Regional Radio in Tunisia : Linking Indigenous Innovation and Formal Research and Development

Abstract

When the Arid Region Institute (Institut des Régions Arides, IRA) in Médenine, Tunisia, set out to seek the dynamics of IK in marginal rural areas of central and southern Tunisia, it discovered a large number of farmers -both men and women-who were developing their own innovations without the support of formal research and development services. In order to spread information about these innovations and to forge links among farmer innovators, and between these and other researchers and extensionists, the multi-disciplinary research team at IRA organized field visits. However, a much further-reaching mechanism to disseminate and stimulate farmers' ideas and experiments proved to be a weekly radio program on agricultural innovation.