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This chapter focuses on indigenous knowledge-informed extension work. It draws on a project in Mali to inform people about how the parasitic 'devil weed' striga reproduces and how to control it, using videos that feature local farmers explaining issues and their experiences. It then follows up on changes that have occurred after people saw the video series, which involved farmers experimenting and modifying their cultivation practices. The ten 'Fighting Striga' videos comprise a set that gives the background biology and ecology to help the farmers understand how control options work and also gives them clues to adapt those options to their local circumstances. The videos use an animation (a technical cartoon) to show how striga seeds germinate and attach themselves to the roots of a cereal crop (or die, if germination is stimulated by a legume, cotton or tobacco crop). An overview and short description of each video is given. All farmers learned from the videos that the battle against striga can only be won when they join forces and apply many technologies together. All of the villages were changed in some ways, either by solving their striga problems, or by changing their organizations, or both. Like farmer field schools, the videos do more than just explain technology. Farmers learn background biological and ecological information, and then use that to conduct their own changes. The main technical changes included: hand pulling of striga; making compost; micro-dosing fertilizer and intercropping with legumes. Organizational changes included: strengthening women's groups; groups adding striga pulling to their repertoire of services and organizing to watch videos.

This paper assesses the climate smart agricultural practices triggered by learning videos on integrated striga management, soil fertility and cost-benefit evaluation practices. Using household head interviews and focus group discussions, this study revealed that farmers have similar perceptions of climate change and related impacts in video-villages and in non-video-villages. However, farmers" observation of climate change and related impacts are influenced by gender; men perceived more climate change and related impacts than women. In non-video villages, few respondents adopted crop rotation, intercropping, crop diversification, improved short-cycle seed varieties and zaï techniques as climate change adaptation strategies. Videos contribute more to the adoption of crop rotation, intercropping and fertiliser application for men than for women. Videos on accounting (managing money) enable more women than men to enhance their cost-benefit evaluation practices for income improvement. During the interviews, women farmers in video-villages were eager to demonstrate their knowledge about cost-benefit evaluation. We also found that the yield of sorghum, millet and maize is higher in video-villages than in non-video-villages. Thus, using videos as an extension tool is suitable for knowledge development and leads to the high adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices for food security.

Agricultural advisory, a learning and decision-making approach, is an important part of the agricultural policies in Sub-saharan Africa. This study aims to analyse the agricultural advisory service provided by comparing the organizational framework and implementation strategies with the realities observed in practice. Using simple random sampling method, 6 groups of 30 farmers from 6 different villages and 30 agricultural advisers were selected in the south of Benin, “Atlantique” department. Data were collected through focus group discussion and semi-structured interviews. Data were analysed using an analytical framework integrating the institutional and social environment as well as the various modalities used for the provision of agricultural advice. Results highlighted four main categories of factors limiting farmers’ access to agricultural advisory service: (i) agricultural advisory service-oriented towards large farms; (ii) individualized and overly specialized advice; (iii) limited number and unskilled agricultural advisers; and (iv) a “gendarme” monitoring and evaluation system little oriented towards the quality of the advice. This critical analysis of the implementation of the agricultural advice service offers some guidelines for strengthening agricultural innovation systems.