Date

2025/8/21 (Thu)16:00-17:50（JST）

Field

SHEP

Venue / Event Format

InterContinental / Hybrid (In-person and Online)

Co-Host

IFAD

Background

Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment & Promotion (SHEP) Approach is a unique agricultural extension tool which realizes Market-Oriented Agriculture. The SHEP approach transforms farmers’ mindset from "grow and sell" to "grow to sell," which leads them to achieve income improvements on their own through supporting their technical and marketing competences. This approach originally emerged through a technical cooperation project between Kenya and JICA which started in 2006 and succeeded in doubling the income of 2,500 smallholders in just two years.
In August 2019, JICA and IFAD jointly organized an event on the SHEP approach during the Seventh Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD 7). A joint declaration for achieving ‘better lives of one million smallholder farmers through the SHEP approach was made in this event by representatives of Governments, development partners, private companies and relevant organizations to commit to support smallholder farmers to do farming as a business. To promote the SHEP approach for agricultural extension services, further collaboration with various organizations has been initiated. And now, the SHEP approach is being applied not only in Africa, but also in other regions such as Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Key Questions

• What is innovative agricultural extension?
• How can we effectively support smallholder farmers?

Objective

• Sharing the status of the SHEP approach collaborating with development partners and private companies to achieve the Joint Declaration
• Sharing experiences of SHEP implementation in Africa and Caribbean.
• Findings from World Bank studies utilizing their evaluation method “SWIFT ” on monitoring development impact of the SHEP approach.

Speakers