From small towns to big cities, sub-Saharan Africa has the fastest urban growth rate in the world. The continent’s population is expected to double by 2050 with the youth representing 60% of the overall population.

The UN Department of Global Communication, for example, projects that for the next 15 years urban growth is set to double for several African cities: Dar es Salaam will reach over 13 million inhabitants and Kampala will exceed seven million.

Nteranya Sanginga

Rural exodus in African cities is often linked to a search for greener pastures—which creates challenges such as high unemployment rates, low income, food insecurity, and persistent poverty. There is therefore a need to respond to the needs of the growing population in a sustainable manner. Tackling unemployment is thus a crucial step towards addressing these needs—especially in the current COVID-1 context.

Engaging the youth in agribusiness

The youth, despite representing the majority of the population, still feel marginalized from the economic mainstream. Their expectations are suffocated by market demands and limited opportunities. Higher education is growing faster than the economies, the job market is saturated, and skill shortage and lack of exposure to technology remain a constraint for African youth to integrate a career track. Some of those unable to find white-collar employment return demoralized to their rural homes or take up menial jobs, or worse, remain unemployed.

There is a need for a systemic change that targets Africa’s youth. Similarly, there is a need for an economic model that is youth-friendly at all levels. Such a model will potentially create a niche market that will cater for graduates, early-career takers, and to some extent non-school educated youth that remain vulnerable to political manipulation. A sustainable development agenda can only be fully realized if youths are mobilized, incentivized, energized, and equipped for transformation.

Writing on the status of youth in agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, David Sarfo Ameyaw and Eugenie Maiga note that rapid economic growth over the past 15 years has not been ‘pro-poor’, occurring primarily in sectors generating relatively few employment opportunities for youth.

Aline Mugisho

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) has invested several efforts to expose the population at large and the youth in particular to the advantages of agriculture through its various programs. For instance, IITA has, for the past 8 years invested in empowering youth as actors in agriculture through training, research, employment, and entrepreneurship. This approach does not only create employment for the youth but prepares them to create employment themselves. IITA is driving the creation of youth programs that will play their role in transforming agriculture to provide Africa with a food secure future.

Agriculture employs over 60 percent of the working population in sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa, and contributes about 30 percent of gross domestic product in most countries. Yet evidence in this area indicates that youth’s contribution to this sector remains marginal.

As Elizabeth Ssendiwala and Akinyi Nzioki write in Youth and Agricultural Productivity, agriculture has to be profitable, competitive, and dynamic to attract youth. Youth tend to perceive farming as an occupation for the aged, illiterate, and for people living in rural areas—which sustains the negative perception about agriculture. There is a need to create an enabling environment that on the one hand demystifies agriculture and on the other hand links it to technological evolution for it to be appealing to modern youth.

Youth do not want to practice agriculture the way their fathers and mothers did, but rather in a modern way, with an appropriate image that speaks to their aspirations as natives of the digital age.

Governor Seyi Makinde. Credit: The Business Day_Businessday.com

Authors of a study of perceptions of agriculture among secondary school students in three African countries suggest that courses must better cast agriculture as an economic frontier and modern farmers as pioneers rather than forgotten victims of poverty. Greater reliance upon electronic instructional tools and digital agriculture is required to stimulate students’ interests, with practicals based upon solid agribusiness models and learning experience offered in proven enterprises.

Another important aspect of youth growth is linked to Transforming livelihoods through agribusiness development–that is more likely to have success with young people. The agribusiness model enhances employment creation, social equity and inclusion, and considers the sustainability of the agrifood system as reliant on the youth. It is important to note that smallholder farmers with less than two hectares of land represent 80% of all farmers and contribute the bulk of food production in some countries. Many are women whose contribution often go unnoticed.

Agribusiness-driven studies emphasize the need for a well-developed business infrastructure, including markets, incubation, business networks, and policies within a global and regional framework favoring youth and women-led agribusinesses in local and regional trade.

Youth initiatives in agribusiness

The Youth in Agribusiness initiatives of IITA such as the IITA Youth Agripreneurs (IYA), Empowering Novel Agri-Business-Led Employment (ENABLE)-Youth, ENABLE-TAAT (Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation), Young Africa Works-IITA Project, Youth Employment in Agribusiness and Sustainable Agriculture (YEASA), Agrihub, and Start Them Early Program (STEP) are tangible proofs of the significant role youths play in the agricultural sector. For the past few years, these programs have created a platform encouraging the participation and engagement of young school children and unemployed or underemployed youth in agribusiness.

These investments in Africa’s younger generation highlight the importance of raising the ambition of primary and secondary school students to guarantee a food- and nutrition-secure continent. This is also important in developing young female leaders in agriculture so that their acquired leadership skills will enable them to help lead the COVID-19 response and recovery efforts.

IITA and partner organizations such as the African Development Bank (AfDB), Mastercard Foundation, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and Oyo State Government, believe that poverty, hunger, and malnutrition in Africa cannot be addressed without involving women and young farmers. The youth and gender-friendly initiatives take into consideration constraints faced by women and young farmers—who in most communities provide most of the agricultural labor and are actively involved in subsistence as well commercial agriculture.

IITA will continue to significantly implement projects that respond to the needs of youth and women to develop effective agribusiness policies that give young people in sub-Saharan Africa the structure and inspiration to help them fulfil their ambitions.

Agriculture remains the only way to ensure food security and sustainable development and the primary employment growth sector for most of sub-Saharan Africa. The public and private sectors need to create viable partnerships. The dramatic growth in the region’s urban areas projected over the next decades makes it even more crucial to involve the youth and women for them to evolve as new entrepreneurs, researchers, employers, and suppliers. Africa’s young women and men are a huge asset to the continent and have the ability to create circular food markets and systems that will respond to the current socioeconomic crisis faced by the continent. The creation of a space for growth and an enabling environment at all levels is crucial to this growth.

Finally, the youth and women will need the support of society at large as consumers and active contributors to their growth. It is important to encourage local consumption of food products to sustain youth-created businesses. This is the only way to a circular economy that is key to Africa’s development.

Nteranya Sanginga, Director General, IITA; Aline Mugisho, Executive Manager, Young Africa Works; and Seyi Makinde, Governor, Oyo State, Nigeria

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The rural-urban migration of youth household members is leading to loss of labour for agricultural production which was not compensated by hired labour. Courtesy: Charles Mpaka

By Charles Mpaka
CHIRADZULU DISTRICT/BLANTYRE, Malawi, Aug 12 2020 (IPS)

As households in Chiradzulu District in Southern Malawi start preparing their farms for the next maize growing season, Frederick Yohane, 24, is a busy young man.

Every morning, he works with his two brothers in their family field where they grow maize and pigeon peas. In the afternoon, he tills other people’s farms to raise money for his needs and to support his family.

Twice a week he cycles to nearby markets to sell the chickens that he buys from surrounding villages.

This has been his life since he was 16 when his father suffered a stroke, which paralysed his left leg and arm. Yohane finished secondary school in 2014, two years after his father fell ill. But he did not pass the final examinations.

Without a school-leaving certificate, he followed the route of many youths in this rural district who trek to Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial capital, to look for menial jobs, mainly as assistants in Asian shops or as street vendors.

“Through a friend, I found work in a hardware shop owned by an Indian. But the money was not good compared with what I was getting in the village. So, I just worked for two months and I returned to the village,” he tells IPS.

Yohane is not planning to return to town again to look for a job. He believes he can make more money in the village if he works harder.

“Besides, I am the eldest child. My father can no longer work. My mother spends much of her time looking after our father. It’s the three of us working in the field,” he says.

Yohane’s family is one of the millions in Malawi which relies on family labour for their farms.  The Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) says in its Small Family Farms Country Factsheet for Malawi that farmers account for 80 percent of the total population of 17.5 million in Malawi. Out of that population of farmers, around 75 percent are small family farms that depend on family labour.

However, like the rest of Africa, Malawi suffers a high rate of rural-urban migration, mostly by youths seeking a better life in towns.

When youths, who make up the majority of Malawi’s population, migrate to urban centres, the productivity of family labour farms declines, according to findings of a study commissioned by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Malawi in 2018 under its Enhancing Capacity to Apply Research Evidence (CARE) in Policy for Youth Engagement in Agribusiness and Rural Economic Activities in Africa.

Under the CARE programme, IITA is working with young researchers across Africa to promote understanding of the impact of poverty reduction and employment and factors that influence youth engagement in agribusiness and rural farm and non-farm economy, Timilehin Osunde, communications officer for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)-CARE Project at the IITA in Nigeria, tells IPS.

In the Malawi CARE study, researcher Emmanuel Tolani interviewed households in two districts of Zomba and Lilongwe. Both districts are known for their high production of maize, Malawi’s staple crop.

The CARE study focused on households where youth had migrated to urban centres in comparison with those where youths had not moved.                  

In a resulting Policy Brief titled “Youth on the Move: Welfare effects on originating households”, the research found that households, which have youths migrating to urban centres, were each producing 13 50-kilogramme bags less than they could harvest if the youth did not move out.

“This can be [attributed] to the fact that migration of youth household members was leading to loss of labour for agricultural production which was not compensated by hired labour using the remittances received,” reads the brief.

In the brief, Tolani recommends the introduction of income-generating activities among rural households to reduce the need for households to look for other means of diversifying their incomes, such as encouraging the migration of youths.

IITA’s Osunde adds that the lack of an environment suitable for agribusiness, the search for educational opportunities and access to services and resources are among the factors for the trend of rural youths leaving their homes for urban centres in Africa.

Over the years, Malawi has designed and implemented programmes aimed at improving social and economic conditions of rural areas, which could reduce rural-urban migration in Malawi.

However, rural-urban migration has not abated. Malawi’s National Planning Commission attributes this to what it says are “policy implementation inconsistencies across political regimes”.

This argument has featured highly in development discourse in Malawi such that it motivated the establishment of the National Planning Commission. Established through an Act of Parliament in 2017, the Commission’s mandate is to ensure continuity of development policies across political administrations.

On the other hand, Osunde observes that a lot of rural development programmes in Africa have failed because they are designed by policy makers without the input of the rural youth.

“These are often implemented with an up-bottom approach instead of using a bottom-up approach,” Osunde tells IPS.

To support African governments in stemming the tide of youth rural-urban migration, IITA is implementing a number of agriculture-specific programmes, besides CARE.

For instance, the Start Them Early Programme (STEP) aims at changing the mindset of young people in primary and secondary schools by providing them with basic understanding in agriculture to direct them toward agriculture-related careers, says Osunde.

IITA is also implementing Enable Youth project. This provides opportunities for underemployed young people, motivating them to establish agricultural enterprises and improve their agribusiness skills.

“[The programme] helps to create a conducive business environment by advancing youth-led policies and provides a communication network that delivers much-needed agricultural information to other youths involved in agribusiness,” Osunde says. 

In addition, the IITA Youth Agripreneurs aims to change perceptions of youths in Africa about agriculture and see that agriculture can be exciting and economically rewarding.

“With agriculture in Africa largely suffering from negative perceptions amongst youths due to the drudgery involved, insufficient financial gains and a dearth in basic infrastructure, the youth programme being implemented by IITA is aimed at changing the perception among youths in Africa while creating resources that can enable them start out as agripreneurs on the continent. These are agriculture-specific programmes that Malawi can adopt to attract youths into agribusiness,” Osunde tells IPS.

Director General for the National Planning Commission, Dr Thomas Munthali, says they are currently mapping the country into potential investment zones with bankable investment projects which, among others, could lead to the reduction of youth migration.

“The idea is to create secondary cities in such zones based on their arable land, mining and tourism potential. These will be created into industrial hubs offering sustainable decent jobs and socio-economic amenities just like in cities,” says Munthali.

As rural youths in Malawi wait for such programmes, Yohane has already decided to stay in the village. And he is dreaming big.

“We harvest enough maize for our food. But we need to make money. So we are planning to rent another piece of land this year where we can grow more maize for sale. We won’t need hired labour. In future, we want to see if we can buy more land on which we can do serious commercial farming,” he says. 

By Aslihan Arslan and Zoumana Bamba
Jun 29 2020 (IPS)

Warnings at the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic that Africa could be hit by a wave of up to 10 million cases within six months thankfully now seem unfounded, although it is still far too early to be over-confident.

The World Health Organization said on May 22 that the virus appears to be “taking a different pathway” on the continent, with a lower mortality rate and a slower rise in cases than other regions. However, three weeks later WHO warned that the pandemic in Africa was accelerating and noted that it took 98 days to reach 100,000 cases and only 19 days to move to 200,000 cases.

Aslihan Arslan

While we must avoid the pitfalls of complacency and trusting sometimes questionable statistics caused in part by a lack of testing, the emerging danger now is that the life and death consequences of the economic fallout from the pandemic will be far more severe than the virus itself.

The African continent is on the verge of sinking into its first recession in 25 years.

Sub-Saharan Africa and India are projected by World Bank analysts to be the two regions hit hardest globally in economic terms. Latest projections estimate that 26-39 million more people, many of them subsistence farmers, will be pushed into extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa this year.

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, who reacted quickly to impose his country’s lockdown, has warned that some African economies could take “a generation or more” to recover without coordinated intervention.

Agricultural value chains have been badly affected by the impact of lockdowns, and not just food crops are affected. Kenya’s flower industry, for example, has been hit by the closure of markets in developed countries. More than 70,000 farmers have been laid off and it is reported that 50 tons of flowers have had to be dumped each day.

Zoumana Bamba

In the near term all this amounts to the twin threat of reduced incomes and serious food shortages, given that households buy around 50 percent of their food even in rural Africa, caused directly or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. On top of this, devastating swarms of desert locusts in East Africa—the worst outbreak in Kenya in 70 years—combined with a year of drought and flooding have put millions of people in that region at risk of hunger and famine.

This most immediate of dangers to Africa’s food security is compounded by the longer-term trends of the fastest population and urban growth rates in the world. Africa’s urban population is projected to nearly triple between 2018 and 2050.

The United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is working with governments and civil society to provide young people with the skills and opportunities they need and to create jobs in the agri-food system in order to safeguard food security, alleviate poverty, and contribute to social and political stability. The challenges are enormous and diverse.

IFAD is increasingly focusing its resources on young people as a priority, as successful rural transformation hinges on their inclusion in the process. It is partnering with the nonprofit International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), and is a key funder of a three-year project in sub-Saharan Africa which provides 80 fellowships for young Africans pursuing a master’s or doctoral degree with the focus on research in promoting youth engagement in agriculture.

Known as CARE – Enhancing Capacity to Apply Research Evidence – the program combines mentoring with training in methodology, data analysis, and scientific writing with a view to produce research evidence and recommendations for policymakers. Young and authoritative voices are being brought to the table, increasing youth representation in domestic and policy processes.

Policy briefs produced to date illustrate how researchers, including numerous young female professionals, are challenging common narratives and stereotypes. Yes, migration out of rural areas is a seemingly unstoppable trend but many young people are still engaging in the farm sector and the agri-food system, which require considerable investment.

To highlight a few examples of their recent findings:

■ Adewale Ogunmodede of University of Ibadan in Nigeria analyses the shortcomings of the N-Power Agro Programme aimed at improving rural livelihoods and argues that the top-down approach is failing in attracting young people to agriculture.
■ Research by Akinyi Sassi in Tanzania challenges the stereotyped view that women use ICT less than men to access agricultural market information. She finds that the cost of phone use and reliability of information are critical factors.
■ Cynthia Mkong examines the issue of role models, social status, and previous experience in determining why some students are more likely to choose agriculture as their university major in two universities in Cameroon. She says her findings indicate that agriculture will rise in stature both as a field of study and occupation.
■ Grace Chabi looks at why youth engagement in agriculture continues to decline in Benin despite government initiatives. Among her policy recommendations are a call to remove gender biases from land ownership, credit, and employment practices.

With the youngest and fastest-growing population in the world, Africa’s still overwhelmingly rural communities will continue to grow, even as migration and urbanization increase. Investing in rural jobs and supporting millions of small-scale farming families are of paramount importance, as well as investing in improving connectivity (both physical and digital) in rural areas to support agri-food systems.

IFAD shares the vision of IITA to enhance the perception of and mindset about agri-food systems so that young people will see opportunities there for exciting and profitable businesses as consumers demand more diversity of food products. The CARE project filling those knowledge gaps is already starting to yield the relevant and thorough research needed by African communities to build food security and resilience against future shocks, and achieve rural transformation inclusive of rural youth.

Excerpt:

Participation in horticulture gives Tanzanian youth income options within a short period

By External Source
Jun 16 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Horticulture is a field of agriculture that involves a short growing season averaging three months and offers quick yields and returns on investments despite the high rate of postharvest losses.

In Tanzania, with the Government-initiated National Strategy for Youth Involvement in Agriculture (NYSIA) for 2016–2021, horticulture is one viable option that would give Tanzanian youth income within a short period. Operated through the Ministry of Agriculture, the vision of the scheme is to empower youth to participate fully in agricultural development, contribute to economic growth, and address the challenge of unemployment.

Horticulture offers employment throughout each crop cycle, an aspect that is advantageous to youth employment, yet this field of agriculture records a high rate of losses. According to research, about 50 to 70% of horticultural output is lost during harvesting, handling, packaging, transporting, and marketing. Hence, postharvest management is critical to success in the horticulture sector.

Adella Ng’atigwa, a fellow of the Enhancing Capacity to Apply Research Evidence (CARE) in Policy for Youth Engagement in Agribusiness and Rural Economic Activities in Africa project, carried out a study on ways to empower youth to reduce horticulture postharvest losses in Tanzania. In the research, Ng’atigwa reveals that lowering the rate of postharvest loss for fresh produce would raise returns to young agripreneurs as well as increase food security in Tanzania.

Ng’atigwa conducted the study among youth in three of the six districts in the Njombe Region of the southern highlands of Tanzania. It reveals the stages at which losses occur, and some of the causes for crop loss that include poor storage facilities, weak transport systems, inadequate market location, poor handling, and inferior packaging materials.

Along with inadequate market location being a significant cause for postharvest losses in the Njombe Region, price fluctuations were cited as the most encountered problem facing young horticultural producers.

Based on the research findings, Ng’atigwa recommends staggered planting and harvest periods, timely harvesting, and ripening while warehoused, as ways to manage postharvest losses. Other recommendations include cold storage, solar drying, improved agronomic practices, more market places, and improved transport facility. Achieving these will raise returns and attract more youth to the horticulture industry in Tanzania.

Ng’atigwa added that there is a need to create incentives for the small and medium financial institutions and microcredit financial institutions in Njombe to provide loans with an affordable interest rate for youth. Such youth-friendly credit schemes will help them to access farm inputs and postharvest management (PHM) innovations.

With Africa striving towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and zero hunger, Tanzania’s move to improve horticulture, a sector that generates more than US$354 million per annum, is laudable. Addressing the challenge of postharvest losses would create a significant impact on the country’s economy and the livelihoods of youth investing their time and money in the sector.

