The Africa Rice Center received two awards at the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. Now that’s a mouthful. The conference is taking place in Montpellier, France. One of the awards was for communications, which caught my eye.
The 2009 CGIAR Outstanding Communication Award was presented to Dr Paul Van Mele, AfricaRice Program Leader on Learning and Innovation Systems, for the Rice Rural Learning Initiative based on farmer-to-farmer videos on improved rice production practices.
The videos, combined with mass media, have helped strengthen the capacities of over 600 farmer organizations across Africa, stimulated greater innovation than did conventional farmer training techniques and had tangible impact on the livelihood of rural women.
Here’s a video from the Africa Rice Center website: