(Kinshasa, DR Congo) Korea Institute for Development Strategy (KDS) and the Research and Communication Center for Sustainable Development (Centre de Recherche et de communication en Development Durable: CERED) of Loyola University, held a opening ceremony of the 1st Outsourcing Training of Trainers (ToT) on 27th November 2017 as a part of the Project entitled “Capacity Development of National Agricultural Extension Center in DR Congo”, which is funded by a bilateral grant from the Republic of Korea through the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA). The KOICA Country Director Se Chul OH, the National Coordinator of National Extension Service (SNV) Ignatius GUKA GANGALE, the Coordinator of CERED Ghislain TSHIKENDWA MATADI, and other honored guests as well as 30 training participants have attended this ceremony.
This ToT program is the 1st training program of the project and the Korea experts and PIU members (local experts) have formulated 5 different modules (Understanding of Agricultural Extension, Marketing, Food crops, Horticulture and Livestock) which are based on the curriculum that has been developed by the curriculum specialist. The CERED who has been selected as the training implementing agency through a local bidding process, will operate the 1st ToT program for three weeks with excellent faculty members and highly experienced administrative staffs. The training participants are composed of 30 government officials from 13 different directions and organizations such as National Extension Service (SNV), National Peri-urban Horticulture Service (SENAHUP), Veterinary Laboratory of Kinshasa and etc. which belongs to the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Rural Development,
Beginning with this training program, one expects more outsourcing Training of Trainers (ToT) program and Training of Leaders (ToL). There will be 3 times of training in 2018 and 4 in 2019, and again the training will be executed in partnership with local training institutes. The results of outsourcing training programs will be utilized as a valuable reference for developing final curriculum and textbooks for the National Agricultural Extension Center (NAEC), which is planned to be established during the project implementation period.
*** KDS, in consortium with World Canaan Farmers’ Movement (WCM) implements this project for 54 months from 2017, under cooperation with Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI) in DRC in order to increase the agricultural productivity of Congolese farmers through an establishment of improved agricultural extension system in DRC. The project is composed of 1) Construction and rehabilitation of National Agricultural Extension Center (NAEC) for Training of Trainers (ToT) and Training of Leaders (ToL), 2) Development of curriculum and textbooks, 3) Consulting on improved national agricultural extension system and consulting on legislation of NAEC, 4) Establishment of the center operation plan and its capacity building, and 5) ToT, ToL and technology dissemination projects.