Source: IITA News

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Young Agriprenuer Programme is promoting youth participation in agribusiness with hands on skills training in farming and entrepreneurship. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Apr 30 2020 (IPS)

In Rwanda, Benimana Uwera Gilberthe, a scholar and pepper producer, experienced first-hand the challenges of breaking into agribusiness.

While in Nigeria, Ayoola Adewale is trying to understand if poultry egg farming will prove a profitable and viable business opportunity to the youth of the continent’s most populous nation. Also in Nigeria, Esther Alleluyanatha is understanding the link between young people leaving their villages for larger cities, the remittances they send home, and the implications on rural livelihoods and agriculture productivity.

In understanding this, these three young researchers are in fact providing answers to greater questions about agriculture on the continent. Like:

• What will it take to attract more African youth into agriculture — a sector the World Bank says could be worth $1 trillion in the next 10 years?
• And what supportive polices and investments are needed to develop this sector?

Adewale, Alleluyanatha  and Gilberthe are just three of the 80 young African scholars that are tackling the business of agriculture through the innovativeness and freshness that comes with youth — while obtaining their masters or doctoral degrees in the process.

They are awardees of the Enhancing Capacity to Apply Research Evidence (CARE), a three-year project that was launched in 2018 by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), with funding from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

The project aims “to build an understanding of poverty reduction, employment impact, and factors influencing youth engagement in agribusiness, and rural farm and non-farm economies,” according to IITA Director General Nteranya Sanginga.

“Grantees were offered training on research methodology, data management, scientific writing, and the production of research evidence for policymaking. They are mentored by IITA scientists and experts on a research topic of their choice and produce science articles and policy briefs about their work,” Sanginga explained.

He has long championed the idea that developing agriculture is key to addressing the urgent challenges of food insecurity, poverty and youth unemployment on the continent.

• Indeed, according to IFAD, agriculture makes business sense because it has high returns per dollar invested. An IFAD study, The Economics Advantage: Assessing the value of climate change actions in agriculture, states that for every dollar invested through one of its smallholder programmes, farmers could earn between $1.40 and $2.60 over a 20-year period by applying climate change adaptation practices. 

“Youth brings energy and innovation to the mix, but these qualities can be best channelled by young Africans themselves carrying out results-based research in agribusiness and rural development involving young people. Youth engagement is key,” Sanginga said.

Young farmers and brothers Prosper and Prince Chikwara are using precision farming techniques at their horticulture farm, outside Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Credit: Busani Bafana/ IPS

Commercial agriculture the answer to youth unemployment?

Adewale, a PhD candidate at the University of Ibadan, works as a technical assistant at the Federal Operation Coordinating Unit for Youth Employment and Social Operation (FOCU-YESSO) in Abuja.  

YESSO is tasked with providing access to work opportunities for Nigeria’s poor and vulnerable youth. 

• Nigeria, which has a population of over 180 million, had 19.58 percent youth unemployment in 2019, according to estimates by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

“Commercialised agriculture holds immense potential as a way out of poverty,” Adewale told IPS. 

• Nigeria is also a net food importer, spending an average of $22 billion annually. The country imports rice, fish, wheat and poultry products with milk and tomato paste accounting for more than $1,4 billion of the food import bill.

“Youth involvement in commercialised agriculture is growing and seems to be the way out of the current unemployment rate. However, government and private sector support is required if youths will compete favourably, thrive sustainably and raise coming generation of commercial agriculture entrepreneurs,” Adewale said.

For her research topic she wants to understand if poultry egg production is a profitable and  technically efficient venture for youth farmers,  specifically assessing the impact of the Commercial Agriculture Development project (CADP).

• CADP is a World Bank-assisted project targeted at strengthening agricultural production systems and facilitating access to market for targeted value chains among small and medium scale commercial farmers in Cross River, Enugu, Lagos, Kaduna and Kano states. 

“Commercial agriculture, across all value chains, holds potential to boost productivity, profitability and economic growth of Nigeria and indeed Africa,” she said. “The study will provide insight into how commercial agriculture programmes are sustainable as well as provide direction into how commercial agriculture can be harnessed for African agriculture.”

Money in agriculture

Alleluyanatha, also from Nigeria, is also concerned about the high rate of unemployment among youth — particularly in urban areas.

“There is a need, therefore, to discourage the exodus of youths from rural to urban areas and to encourage them to go into agriculture, which is known to be the major source of livelihood in the rural areas,” Alleluyanatha said. 

She is researching youth migration and remittances and the implications on rural livelihood and agriculture productivity in Africa. She aims to do this by comparing households with youth migrants and those without. 

In Rwanda, Gilberthe  and his under-graduate classmates started growing pepper for export after securing a contract with the country’s National Agricultural Export Development Board. 

“The venture was successful and we gave youth in my areas the idea on how agribusiness can be a decent job if you do it professionally and invest in it,” Gilberthe told IPS. “I used to have at least $210 each time we sold our product.”

Youth aged between 14 and 35 years make up 39 percent of Rwanda’s population but, according to Gilberthe, many are not participating in agribusiness owing to limited agribusiness skills, lack of start-up capital, limited access to land, and information on agribusiness opportunities.

• Indeed it is a issue across the continent. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) notes that Africa needs targeted interventions focused on making agriculture a viable employment option for Africa’s youth who are held back from joining it by lack of land, credit, quality farm inputs, machinery and skills.

Gilberthe is researching how being part of financing schemes impact the incomes of youth agripreneurs.

He believes policies for youth engagement in agribusiness should also include trainings about running such businesses. In addition, he believes such policies should also make provisions for more agribusiness financing schemes.

“In Rwanda, youth engaged in agribusiness have a problem of not owning land and most of them use their parent’s land but their income is limited and they need access to credit,” he said.

• Rwanda, one of Africa’s smaller countries per square kilometre, has a land area of just under 27,000 square kilometres. About 69 percent of the land is used for agriculture, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.

“I think differently about agriculture now,” says Gilberthe. “As a young researcher I have discovered the opportunities and barriers for youth engaged in agribusiness and this research is giving me a chance to contribute toward policy formulation about youth engagement in agribusiness.

“Through my findings I will be able to prove wrong youth who take agriculture as the work for old and village people and other people who still think that agriculture cannot improve your income.”

Excerpt:

Nteranya Sanginga

By Nteranya Sanginga
IBADAN, Nigeria, Apr 29 2020 (IPS)

Africa’s frailties have been brutally exposed by the coronavirus pandemic. The virus has reached nearly every country on this continent of 1.3 billion people and the World Health Organization warns there could be 10 million cases within six months. Ten countries have no ventilators at all.

Governments are fighting the pandemic with weak health systems where lockdowns are especially punitive in the absence of a welfare state. Many people subsist on daily earnings, living off the informal economy in densely crowded living conditions that make a mockery of ‘social distancing’. Collapsing commodity prices in international markets and capital outflows from emerging markets are hitting economies.

But so too Africa’s strengths are on display. Valuable lessons have been learned from past epidemics, such as the Ebola outbreak in 2014, and governments are responding with strict measures. Far from the stereotyped image of the Third World calling for help from richer countries, people are demonstrating their resilience, generosity, civic spirit and boundless ingenuity.

Africa’s young population gives hope too. With a median age of less than 20 years, the continent may suffer relatively fewer fatalities than other nations with more ageing populations. The pandemic is underscoring what many have cautioned for years – that Africa’s economies need to depend less on exporting raw materials and do more to tackle the urgent issues of food insecurity, youth unemployment and poverty.

Developing agriculture is key to addressing these challenges. Youth brings energy and innovation to the mix, but these qualities can be best channelled by young Africans themselves carrying out results-based research in agribusiness and rural development involving young people. Youth engagement is key.

As a research-for-development non-profit, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) works with various partners across sub-Saharan Africa to facilitate agricultural solutions to hunger, poverty and natural resource degradation. IITA improves livelihoods, enhances food and nutrition security and increases employment as one of 15 research centres in CGIAR, a global partnership for a food secure future.

Throughout the pandemic, IITA is helping sub-Saharan food systems by monitoring food prices and strengthening access to agricultural technologies and markets..

Before the coronavirus surfaced, IITA had launched a three-year project known as CARE (Enhancing Capacity to Apply Research Evidence) to build an understanding of poverty reduction, employment impact, and factors influencing youth engagement in agribusiness, and rural farm and non-farm economies. The project was funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and provided 80 research fellowships for young African scholars, with an emphasis on young female professionals and students aiming to acquire a master’s or doctoral degree.

Grantees were offered training on research methodology, data management, scientific writing, and the production of research evidence for policymaking. They are mentored by IITA scientists and experts on a research topic of their choice and produce science articles and policy briefs about their work.

How is Africa going to feed a population set to double by 2050? As CGIAR says: we are at a crossroads in the world’s food system and cannot continue our current trajectory of consuming too little, too much, or the wrong types of food at an unsustainable cost to natural resources, the environment and human health.

Here in sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture contributes to nearly a quarter of GDP and smallholder farmers make up more than 60 percent of the population. Young people are finding careers in agribusiness and IITA aims to strengthen their capacity to inform future action plans for local communities and up to national governments, the business sector and international community.

Dolapo Adeyanju, a IITA grantee, illustrates how Africa is capable of generating more youth engagement in policy research, whether on policy, start-ups, agribusiness, development initiatives or leadership. A Nigerian national, Ms Adeyanju is a master’s student at the University of Nairobi working in collaboration with the University of Pretoria, focusing on the impact of agricultural programs on youth agripreneurship in Nigeria.

