Rice is the third most important crop in Niger and showsthe most rapidly increasing consumption. Rice importsgrew from 40,000 t in 1995 to 210,000 t in 2005 at a costof US$ 71.4 million in a country where nearly 60% of thepopulation lives below the poverty line [1,2]. Rice is produced mainly in the region of Tillabéry (75% national production) where about 1/7 of Niger’ s population live [3,4].With 100,000 ha of arable and irrigable lands, this regionof Tillabéry has nearly 50% of the country’ s irrigable land.There are 29 irrigated rice schemes (with double cropping each year) that cover 7,432 ha (85.3% of the nationalirrigated schemes) in Tillabéry. The average rice grain yield in this agrosystem is 3.5 to 4.5 t ha−1[5,6]. This intensive system, under the control of local farmer unions andsupervised by the Office National des Aménagements Hydro-Agricoles (ONAHA), currently produces 30,000 to
35,000 t year−1. Private irrigated systems with individual
water pumps are also found in this area. The irrigated ecosystems are planted only with improved Asia-type (Oryzasativa) cultivars. The traditional rice growing in the Tillabéry region accounts for about 62.13% of lowland rice production.
The Sustainable Opportunities for Increasing Livelihoods with Soils (SOILS) Consortium led by the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) intends to establish a technology park in Niger. The park will function as information and training service center and project agricultural information and innovations to accelerate dissemination and scaling efforts, provide training to farmers and other agricultural value chain actors. The SOILS Consortium in collaboration with the Feed the Future Developing Local Extension Capacity (DLEC) project conducted this study to analyze the digital agricultural extension and advisory services in Niger to support creation of the technology park and to provide insights and recommendations on how the SOILS Consortium can better use digital extension platforms and services to increase the reach of their activities.