboration among them and with other stakeholders
3. To enhance the understanding and application of working principles and practices that promote synergy among experts in all branches of land use and facilitate better reach to stakeholders
4. To put into place effective mechanisms for participatory monitoring and evaluating Africa’s agricultural capacity and to develop and implement responsive strategies

The process used by ANAFE is to institutionalize integrated education programmes in Agroforestry, Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Natural Resources at African colleges and universities. This will enable the member institutions to produce graduates that are capable of developing, disseminating and implementing agricultural practices suitable for African farmers and solving natural resource management problems in a holistic manner for human development and for conserving the environment. Therefore, the specific objectives of ANAFE are:

• To strengthen the content and delivery of tertiary education in Agroforestry, Agriculture and Natural Resource sciences
• To establish and nurture linkages among education, research and extension in order to maintain relevance of their education programmes
• To build a culture of sharing information and expertise among educational and training institutions in Africa, and promote links with global partner