“Policymakers cannot operate in a vacuum,” she says, stressing the need for appropriate policies to be based on relevant evidence derived from research results and recommendations.

Development of effective policies will enable African young people who are already taking advantage of agricultural research to make a life out of farming. IITA’s CARE project will help make up for the deficit of youth-specific research, and the support of IFAD ensures that young Africans will have a voice in how they can contribute to this effort.

Africa was not well prepared for a crisis of this magnitude in COVID-19. Universities have been closed, borders shut, and trade has plummeted. The pandemic has exposed decades-long underinvestment in vital sectors, as well as demonstrating the importance of scientific and educational collaboration. The immediate focus will naturally be on the direct response to the disease in terms of medical research, equipment and health care. But as the pandemic pushes through, Africa must keep its eye on long-term development needs. IITA will play its role in equipping the next generation to advance agriculture and feed the people of Africa.

Excerpt:

Agriprenuers (from left to right) Oni Hammed , Ngozi Okeke and Yusuf Babatunde, directors of Frotchery Farms and graduates of the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Youth Agripreneur Programme, outside their factory in Ibadan, Nigeria. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
IBADAN, Nigeria, Mar 18 2020 (IPS)

“It is not easy to be in agriculture but you must have the perseverance and you must have the passion for it,” Ngozi Okeke (30), the director of operations at Frotchery Farms, tells IPS during a tour of the company’s factory in Ibadan, Nigeria. For Okeke, passion and patience are pivotal to business success. But she also recognises the need to create opportunities to nurture agripreneurship among Africa’s growing ranks of unemployed youth.

The company processes about 1,500 tonnes of live catfish, frozen and smoked fish, fish snacks, fillets and fish powder at its factory in Ogidi Estate in Akobo, Ibadan. The products are then packaged in the company’s brand and sold at local markets across the country.

“When we started our first production of smoked fish, everything got burnt, we lost our money and lost everything. But because we knew what we wanted for ourselves that did not discourage us, it was just a set back and we continued pushing,” Okeke says.

Yusuf Babatunde (30), who is director of marketing, says the company was started with personal savings which the partners invested in buying fish from farmers before they started their own fish production.

“We have believed in high quality when it comes to fish production and our different skills help us to innovate and grow our brand and this is paying off,” Babatunde says.

• Africa has more than 200 million young people between the ages 15 and 34, according to the Africa Development Bank (AfDB). Agriculture is a key economic driver in many countries on the continent, with the African Union having long-ago identified it as a force for social and economic growth in its 2003 Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).

But agriculture suffers from negative perceptions among the youth of being labour intensive and offering little gain. 

“Many youth are not patient, youth that go into agriculture have to be patient and they have to persevere serve to succeed,” Okeke says.

Frotchery Farms was established in 2015 by Okeke and Babatunde and their other partner Oni Hammed (31), as graduates of the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Youth Agripreneur Programme. The programme provided technical and material resources to launch the enterprise.

• IITA director general Nteranya Sanginga established the Youth Agripreneur Programme in 2012 with the aim of changing the perception of Africa’s youth about agriculture to see it as an exciting and profitable business., which enrols 60 youths for hands-on training in agriculture and entrepreneurship from 24 centres across Africa.

Staying power

Agribusiness is lucrative but demands entrepreneurial flair and a never-say-die attitude, something that eludes young people, says Hammed, the managing director who is also in charge of production at Frotchery Farms.

“Most times the youth feel its old people that can go into agriculture and we are trying to change that mindset,” Hammed tells IPS. “It is possible, the youth are innovative and can create something and change the way agriculture is seen.”

Passion yes, but skills better

Skills in agripreneurship are critical for youth employment, especially for those in rural areas.

Research by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that youth are turning away from agriculture and moving into cities to take up low skilled labour, all the while aspiring to high-skilled jobs despite their low level of education.

“Skills mismatch is a big issue and youth need to be trained and retrained in jobs along the agri-food value chain, beyond farming,” Ji-Yeun Rim, project manager at the OCED’s Development Centre in Paris, France, tells IPS.

With the increasing domestic and regional demand for diversified and processed food, there is a high opportunity to develop the agrifood business in Africa, says Ji-Yeun, who is coordinating a project supporting governments in nine African and Asian countries to improve policies targeting youth, especially in the agro-food value chain.

“Many youth employment programmes focus on entrepreneurship but our research finds that entrepreneurship is not for everyone and most youth do not succeed as entrepreneurs and often remain just in subsistence activities,” Ji-Yeun says.

“Entrepreneurship is a false panacea to the youth employment problem. Youth need to be trained in various types of jobs along the agro-food value chain, from farming to processing, services and marketing to help them find salaried positions.”

Research evidence for policy development

Meanwhile, the IITA says more youths are taking advantage of agricultural research and the new technologies designed for agriculture systems in Africa to make a profitable career from farming.

IITA notes though that agriculture systems need transformation and strengthening to help achieve youth employment, food security, zero hunger and alleviate poverty.

To this end, the IITA launched the Enhancing Capacity to Apply Research Evidence (CARE) in Policy for Youth Engagement in Agribusiness and Rural Economic Activities in Africa, a three-year project funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

CARE seeks to increase understanding of poverty reduction, employment impact and factors influencing youth engagement in agribusiness, rural and non-farm economy. It provides grants to young African scholars who aim to study for a Masters or Doctoral Degree. The scholars are helped to build capacity to generate and disseminate evidence-based results to influence policy and practise in supporting economic growth and meeting SDGs goals in Africa.

Currently, 30 scholars have been awarded grants under the CARE project in 2020.

One of the first grantees of the project in 2019, Dolapo Adeyanju, a Masters student from Nigeria, has researched on the impact of agricultural programmes on youth entrepreneurship performance in the West African nation. She found that many young people have accepted agribusiness as a sustainable and profitable career choice.

“Even though, it can be said that there is still a lot to be put in place in terms of creating an enabling environment for young agribusiness owners in the form of policies and interventions that could help young agripreneurs and prospective ones,” Adeyanju says.

Excerpt:

The glaciers of the Andes Mountains are threatened by global warming. Credit: Julieta Sokolowicz/IPS

By Farhana Haque Rahman
ROME, Dec 16 2019 (IPS)

By any measure this has been a devastating year: fires across the Amazon, the Arctic and beyond; floods and drought in Africa; rising temperatures, carbon emissions and sea levels; accelerating loss of species, and mass forced migrations of people.

As seen through the eyes of IPS reporters and contributors around the world, 2019 will be remembered as the year the climate crisis shook us all, and hopefully also for the fight back manifested in the spread of mass protests and civic movements against governments and industries failing to respond.

Calls to combat the climate emergency were ringing in the ears of delegations from nearly 200 countries at the annual UN climate summit that opened in Madrid on December 2. Yet despite warnings that the planet is reaching critical tipping points, fears remained that the two weeks of negotiations would end in that familiar sense of disappointment and an opportunity missed.

“Do we really want to be remembered as the generation that buried its head in the sand, that fiddled while the planet burned?” declared U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.

But the heads of government of the world’s biggest emitters were notably absent, including Donald Trump of the US, China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who refused to host the meeting, also stayed away rather than face a hostile reception. Protests against the fires sweeping Brazil’s Amazon rainforest and the government’s encouragement of deforestation are spreading around the world, especially in Europe. Youth is the new face of activism as inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and others.

In one of many scientific surveys ringing alarm bells in 2019, a landmark report by IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, warned that more than one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades.

The climate crisis and species extinction are twin challenges with far-reaching consequences. IPS this year covered how drought in some areas of Africa is leading to re-runs of famine and migration.

The expanding Sahara desert is breaking up families and spreading conflict. The Sahel on the southern edge of the Sahara is the region where temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else on Earth. Projects such as the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification’s Land Degradation Neutrality project aimed at preventing and/or reversing land degradation are some of the interventions to stop the growing desert.

Farhana Haque Rahman

While much of the Horn of Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe are being ravaged by drought, small island states, especially in the Pacific, are sinking beneath rising sea levels or becoming more vulnerable to hurricanes and typhoons.

Irregular migration is on the rise, and has driven thousands to their deaths on hazardous journeys. The thousands drowned crossing the Mediterranean has led to projects like Migrants as Messengers in Guinea launched by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) which recruits returnees to raise awareness of the dangers.

People smugglers make money out of migrants with scant regard for their safety while other vulnerable people, especially women and girls, fall into the hands of exploitative human traffickers. As a major source of migrants heading towards the United States, Central America is an impoverished region rife with gang violence and human trafficking – the third largest crime industry in the world. Human trafficking has deep roots in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for decades and, as IPS has reported this year, it increasingly requires a concerted law enforcement effort by the region’s governments to dismantle trafficking networks and help women forced into sexual exploitation.

Over 40 million people are estimated to be enslaved around the world. Presenting her report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, UN expert Urmila Bhoola pointed out that servitude will likely increase as the world faces rapid changes in the workplace, environmental degradation, migration and demographic shifts.

Children from rural areas and disempowered homes are ideal targets for trafficking in India and elsewhere. Credit: Neeta Lal / IPS

Eradicating modern slavery by 2030, one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, would require the freeing of 10,000 people a day, Ms Bhoola reported, citing the NGO Walk Free.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR says more than 70 million people are currently displaced by conflict, the most since the Second World War. Among them are nearly 26 million who have fled their countries (over half under the age of 18). But the response of many countries has been to erect barriers and walls.

And the plight of some one million Muslim Rohingya refugees, driven out of Myanmar into Bangladesh, shows little sign of resolution. Paralysis at the U.N. Security Council, where veto-wielding China can protect its interests in Myanmar, has triggered interventions by both the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice which are expected to sit in judgment over the atrocities.

