nent, in line with Millennium Development Goals. The Afri­can Union's (AU) New Partnerships for African Development (NEPAD) has issued a Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) that describes African leaders' collective vision for how this can be achieved. It sets a goal of 6% per annum growth for the sector.
     A key component of the vision calls for improving agri­cultural productivity through enabling and accelerating in­novation. CAADP Pillar IV constitutes NEPAD's strategy for revitalizing, expanding and reforming Africa's agricultural research, technology dissemination and adoption efforts. Currently, chronic shortcomings afflict many of the conti­nent's agricultural productivity programs. This explains the historical underperformance of the sector and the current plight of African farmers. Consultations with agricultural leaders, agricultural professionals, agribusiness and farmers shows substantial agreement that institutional issues such as, capacity weaknesses, insufficient end user and private sector involvement and ineffective farmer support systems persist in most of Africa's agricultural productivity programs and organizations, hampering progress in the sector. These prob­lems are compounded by the fragmented nature of support and by inadequate total investment in agricultural research and technology dissemination and adoption. So, restoring and expanding Africa's agricultural innovation capacities requires radical modifications and changes in human and institutional capacity building (Youdeowei, 2007).
     Despite the enormous challenges facing African agri­culture, there are reasons for optimism. The African Union (AU), in establishing NEPAD  and formulating CAADP, has given its unequivocal political backing for this effort. In setting up the Forum for Agricultural Research in Af­rica (FARA/AU/NEPAD, 2006), Africa has created a way of bringing technical leadership into play.
     The Framework for African Agricultural Productivity (FAAP) brings together the essential ingredients suggested for the evolution of African national agricultural produc­tivity programs. A number of guiding principles have been derived from consultation with Africa's agricultural people and with their development partners. The FAAP indicates how such best practice can be employed to improve the per­formance of agricultural productivity in Africa. Beyond im­proving the performance of individual initiatives, the FAAP also highlights the importance of replicating and expand­ing such programs through increased levels of investment. It also stresses how increased funding must be made avail­able through much less fragmented mechanisms than has been the case in the past. If these efforts are to have their desired effect, the harmonization of Africa's own resources with those of development partners will therefore need to be placed high on the agenda.
     The FAAP has been developed as a tool to help stake­holders come together to bring these political, financial and technical resources to bear in addressing problems and strengthening Africa's capacity for agricultural innovation. The Heads of State and Governments of the African Union (AU) endorsed the FAAP at its Heads of State Summit in Banjul in June/July 2006. Specifically, the AU urges regional economic communities and member states to realign their regional and national research priorities to the FAAP with the support of the FARA.

     The FAAP, in its detailed discussion of the evolution and reform of agricultural institutions and services, has several proposals regarding the future strengthening of extension, research training and education, several of which resonate loudly with the proposals of this section:
•     End-users should be actively engaged in the processes of agricultural research priority setting, planning and work program management;
•     The quality of tertiary agricultural education is critical because it determines the expertise and competencies of scientists, professionals, technicians, teachers and civil service and business leaders in all aspects of agriculture and related industries. It raises their capacities to access knowledge and adapt it to the prevailing circumstance and to generate new knowledge and impart it to others; there is a consensus among recent studies, such as those by the Inter-Academy Council and the Commission for Africa, that urgent action must be taken to restore the quality of graduate and postgraduate education in Africa;
•     Establishment of national agricultural research strate­gies through participatory and multidisciplinary pro­cesses and the endorsement of these at national level through inclusion in the poverty reduction strategies;
•     Breakdown of the institutional and programmatic sepa­ration between universities and NARIs which results in inefficient use of capacity and unproductive competi­tion; and
•     Create synergies among institutions and curricula in education, research and extension.

The FAAP document suggests that international contributions could be in the following principal areas, among others:
•     Bringing best practices, data, knowledge and exper­tise from other regions of the world to bear on African issues;
•     Providing research-based, relevant information and data for training and curricula and course development;
•     Providing   specialized   expertise   in   cutting-edge   sci­ences including biosciences, social sciences and policy analysis;
•     Creating critical mass and building capacity through collaborative research; and
•     Enabling  cross-country   and  cross-continent   replica­tions and comparisons to inform African research and development.

Already then, at this stage, there is an articulated set of mea­sures to which NAE AKST institutions can be enabled to re­spond, not solely through the International Organizations/ Institutes, but also through national and international con-sortia or networks of NAE AKST institutions that could link with similar networks of AKST institutions in other regions or sub regions. One such European Network is NATURA, a network of about 30 European universities and research complexes which have agricultural partnership links with developing countries. In the US, the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC), is similarly placed for appropriate networking.
     It is recommended that initially, development funding could be made available for a number of pilot partnerships