Background of the Service
The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) was established in 1983 under the Lome Convention between Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and the European Union member states. CTA's tasks are to develop and provide services that improve access to information for agricultural and rural development, and to strengthen the capacity of ACP countries to produce, acquire, exchange and utilize information in these areas.
Within this context, CTA established in 1985 a Question and Answer Service (QAS) to provide information and documentation to ACP partners on demand. An external evaluation of the QAS commissioned by the CTA in 1997 recommended the devolution of the service to appropriate institutions in the ACP countries over a period of 2 to 3 years. As a result, the Centre developed a strategy for the QAS devolution that favours the development of regional QAS taking into account the need to promote regional networking activities, subject orientation and linguistic lines.
CTA commissioned a study in 1999 in Nigeria to make a survey of agricultural institutions that have potential of providing a QAS for Nigeria. According to the recommendation from the study, CTA proposed to work with NAERLS to which NAERLS obliged as a partner in delivering QAS for Nigerian agricultural actors. The formal signing of a contract between NAERLS and CTA in September 2000 marked the start of NAQAS. As at July 2002 NAQAS has received and answered over 500 requests for information.