Bangladesh is already struggling with the impact of severe cyclones in November and, as recently reported by IPS, long-term projects are helping its own climate migrants achieve food security. Because of government interventions in agriculture, Bangladesh has already achieved sufficiency in food. According to the Food Sustainability Index 2018 of the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) many farmers have substantially reduced fertiliser use and increased yields.

The SDGs made a solemn promise to eradicate hunger and extreme poverty by 2030, and that cannot be achieved unless the world’s smallholder farmers can adapt to climate change.

But since 2016 global numbers of hungry people have been on the rise again. In September a welcome $650 million of funding reached CGIAR, a partnership of funders and international agricultural research centres and formerly known as the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research.

At the other extreme, April is Reducing Food Waste Month in the United States, as efforts mount to reduce food loss and waste, and deal with growing obesity. For the U.S. and 66 other countries BCFN has produced a food sustainability index profile that dives into all the relevant sectors, ranging from management of water resources, the impact on land of animal feed and biofuels, agricultural subsidies and diversification of agricultural system, to nutritional challenges, physical activity, diet and healthy life expectancy indicators.

The Global Commission on Adaptation Report, launched in October, says the number of people who may lack sufficient water, at least one month per year, will soar from 3.6 billion today to more than 5 billion by 2050. Climate change has a disproportionate impact on women and girls who bear the brunt of looking for water.

Nutrition is the best investment in developing Africa, experts say, with evident correlation between countries with high levels of children under five years of age who are stunted or wasted and the existence of political instability and/or frequent exposure to natural calamities. The nutritional situation is worrying in Africa, Busi Maziya-Dixon, a Senior Food and Nutrition Scientist at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), told IPS with research showing all forms of malnutrition, including stunting, wasting, and obesity, are growing. “We need to educate our governments to link nutrition to economic development and prioritize nutrition.”

Overall investment in Africa continued to gather pace in 2019, however. Amid IMF warnings of a “synchronised slowdown” in global economic growth, 19 sub-Saharan countries are among nearly 40 emerging markets and developing economies forecast to maintain GDP growth rates above 5 percent this year. Particularly encouraging for Africa is that its present growth leaders are richer in innovation than natural resources.

Small steps can bring big results by simply getting together. In September Manila hosted the first ever global forum for people with Hansen’s disease, commonly known as leprosy. Participants from 23 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean shared common challenges at the forum organised by The Nippon Foundation (TNF) and Sasakawa Health Foundation (SHF). Last week in Bangladesh, the country’s National Leprosy Programme, in collaboration with the TNF and SHF brought together hundreds of health workers, medical professionals and district officers to discuss the issue under the theme “Zero Leprosy Initiatives”. Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina who opened the Congress said, if special attention is given to its northern region and the Chittagong Hill Tracts, it is quite possible to declare Bangladesh a leprosy free country before 2030.

All in all however, the SDGs are in trouble, with the U.N. Secretary-General warning in July that a “much deeper, faster and more ambitious response is needed to unleash the social and economic transformation needed to achieve our 2030 goals”. A 478-page study by independent experts drove the message home.

Lastly, as 2019 draws to a close, let’s pay tribute to all those reporters around the world who have bravely covered these issues, spreading knowledge and defending press freedoms despite obvious dangers and more insidious campaigns of vilification.

Excerpt:

Felicienne Soton is part of a women's group that produces gari (cassawa flour). She and her group in Adjegounle village have greatly benefited from Benin's national CDD project. (Photo: Arne Hoel).

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
COTONOU, Benin, Apr 30 2019 (IPS)

Théophile Houssou, a maize farmer from Cotonou, has spent sleepless nights lying awake worrying about the various disasters that could befall any farmer, often wondering, “What if it rains heavily and all my crops are washed away?” or “What if the armyworms invade my farm and eat up all the crops and I’m left with nothing?”

Maize crops in Benin, like in at least 28 other African countries, are being threatened by the Fall Armyworm (FAW), an invasive crop pest that feeds on 80 different crop species. Houssou is thankful to have missed an infestation and gives thanks to “God for the good season, but it was not easy,” he tells IPS.

Maize production in Benin reached a record 1.6 million tons during the 2017-2018 season, compared to 1.2 million tons two years ago, according to the ministry of agriculture’s figures.

In downtown Cotonou, the country’s commercial capital, five men are busy loading pineapples onto a 10-ton truck, while four more heavy vehicles wait to be loaded. The produce will be taken to several countries in the region, including Nigeria, which receives 80 percent of all Benin’s exports. Benin is Africa’s fourth-largest pineapple exporter, producing between 400,000 and 450,000 tons of pineapple annually. Exports to the European Union (EU) increased from 500 tons to 4,000 tons between 2000 and 2014, according to official figures.

Further away, the famous Dantokpa Market is flooded with agricultural products, including red tomatoes, okra, soya beans, mangoes, orange, green pepper, lemon and all sorts of spinaches and fruits. Competition is fierce and the selling price is very low, amid an excellent agricultural season.

Room for improvement
While the agricultural sector here may look lively, it boasts several fault lines.

Despite being mostly a subsistence sector, agriculture contributes about 34 percent to this West African nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Almost 80 percent of Benin’s 11.2 million people earn a living from agriculture, the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) says. FAO adds that the country’s farmers face challenges such as include poor infrastructure and flooding, which can wipe out harvests and seed stocks.

In a document titled “Strategic Plan for Agricultural Sector Development (PSDSA) 2025 and National Plan for Agricultural Investments and Food Security and Nutrition (PNIASAN) 2017 -2021”, the Benin government has admitted that the agriculture sector’s revenues and productivity are low, and the labour force is only partially rewarded, making agricultural products less competitive.

“Most farmers have very little use of improved inputs and engage in mining practices that accentuate the degradation of natural resources,” the document states.

“We can do better than this,” Marthe Dossou, a small scale farmer supervising the offloading of thousands of boxes of red tomatoes from a rundown truck, tells IPS. These tomatoes will be exported to Nigeria but Dossou feels that considering the high quality of the harvest, Benin can produce more for export. “If we can be given a helping hand like more resources, including loans, new farming methods and how to master water control techniques,” she says.

Dr Tamo Manuele, the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Benin country representative, tells IPS that agricultural innovation “is key to eradicating poverty, hunger and malnutrition, mainly in rural areas where most of the world’s poorest live.”
“Innovation can, first of all, increase small-scale farmers’ productivity and income, and secondly diversify farmers’ income through value chain development; and lastly create more and better opportunities for the rural poor,” he says.

“Farmers or at least actors in agricultural value chains need support for conservation and processing of agricultural commodities. With e-agriculture, farmers can better manage their production and especially be informed of market opportunities. Innovations such as warrantage system [an inventory credit system where farmers instead of selling their produce use it as collateral to get credit from a bank] and group selling can help solving this problem. NGOs and specialised experts in agriculture have to strengthen and support closely farmers,” Manuele urges.

Headquartered in Ibadan, Nigeria, the IITA has been present in Benin since 1985 and it supports national agricultural research and extension services.

“Research is one of the main links leading to innovation. Many studies have reported that communities living near the research centre are more informed, exposed to the innovations and more supervised by scientists. Therefore, their willingness to adopt innovation is very significant. So IITA-Benin is more present on fields through several on-farm-innovation testing managed by scientists,” Manuele says.

IITA launched a jatropha-based biofuel project in 2015 in Benin. This involved the development of a biofuel chain to create profitable and viable small businesses. These women make soap from the jatropha tree. Courtesy: International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA)

Some farmers say they are aware of agricultural technologies, but complain about the lack of promotion of such innovations in the areas where they operate.
Koffi Akpovi Justin, a seasonal farmer, was introduced to the 4R method, where four scientific principles are used to ensure that the soil has the right levels of nutrients for planting.

“Everybody brags about how fertile the African land is…I used to be frustrated and almost gave up on farming because I strongly believed in the natural way of doing things. I would just labour the land, plant seeds (plenty of them) and start the painful process of watering it, and at the end I got mitigated results. But not anymore.”

But Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s most expensive fertiliser market, where small scale farmers make up about 70 percent of the population. “If you will use it, use it carefully because not practicing the 4R method could see some of it spill all over the fields and pollute nearby water resources and groundwater. I experienced it many years ago, but now I’m wiser.”

He adds that many farmers who live in remote areas are unable to access information about agricultural innovation. “Many of them, who operate mostly in very remote places, always say ‘We know that these things exist and we would like to use it but where can we find it?’ Maybe the international organisations, like the UN and the IITA, could do more to make sure that as many farmers as possible get access to agricultural innovations to boost food production and fight hunger.”

Monique Soton is one such farmer. She lives in north-western Benin, about 500 km from Cotonou, the country’s commercial capital.

“We operate in remote areas and there our lives are concentrated only about leaving in the morning to work on the land and come back in the evening. There is no radio, no TV, no electricity. We may miss out on important information about new methods of farming or new developments going on in the sector, like if a census were to be held to determine the number of farmers who need financial support. It’s sad,” the tomato farmer tells IPS.

Another major obstacle facing small scale farmers in Benin is also the lack of market. “The only local market I use to sell my products is Dantokpa in Cotonou. Just imagine the distance from our area [about 500 km from Cotonou] to the commercial capital,” Soton says, adding that there aren’t adequate roads or vehicles to get the produce to the marketplace.
“There were many times the rundown vehicle we were using to transport our products broke down in the middle of a no man’s land at night and that’s very scary.”

Agricultural innovation
The IITA has been reaching out to various communities. In Benin it launched a jatropha-based biofuel project in 2015. This involved the development of a biofuel chain to create profitable and viable small businesses.

