percent in Côte d’Ivoire and Niger to over 60 percent in Lesotho, Mozambique, and Sierra Leone (FAO 2011). Although women’s school enrollment rates have increased over time in SSA, the lower number of females relative to males in school reflects both fewer female entrants and a higher dropout rate among women. Petesch and Caillava’s survey (2012) found that both sexes most often reported that economic difficulties prevented them from continuing their schooling, but early marriage and pregnancy were also common barriers preventing young women from completing their education. There is widespread recognition of the need to improve both basic education and agricultural vocational education for women and to enhance rural women’s access to extension services.

_Agricultural vocational education._ A growing and diversifying agricultural sector creates employment opportunities in addition to those in primary production, and these will have a place in three of the four pathways. Already existing agricultural vocational schools can play a very constructive role in training skilled personnel for jobs in processing, marketing, machinery operation and repair, transport, logistics, and quality control. The number and quality of trained technical and professional personnel in agriculture is a critical factor in agricultural development, since a sector undergoing structural transformation has an expanding need for skills. In addition to gaining technical skills, workers need to master teamwork, communication, diligence, creativity, and entrepreneurship. In many cases, these behavioral “soft skills” are learned through mentoring and through the standards of performance set in the formal workplace. As formal employment in off-farm agricultural activities increases, behavioral norms within a larger cohort of young people will be affected.

Empowering young people with the skills they will need to thrive in agriculture requires investment in educational institutions at all levels. Institutional infrastructure for agricultural higher education and training has been in place in SSA since the 1960s and has strengthened over time, but not sufficiently to meet the enormous demands evident now. The sub-continent now has more than 200 public universities (compared with 20 in 1960), about 100 of which teach agriculture and natural resource management. In addition, private universities are appearing to complement this public capacity (World Bank 2007b). Much stronger national and regional institutions are needed to train future professionals and leaders with appropriate technical and functional skills.

As with basic education, women face special challenges when they seek higher technical training. Few women graduate from agricultural education programs, there are not many female agricultural extension workers, and women are often marginalized during agricultural events, activities, and programs, although detailed gender-disaggregated data are available only very sporadically or not reported at all (World Bank 2009). Efforts have been launched to give stronger recognition to the role of women in agriculture, to increase the number of female students in agricultural schools and colleges, and to provide resources for extension services directed to women farmers. An innovative program in this regard was launched in 2008 by the Gender and Diversity Program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The African Women in Agricultural Research and Development program (AWARD) seeks to strengthen the research and leadership skills of African women in agricultural science, empowering them to contribute more effectively by establishing mentoring partnerships, building science skills, and developing leadership capacity.

_Agricultural extension_ . Agricultural extension arose to address the informational needs of farmers in a wide array of settings around the world. The needs then were quite similar to those 32