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Keywords:Sustainability, core values, integrated,commitment, youth, practicalChapter 15Sustainable agriculture and rural development– a response to the realities of rural AfricaTony Dolan, Baraka Agricultural College, KenyaAbstractOne of the main challenges for African agricultural education, training and extension is to devise systemsthat will give smallholders and pastoralists the hope, self-confidence, knowledge and skills theyneed to play a central role in the development process. In most African countries, agriculture is themajor source of livelihoods, and current standards of agricultural training must be improved if we are toachieve the goal of sustainable development. Many systems have been tried, from the ‘bwana shamba’(government extension agent) in each village, to the World Bank’s ‘training and visit’ system. All havemet with only limited success. Baraka Agricultural College is a small private institution, owned by theCatholic Diocese of Nakuru. Our mission is to promote sustainable agriculture and rural development(SARD) in eastern Africa through dialogue, participatory education, training, research and extension.Agroforestry is one of the non-negotiable programmes for sustainable agriculture and Baraka is anardent promoter of the practice. Bottom-up development is the approach, and the aim is to promotedevelopment through participatory action research. Collaboration and partnership are the two fundamentalvalues underpinning the work of the College. Baraka’s experience has shown that the SARDstrategy works. We believe that it should be adopted as a tool for rural development throughout Africa.IntroductionBaraka Agricultural College is a small private institutionsituated in the highlands of Kenya, 7 km from Molotown. Owned by the Catholic Diocese of Nakuru, theCollege is managed by Franciscan Brothers. The collegewas established in 1974 to respond to the educationand training needs of the newly settled farmers of RiftValley Province. Initially, these needs were met byproviding short courses in close collaboration with theMinistries of Agriculture and Livestock. However, theproblems of running an institution on short coursesalone soon became apparent. It proved difficult tocreate a learning atmosphere and maintain staff motivationbecause of a lack of continuity in attendanceof course participants. To solve this problem, we introduceda 1-year course in general agriculture aimedat school leavers entering farming. The curriculum forthe new course was derived mainly from Europeanagricultural colleges, with the emphasis being on highexternal input/high output agriculture.By the mid-1980s, it had become clear that the collegecurriculum was not supporting the needs of increasingnumbers of smallholder farmers. An international workshopon sustainable agriculture was held at the collegein 1986, and this proved to be a turning point in theBaraka approach. After this, we focused on refiningthe concept of sustainable agriculture and develop-