“Specifically, it is consolidating the profitability and sustainability of jatropha value chains through a public-private partnership approach that creates jobs for young people, women and men. The project is set up according to the value chain approach including jatropha production, jatropha oil extraction, soap making, grain milling and rural electrification, among others,” Manuele explains.

Since the start of the project some 2,050 producers, including 538 women, have benefitted.

Apart from this jatropha project, the IITA said that it has implemented several other projects that contribute to the food and nutrition security and income improvement of many rural households.

Magic solution?
While innovations in agriculture have proved successful, Dr Jeroen Huising, a soil scientist based in Nigeria, cautions that this is not the ‘magic bullet’ for Benin. “I do not believe in magic solutions and agricultural (innovation) is certainly not magic. The question about the rural poor has little to do with the agricultural innovations. There are economic factors that determine that,” he tells IPS.

“Also, if the ‘innovations’ would increase yield for the smallholder farmers, it would not solve their problems. The production has to do primarily with use of inputs and even then the prices are often too low to make a decent living.”

Soton agrees that economic factors pay a huge role in being a successful smallholder, explaining that “the lack of financial support is a serious problem.”

She says that banks do even consider small holder farmers for loans “because we don’t fulfil not even one of their requirements needed to lend us money. So, we invest our money we get from the tontines [an investment plan] and from selling some of our properties.”

“We have the land but we lack everything from seeds to fertilisers and cash to hire labourers.”

By Nteranya Sanginga
IBADAN, Nigeria, Mar 29 2017 (IPS)

The role of genetic engineering in agriculture and food has generated enormous interest and controversies, with large-scale embrace by some nations and wholesale bans by others.

Nteranya Sanginga, Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Courtesy of IITA

Fast-moving developments, however, suggest that lines drawn in the sand both for or against the broader use of GMOs risk becoming a distraction, particularly in Africa.

The major novelty is the emergence of CRISPR, which stands for “Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats” and is popularly called “genome editing”, which amounts to a much faster way to alter genomes. The method sharply lowers costs and amounts to a revolution for seeds.

The second development springs from the first: Genetic engineering can now be deployed on a far vaster array of organisms, and with more bespoke goals such as drought resistance or nutritional enhancement. Many GMOs in the market are for insect and/or herbicide resistance, as has been the case for many biotechnology products of the past.

While formulating national policies on GMOs is the responsibility of governments, informed debate entails that we recognize these developments change the game.

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture,– and the Food and Agriculture Organization considers biotechnologies as potential tools in the toolbox, meaning they may be appropriate. Our primary interest is in boosting food production, food security, nutrition, climate resilience, and rural employment.

At any rate, vast monocultures of cash crops such as maize, soy and cotton – the main GMO varieties in the world today – are not our utmost priority. But CRISPR and related new approaches open the door to many more applications.

To cite a few examples, all very recent: Researchers have developed a transgenic maize variety that keeps aflatoxin out of kernels, thus tackling one of the world’s single-largest food problems and source of farm-based agriculture loss.

Elsewhere, scientists in Ghana have developed a GM cowpea that survives pests – or needs less pesticide – is advanced and might be available at a commercial scale as early as next year. Currently, the Maruca pod-borer destroys a hefty share – often more than half – of cowpeas grown in West Africa.

Or take cassava, which is one of IITA’s favorite crops and is the second-most important source of calories consumed in sub-Saharan Africa. A recent exploratory review found 14 potential genetic pathways that could improve the crop’s yield which has proven stubbornly stable for decades. One of them involved optimizing the plant’s photosynthesis in the same way that has worked well with tobacco and other plants. The goal is to adjust the plant’s canopy so that more of its energy goes into actual storage roots rather than stems. Another potential path is to tweak the cassava so that it can thrive better in soils with lower phosphorus, to which it is notably more sensitive than other major staple crops.

Working with Nigeria’s National Root Crop Research Institute, IITA is conducting research on a disease-resistant cassava with higher vitamin A content. Nigeria is also running confined field tests for GMO sorghum fortified to produce more iron, zinc, protein and vitamin A and to demonstrate greater nitrogen efficiency while growing. These and other hypothetical developments – think salt-tolerant rice, or zinc-enhanced cassava, or zinc and iron-fortified pearl millet – may warrant pursuit.

Similarly several confined field trials of GMOs are occurring in Malawi, Mozambique, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Uganda

African governments are taking cautious steps. South Africa grows GMO corn and soybeans, while non-food crops are legally cultivated in Sudan.

Last month, Kenya’s parliament authorized local crop researchers to start growing GMO cotton, although instructed not to let related by-products enter the human and animal food chain. Lawmakers also welcomed experimental genetic trials aimed at solving endemic national problems affecting sweet potato and cassava crops, and suggested they’d look at legalization on a case-by-case basis. Ghana recently authorized GMO guidelines – a bill allowing them is not yet law – and other countries including Nigeria and Burkina Faso have moved even further.

Opposition in the past has come for a host of reasons, including fears that GMO crops required expensive inputs provided by multinationals and posed environmental risks as they were often designed to be resistant to herbicides. Many of the new proposals come without such baggage, suggesting the policy debate will change.

Norway has adopted an interesting regulatory approach to genetic engineering, which requires safety reviews, farmer consultations, and a litmus test of whether alternatives contribute better to sustainable agricultural practices. That’s a far cry from the usually binary debate – stoked by stories about creating designer human babies – about GMOs.

The subject matter is complex and the science even more so. It appears we are on the brink of a deluge of new discoveries – engineering beneficial soil microbes may soon be a booming research arena – many of which may not need the kind of capital-intensive agricultural operations where GMOs were first developed and can instead directly address the needs of smallholders in developing countries and the specific food and nutrition security and climate change challenges they face.

Genome editing can now economically be applied to the crop cultivars that farmers in a given locale prefer, consisting of highly targeted interventions that can address specific challenges, and don’t take years of breeding to consolidate.

It’s a new world. Let’s have a new debate, not the old one.

Excerpt:

Smallholders in developing countries all too often do not have the resources or incentives to commit to the transformation to sustainable agriculture that scientists know is needed. Credit: IITA

By Nteranya Sanginga and Edidah Ampaire
IBADAN, Nigeria, Jan 24 2017 (IPS)

Development advocates and professionals are very keen on harnessing the power of agriculture to promote the cause of climate change these days. And rightly so, because agriculture is both a major emitter of greenhouse gases and so a potential force for mitigation, and because billions of people will need to eat, and so adaptation is an absolute necessity.

That said, it’s actually quite hard to achieve lasting consensus on the ground. For a plethora of reasons, smallholders in developing countries all too often do not have the resources or incentives to commit to the transformation to sustainable agriculture that scientists know is needed.

However, these challenges can be faced and overcome. Doing so requires that experts listen closely to what people are saying.

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture is highly engaged in promoting climate-sensitive farming practices and full-fledged Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA). Our experience in the field has given us the opportunity to learn why some useful adaptive techniques struggle to take hold.
Some examples from our work in Northern Uganda are noteworthy.

For example, some agroforestry initiatives and other projects geared to using perennial crops fail to achieve traction among women farmers because they do not own land. The absence of equitable tenure rights leads many women naturally to prefer annual crops that can be harvested in the short term.

Nteranya Sanginga, Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Courtesy of IITA

It is important to realize that what often appears as farmers’ resistance to change is a fairly well-grounded assessment of the risks and uncertainties that smallholders face. Indeed, when they see a successful technique work over time, they are usually quite interested in adopting it. But, in the absence of a steady and reliable safety net, short-term results are a requirement, which can lead to slower take-up of practices such as no-till that boost long-term soil fertility but may dent present yields.

It’s also true that culinary preferences matter. In Uganda, farmers prefer the aroma of local Sindani rice to the Nerica variety that offers improved performance in upland areas. But here, too, it turns out that Sindani is less damaged by birds, so their rationale is on solid ground. It is only through dialogue that such factors emerge.

IITA has sought to foster and tap such dialogues through its leading role in Policy Action for Climate Change Adaptation (PACCA) projects in Uganda and Tanzania, which seek to prioritize CSA practices with local stakeholders.

One of the core features of our efforts, much of which is done in partnership with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Bioversity International and local partners, is what we call the learning alliance model. After several years of engagement, we are harvesting useful knowledge.

First, and unsurprisingly, it is essential to be reminded by farmers of what their priorities are when asked to consider a change. Yield, income, labor, cost, inputs, equipment, and appropriate farm size are all top priorities.

A set of on-farm demonstrations done in Nwoya district in 2015 allowed for more specific feedback, which we culled from a farmers’ “reflection workshop” organized earlier this year.

While farmers noted that the learning process itself represented a significant cost, due to the risk of crop theft or stray animals entering fields while they travelled long distances to reach training sessions, many CSA practices won plaudits from smallholders. These included: improved varieties, which tend to yield more, mature earlier and resist disease; row planting, which requires fewer seeds and facilitates weeding and harvesting as well as pest control; and minimum tillage, which was seen as a labor saver requiring little specialized skills.

Greater awareness of the risk of climate change would help give more balance to farmers’ concerns. Farmers are increasingly aware of depleted water sources, fewer bird species, lower water tables and other impacts of climate change, but such factors can’t be tackled by a smallholder acting alone and require collective action.

One intriguing idea, which emerged at our recent Learning Alliance reflection meeting in Tanzania, is for the government to set up an agency to address issues of climate change in the same way that special committees were set up in the past to deal with HIV/AIDS.

National platforms with that level of focus are warranted given the magnitude and full spectrum of risks posed by climate change. But the key issue is to make sure they are capillary and local.

