Foo wrote:
> Having an expatriate farm manager can have many advantages. Lylian,
> you are an expatriate yourself and working in Cambodia, you probably
> have realised that it can help, especially at executing jobs/tasks. As
> you may have heard this before, "you cant be a prophet in your own
> country". There are of course also advantages for the locals to have
>an expatriate manager. Many of the reasons may also apply for jobs
>in industry too.

An expatriate manager can be justified in terms of "return on cost". As the
outputs of a university demonstration farm are not only physical products for
sale, but teaching functions, a monetary value needs to be placed on the
teaching functions. There are now enough private sector agricultural
training/extension companies operating in many developing countries,
particularly in the plantation sector, to provide some sort of benchmark as to
what training/extension services are worth in the marketplace.

Of course fluency in local language and custom is critical to success.
Likewise a broad experience in technical, personnel management, finance and
administration, marketing, sales, extension delivery, and quality assurance
disciplines is needed, as well as a strong work ethic. In Indonesia, such a
local candidate is not common, and given that salaries for such a person are up
to ten times higher in private sector operations than universities, it is very
hard to recruit them. If they are successfully recruited, they soon tire of
University politics and leave. There are problems with using an expatriate
manager in that many will stay for three to five years and move on, and the
momentum established by their presence is not necessarily continued by their
successor.

Can I be so bold as to make a suggestion to our colleagues in Nigeria? Provide
the farm land on free lease to a suitable private agricultural company with a
good track record, be it a local company or a foreign one.  As part of the
conditions of the lease, require certain training and extension functions from
the tenant, to be performed to a certain standard.  Make your university's
laboratory facilities available to the venture, and charge a commercial fee for
this use. Make your experienced local academics available for consultancy at an
agreed charge, so that the private company can benefit from your in-house
expertise and the university can develop some revenue and experience in
consultancy from the exercise. Research and development can be a sideline
activity, and can be driven by the private company, in consultation with your
faculty; they will have a very good idea of what research is of importance to
commercial producers and what is esoteric, and can guide your faculty in making
sound research resource allocation decisions.

A private company, in addition to their own capital, can source capital in the
form of grants from international aid agencies and private benevolent
foundations to finance certain training activities, often on a dollar-for
dollar retrospective basis. There are some benefits for them being involved in
this arrangement, provided that the University does not become too intrusive in
their commercial operations and allows the project to grow, with guidance
rather than interference. Corruption and greed will kill such an initiative
dead in the blink of an eye.

Indonesia is littered with the corpses of demonstration farms financed by
international donor agencies, run by experienced and skilled foreigners with
capable senior local officers, and then dying once the foreigners go home,
largely due to the Indonesian government's unwillingness to finance ongoing
operations. In my opinion, involvement of private sector participants, not as
donors,  but as the driving force behind such projects, is imperative for long
term survival of demonstration farms and associated extension programs.

The model I am suggesting may or may not be valid in Nigeria, due to local and
university politics, but I hope my thoughts can stimulate discussion.

Best wishes,
Simon Appleby