Comments on ‘Enhancing organizational effectiveness in developing countries: The training and visit system revisited’

This article comments on the above-titled article which appeared in Public Administration and Development (PAD), Vol. 12. It argues that Hulme's article: (i) does not, as it professes to, bring out the organizational impact of the training and visit (T&V) system of extension and, more seriously, does not suggest what improvements are needed to the system, and whether any such improvements have been tried anywhere and with what results; (ii) dismisses the rigorous statistical analysis of the impact of the system by Feder and Slade, and approvingly cites Antholt's methodologically unsustainable comparison between states in India, without giving convincing reasons for this choice; and (iii) ignores the important developments regarding T&V extension in the recent past, and relies on earlier papers on the subject. Some of the recent developments regarding the implementation of T&V in Africa are given in this article, including a summary of recent evaluations done in Kenya and Burkina Faso. The article concludes with an account of the managerial issues posed by T&V.