The Learning Alliance model is promising in that regard.

Bringing together different partners drawn from policy makers, academic, research organizations, civil society, the private sector and farming communities themselves, the platform has facilitated the sharing of information, knowledge and experiences. They have retained smallholder interest, which is the gold standard for such initiatives.

And increasingly we see local participants in Learning Alliances advocate effectively for deeper plans, the kind that can win funding from international sources, allowing them to last longer and clinch the loyalty of farmers who buy in to the campaign. In short, they are embryonic institutions based on participation and, as such, a replicable approach to tackling the great challenge for climate-smart agriculture practices – sustainable implementation.

Excerpt:

Application of Aflasafe in groundnut field. Photo courtesy of Aflasafe.com

By Ini Ekott
ABUJA, Dec 27 2016 (IPS)

As food contaminants, aflatoxins are amongst the deadliest. Between 2004 and 2007, contaminated maize killed nearly 200 people in Kenya, left hundreds hospitalised and rendered millions of bags of maize unfit for consumption.

On average, 25 to 60 percent of maize – a staple in many African countries – has high levels of aflatoxins in Nigeria, warns the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). And with that comes the risk of liver cancer, suppressed immune system, stunted growth in children, and death.In the first year of the aflasafe trial, farmers recorded 13 percent average sales price over market rate, which is a 210 percent return on investment.

But despite such toxic potency, aflatoxins are hardly popular. Now, a made-in-Africa biocontrol product, Aflasafe, is taking on the poison, and is offering hope to millions across the continent who rely on vulnerable crops like maize.

“Aflatoxins are some of the most carcinogenic substances. But for four years that we have worked with farmers, we have seen great results in the use of aflasafe,” said Adebowale Akande, an aflasafe project lead at IITA, the institute that developed the product.

A four-year trial of aflasafe in Nigeria has yielded an impressive 80 to 90 percent reduction of aflatoxins, Akande said. “You will agree with me that four years is enough to know whether something is working or not,” he said.

Aflatoxin contamination is a global problem. But while developed countries regularly screen crops and destroy food supplies that test over regulatory limits, lax control and low awareness in developing countries mean billions of people face the risk of being exposed to the toxin daily.

The U.S-based Centre for Disease Control estimates that 4.5 billion people in developing countries may be chronically exposed to aflatoxins through their diet.

The toxins contaminate African dietary staples such as maize, groundnuts, rice either in the soil or during storage.

Countries in latitudes between 40 degrees north and 40 degrees south—which includes all of Africa—are susceptible to this contamination, the Partnership for Aflatoxin Control in Africa, PACA, an African Union body, said.

Besides health, aflatoxin also has serious economic implications.

“The direct economic impact of aflatoxin contamination in crops results mainly from a reduction in marketable volume, loss in value in the national markets, inadmissibility or rejection of products by the international market, and losses incurred from livestock disease, consequential morbidity and mortality,” said PACA in a 2015 paper.

Aflasafe production quality check after colonisation and drying. Photo courtesy of Aflasafe.com

Pull Mechanism

Aflasafe works by preventing the growth of aspergillus, the fungus that produces aflatoxin. It does so by stimulating the growth of large quantities of a harmless specie of aspergillus instead.

Developed over a decade by IITA, U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service, University of Bonn and University of Ibadan, aflasafe is applied by hand on soil two to three weeks prior to crop flowering. It works only for maize and groundnuts for now, amid ongoing researches for other crops.

Within two to three days of application, the anti-toxigenic strain of the fungus builds up rapidly on the crop, colonizes it and stops the toxic strain from developing. With that, over 90 percent of aflatoxins can be eliminated.

Despite such promise, there are challenges. Low awareness of the dangers of aflatoxins means low demand for aflatoxin-free maize. Also, poor regulation has limited investments in the control of aflatoxin.

The IITA set up the “pull mechanism” to ultimately expand the use of aflasafe by providing economic and technical incentives to smallholder farmers, who work in groups through intermediaries called implementers. It features per-unit payments based on the number of kilograms of maize treated with aflasafe.

Premium payments equal to 18.75 dollars are paid for every metric ton of high-aflasafe maize delivered to designated collection points. This corresponds to a premium rate of 5 percent to 13 percent depending on the current price of maize.

The pull mechanism began in 2012 in Nigeria, with four implementers and 1,000 farmers. By 2016, the number has grown to 25 implementers and 15, 000 farmers, Mr. Akande said.

Abubakar Yambab, 43, is one of such farmers. At Abaji, a suburb of Abuja where he lives, Mr. Yambab grows maize on a 1⅟2 hectare of land. He told IPS he first used aflasafe in 2015, and his yields have since improved in quantity and quality.

“Using aflasafe has a multiplier effect,” he said. “It removes the coloured particles (aflatoxin) we used to notice in the harvested maize and I don’t think I can grow maize now without aflasafe.”

Yambab said he receives subsidized fertilizers, farming equipment, tractors and chemicals from IITA, and has relied on his farm proceeds to feed his six children and two wives, in addition to recently completing a block home.

Receiving premium payment on aflatoxin-reduced maize makes business sense for the farmers despite investment in the aflasafe technology.

IITA said in the first year of its trial, farmers recorded 13 percent average sales price over market rate, which is a 210 percent return on investment. In 2015, average sales price stood at 15 percent over market rate, translating to 524 percent return on investment.

Commercialization

Nigeria was chosen as pilot location for aflasafe as it is the leading producer and consumer of maize in sub-Saharan Africa and up to 60 percent of its maize may be affected. The country is for now the only developing country in which aflasafe is ready for use by farmers.

But similar work is going to Senegal and Kenya. A manufacturing plant capable of producing 5 tons of aflasafe per hour is operational at IITA headquarters in Nigeria, Ibadan. Another is under construction in Kenya and a third is underway in Senegal.

The institute is also working on transferring the technology to allow companies produce and distribute aflasafe to millions of farmers throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

“It is slated to cover 500,000 hectares in 11 countries where aflasafe will soon be registered,” Matieyedou Konlambigue, who leads IITA’s Aflasafe Technology Transfer Commercialization Project, said at the launching of the project on Dec. 1 at Ibadan, Nigeria.

The targeted countries are Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Gambia, Uganda and Zambia, Konlambigue was quoted by the News Agency of Nigeria as saying. The project is to last from 2016 to 2020.

Yamdab said he would advise other farmers to use aflasafe for their crops. “If all farmers in the FCT (Federal Capital Territory) use aflasafe, it will really improve the quality of food products here,” he said.

Nursery operators raise improved Robusta coffee seedlings in Uganda. Credit: IITA

By Sally Nyakanyanga
KAMPALA, Dec 22 2016 (IPS)

Coffee production provides a quarter of Uganda’s foreign exchange earnings and supports some 1.7 million smallholder farmers, but crop yields are being undermined by disease, pests and inadequate services from agricultural extension officers, as well as climatic changes in the East African country.

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), one of the world’s leading research partners in finding solutions for hunger, malnutrition, and poverty, is playing a key role in overcoming these challenges with simple, efficient practices like planting shade trees to protect coffee plants that require a cooler tropical climate.“The knowledge I’ve received towards adapting to farming that suits the changes in the climate, such as intercropping and planting shade trees, has transformed my life." --Coffee farmer Cathrine Ojara

Mujabi Yusuf, 41, a coffee farmer in the Nakaseke District of Central Uganda, told IPS prolonged droughts and unpredictable rainfall had been major setbacks.

“I have fed my family and sent them to school through coffee farming, but the weather has failed us,” says Yusuf. “Buying farming inputs such as fertilizer is a challenge because it’s expensive, yet for some time my farming production has been decreasing.”

Uganda has the largest population of coffee farmers in the world, yet 2 percent of its exports are not certified. It is Africa’s largest Robusta producer, accounting for 7 percent of global Robusta exports. The cost of production is low as a result of smallholder farmers using family labour and few inputs.

“Seasons have changed and become unpredictable. The rains sometimes come but for a short period. This has resulted in leaves wilting and eventually dying,” says Kironde Mayanja, a coffee farmer from Central Uganda.

“Drought stress, pests and diseases, poor quality of inputs, inadequate extension services and financial constraints inhibits farmers from adapting efficiently in Uganda,” says Elizabeth Kemigisha, IITA Communications Officer.

“There is a global awareness that if agricultural research for development is to have a positive impact on the beneficiaries of development efforts, all stakeholders in the process need to be on the same page. All stakeholders can all contribute to address the challenges of agricultural development and food security for all,” Kemigisha told IPS.

IITA generates evidence-based solutions such as a shade tree tool, farmer profiles and segmentation, new crop varieties, intercropping coffee and banana, as well as appropriate investment pathways for various stakeholders.

“Our research is used by non-governmental organisations and the private sector, and we work closely with governments, particularly National Agricultural Research Organisations (NARO). IITA has worked with HRNS as an implementing partner to conduct studies to enhance local knowledge on climate change adaptation in coffee growing,” Kemigisha said.

David Senyonjo, the Field Operations Manager in charge of climate change at HRNS, says his organization promotes and provides technical support for coffee production by working with smallholder coffee farmers.

“Research has helped to enhance farmers’ resilience to the adverse effects of climate change by providing them with the know-how to adapt to the changing climatic conditions,” says Senyonjo.

Cathrine Ojara, a female coffee farmer, is one such success story.

“The knowledge I’ve received towards adapting to farming that suits the changes in the climate, such as intercropping and planting shade trees, has transformed my life,” she says.

Ojara said she has been able to send her children to school and improve her household, as well as establish extra income through projects such as poultry.

