Determinants of functionality level of farmers training centers in north-west Ethiopia

Abstract

The Ethiopian agricultural extension system is highly dependent on Farmers/Pastoralists Training Centers (F/PTCs), hereinafter training centers simply. These training centers are established at Kebele level mainly to provide advisory, information, demonstration, and training services to farmers and pastoralists. Nationally, the training centers are categorized into four levels based on their functionality level. The purpose of this study is to assess the determinants of the training centers' level of functionality in North-West Ethiopia. A cross-sectional data were collected from April to June 2020 from 44 training centers. The quantitative data were collected through a survey questionnaire filled by heads of the training centers. The qualitative data were also collected by interviewing key informants, such as Woreda and Kebele level extension workers. The ordered (adjacent-category) logistic model was employed to analyze the determinants of the training centers’ level of functionality. Working experience of development agents (DAs), annual internal revenue, availability of water, and linkage with local cooperatives were found to be significant factors affecting the functionality level of FTCs. Thus, arranging experience sharing platforms among development agents, enabling the training centers to generate their revenue, exploit available water sources, and create strong linkages with locally available cooperatives are suggested to make the low performing training centers at equal footing with the higher performing ones. This study contributes to the literature on what determines the functionality level of FTCs in Ethiopia. It has also a methodological contribution by applying the adjacent-category econometric model which is a rarely used variant of the ordered logistic regression model for ordinal response variables.