African Agric Scientists meet in Bamako (October 6, 2009)

ABOUT 300 agricultural scientists, entrepreneurs, farmers’ organisations and governments from across the African continent are meeting in Bamako, Mali, to accelerate a major new effort to develop and deploy higher yielding, as well as drought and disease resistant, varieties of Africa’s most important food crops.
This is happening at a time when failing harvests are once again threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions of people across the continent, especially in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, The Sudan and Uganda.
The meeting has brought together a wide range of experts from 20 African countries, including Ghana, who collectively form the core of the Programme for Africa’s Seeds System (PASS), a $150-million initiative launched two years ago by the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
The initiative is to bring improved varieties of rice, maize, millet, sorghum and other staple foods to millions of Africa’s small-scale farmers.
At the opening of the five-day conference in Bamako on Monday, the Malian Minister of Agriculture, Mr Moussa Leo Sidibe, said the struggle to achieve a green revolution in Africa which had begun must be won so that the people on the continent would get food to eat and reduce poverty.
He said the objective could be achieved if researchers, farmers, as well as other stakeholders in the agricultural sector, collaborated to improve their farming methods, adding that the use of fertilisers and pesticides should be adopted by farmers on the continent if they expected to increase their yields.
At a press conference, the minister said the government of Mali had adopted a national plan of action to increase the country’s current cereal production of five million tonnes per year to 10 million tonnes by 2012.
He explained that the objective would be achieved through subsidies on agricultural inputs, the expansion of irrigation sites, increase in the number of out-growers, reliance on research findings and mechanisation.
He called for a strong public/private partnership to enable the continent to succeed in its Green Revolution agenda, as had happened in Asia and Latin America.
Mr Sidibe was optimistic that the Malian government’s objective could be achieved because of the fact that there were already signs to that effect. He pointed out that many farmers who previously cultivated about 30 square kilometres of rice between two and 10 years ago were currently cultivating 80 square kilometres.
For his part, the President of AGRA, Dr Namanga Ngongi, said “without viable, sustainable systems that provide our farmers with high-yielding and disease and drought-resistant varieties, Africa will continue to suffer from food shortages”.
He took the opportunity to urge African leaders to lend their support to the Green Revolution in Africa, just like the chairman of the board of the alliance, Mr Kofi Annan, to ensure that African people had enough to eat.
Dr Ngongi, a Camerounian and former Deputy Director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), expressed the hope that AGRA would learn new lessons from the conference and challenged the participants to come up with workable suggestions which farmers in Africa were likely to accept and adopt.
Messages were delivered by representatives of the two main organisations which sponsor AGRA’s projects, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Earlier in the day, a broad coalition of public and private sector organisations had announced a new partnership committed to raising the yields and incomes of smallholder farmers in West Africa by increasing their access to improved locally adapted varieties of major food crops.
The partnership, which is among AGRA, PASS, the African Seed Trade Association (AFSTA), ECOWAS and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), established the West Africa Seed Alliance (WASA).
As part of the programme, the partners signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to reinforce their objective of promoting a sustainable commercial seed industry focused on ensuring that small-scale farmers in West Africa had affordable, timely and reliable access to good quality seeds and planting materials.
At the signing ceremony, the Senior Agricultural Advisor of USAID for West Africa, Dr Robert Kagbo, said it was no coincidence that the most successful agricultural enterprises came about mostly through effective public/private sector partnership.
For his part, the Director of PASS, Dr Joe Devries, pointed out that “the livelihoods of small-holder farmers in West Africa are directly linked to modernised agriculture” which must be encouraged.
AGRA is working in Africa to help millions of small-scale farmers to lift themselves up from poverty and hunger.
With former UN Secretary General Mr Kofi Annan as Chairman of the board, AGRA advocates policies that support its work in all the key areas of the African value chain, which is from seeds, soils and water to markets and agricultural education.