Mayanja, who has an eight-acre farm, with the help of HRNS Africa has adopted new farming methods and his yields have increased from 20 to 50 percent.

“We have received training that has made me an expert in climate change and I have put to good use what I learnt to improve our crops. I have been practicing mulching, planting and managing shade trees, using fertilizers, digging water trenches and irrigation,” Mayanja told IPS.

Senyonjo noted that women face additional difficulties. “[They have a] lack of control over production resources like land, which in most cases is a prerequisite to having access to credit, hence women are less likely to use yield enhancing inputs like fertilisers,” he said.

“We don’t have our own land and due to time constraints and domestic responsibilities, we are unable to attend trainings on climate change,” Ojara told IPS.

While women do most of the farm labor, they only own 16 percent of the arable land in Uganda.

Hannington Bukomeko, a scientist with the IITA, said effective adaptation to climate change among coffee farmers requires low-cost and multipurpose solutions such as agroforestry, a practice of intercropping coffee with trees.

IITA has developed a shade tree advice tool, offering the best selection criteria for suitable tree species that provide various ecosystems services in different local conditions.

“Shade trees are one of the climate change adaptation practice we recommend for farmers. Shades modify the micro-environment so that it reduces the intensity of sunshine hitting the coffee plant as well as evaporation of water from the soil,” says Senyonjo.

Bukomeko explained that the tool helps coffee farmers to identify appropriate tree-selection.  “Farmers lack the knowledge on selecting the appropriate tree species, lack the tools and technical support to summarize such information to guide on-farm tree selection,” Bukomeko told IPS.

According to Bukomeko, the shade tree tool relies on local agro-forestry knowledge and scientific assessments of local on-farm tree diversity. “Users of the tool can identify their location in terms of country, province and ecological zone, select their desired ecosystem services and rank them according to preference. In return, the tool advises the user on the best tree options for a given location and ecosystem services,” says Bukomeko.

The shade tree tool was tested and validated for the studied regions, and found to serve the purpose of guiding on-farm tree selection for coffee farmers, according to IITA.

“Through government and other partners, the tool can be used by extension workers who will have mobile devices that can access the application tool,” says Kemigisha.

IITA has also conducted research on banana/plantain, cocoa, cowpea, maize, yam, and soy bean.

Nteranya Sanginga, Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Courtesy of IITA

By Nteranya Sanginga
IBADAN, Nigeria, Nov 18 2016 (IPS)

Harvesting the benefits of core agricultural research, which often bears on improved crop varieties and plant diseases, increasingly depends on the social and economic conditions into which its seeds are sown.

It is a sign of the times that Kanayo F. Nwanze, the president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development who started off as a cassava entomologist when ITTA posted him to Congo in the 1970s, was recently hailed for his efforts to create African billionaires.

That happened when youth from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture’s Agripreneur program gave Nwanze special lapel pins after his guest speech at our golden jubilee celebration kickoff.

Our institute, IITA, has evolved with the times. I trained in microbial ecology, yet while agronomy research –remains very important, it is initiatives like our Youth Agripreneur program that underscore how we are paying more and more attention to the need to boost youth employment, especially in Africa.

Creating decent employment opportunities, especially rural employment opportunities, is the critical challenge of our time in Africa. It is the lynchpin of any possible success in the noble goals of hunger and poverty eradication.

The most obvious reason for that is demographic: Africa’s population is set to roughly double to 2.5 billion by 2050. Many of them, perhaps the majority, have not been born. Income opportunities and healthy affordable food will be in unprecedented demand. Today’s youth play a huge role in making that possible.

While Africa’s cities are expected to grow, even that will depend on decent rural jobs being created. Agriculture is not only called upon to increase food output and productivity, but to create jobs and even bring in the best and brightest.

The prospects are, in theory, quite good. The world is increasingly turning to sustainable agriculture, and research shows that diversified farming systems are more challenging – experientially, cognitively and intellectually – which both cushions the drudgery and spurs innovation to reduce it.

Yet the challenge, as the population projections show, is formidable. Growing by around 300 million every decade means all sectors need a giant and focused developmental push. Perceiving agriculture as the rural sector from which one escapes will backfire.

That’s one of the reasons why entomologist-turned research administrator Dr Nwanze talks about the need to foster opportunities for youth.

The IITA Youth Agripreneur program has ambitious aims. It has expanded quickly around Nigeria and other African countries.

At the same time, IITA is partnering with IFAD and the African Development Bank for the Empowering Novel Agribusiness-Led Employment for Youth in African Agriculture Program, dubbed ENABLE. The goal is to create 8 million agribusiness jobs within five years for youth.

How can IITA’s research contribute?

Take our project on Sustainable Weed Management Technologies for Cassava Systems in Nigeria. As its name suggests, this is very much geared to primary agricultural work. But it is not simply about having more cassava but about having enough extra cassava, and having it consistently, to support the use of this African staple food in flour.

As such it fits into other IFAD projects aimed at boosting the cassava flour value chain in the region. Once the weeds have been sorted out, this initiative is designed to require large gains in food processing capacity.

IITA researchers have managed to bake bread using 40 percent cassava in wheat flour, so the potential for this initiative is very large. Notice that it immediately suggests a role for bakers, confectionary products and others. That means more jobs.

This relates back to Dr. Nwanze’s time as an IITA field researcher, as he was involved in a successful effort to combat and control the cassava mealy bug that saved the continent millions of dollars.

One of the big challenges for scientists today is to make research contribute to growth. Breakthroughs often lead to solutions of food-system problems and thus relieve hunger and food and nutrition insecurity. IITA showed that by developing two new maize hybrids that deliver higher levels of vitamin A and improve child nutrition.

But we can go further, steering these breakthroughs into veritable engines of growth.

To be sure, this requires improvements on many fronts, such as better freight transportation networks. But such investments pay themselves off when they serve a common goal. Africa’s need and duty is to make sure that agriculture is ready to deliver the goods for such a take-off.

All this by the way will not only boost Africa’s agricultural productivity, which is lagging, but will boost the productivity of research itself, leading to higher returns and, one hopes, attractive jobs with higher incomes and better facilities. That’s important for future microbial ecologists and cassava entomologists!

Excerpt:

Anna Gamusi is a banana and plantain grower on the outskirts of Kampala, Uganda. Anna has only recently started using pesticides after discovering worms affecting her crop. Credit: Palwesha Yusaf/IPS

By Lyndal Rowlands and Palwesha Yusaf
Kampala / New York, Mar 7 2016 (IPS)

Anna Gamusi, has been growing ‘matooke’ – plantains – for over 20 years. She originally learnt how to grow them in her home village of Busolwe in Eastern Uganda, but says that they are no longer grown there.

“I learnt how to plant matooke in my village, Busolwe in Butaleja district, but now there is nothing, no matooke in Busolwe,” she said. “Now we grow mostly cassava, sorghum millet and rice.” Gamusi said that the soil doesn’t support the growth of the matooke anymore.

“The soil has been exhausted, you need virgin land, very fertile soil and a lot of fertilizer, manure, to grow matooke, but now the soil has gotten tired,” she said.

She says that she has also recently had problems with her own matooke crops in Kampala, where she now lives. A worm has begun to affect the roots and make the fruit inedible, she says.

“(The worms) did not used to be there before, it is a recent thing,” she said, “it affects all types of plantain.”

These soil borne worms — or nematodes — are one of three types of diseases affecting plantains, Rony Swennen, who leads banana and plantain breeding in Africa for the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), told IPS.

Plantains, an important staple in Uganda, as well as through much of the tropical world, are susceptible to the same diseases currently threatening the world’s most popular banana the Cavendish.

“120 plantain varieties they all suffer from the same susceptibility to black sigatoka, nematodes and weevils, like the cavendish, so there’s no variation in response to the disease except that they are all extremely susceptible”, he said.

IITA have developed new hybrid varieties which are resistant to the common diseases effecting plantains, says Swennen, yet further research may also help to identify ways to protect the 120 varieties of plantains which remain susceptible.

“If you have the plantains growing around the houses so the small backyards they are suffering far less than when they are in the fields,” said Swennen.

“Possibly there is a nutrition content in the soil of the very rich back gardens which we have not properly understood,” he said.

The fruit, which is closely related to bananas, is an important source of starch and calories, and is also very rich in vitamin A.

Protecting the plantains is important because they help to fill the hunger gap in the off-season when other crops have already been harvested, says Swennen.

Unlike other crops plantains can be grown year round, they also have many other benefits for farmers, said Swennen, they are cheaper to grow “than any other crop in Africa”, and they also provide valuable shade for other crops.

“They create a micro-environment and therefore they allow the other crops to come into the farm,” he said.

The new varieties also address another important concern of farmers, the ability to grow plantains year in year out in the same field.

As Gamusi said, it has become difficult to grow plantains in her village because the fields become tired from the traditional crops, which are not perennial.

Swennen says that feedback from farmers has shown that they value perennial behaviour, and the ability to produce more plantains in a given period of time, over increasing crop yields.

The new hybrid varieties developed by IITA are perennial so they don’t need to be replanted each year, he says.

“The new plantain varieties also have very good ratooning, which leads to a faster crop cycling, meaning that farmers can produce more plantains in a given period of time,” he added.

The new hybrids were developed in Nigeria and have proved popular, and are even being trialled in the Caribbean and Colombia.

Researchers at the University of Agriculture in Nigeria say that plantains are eaten in many different ways, including as fried chips. They are also boiled, baked, pounded, roasted or sliced and turned into beer and baby food.

Gamusi says that it is now popular to fry or boil the plantains and eat them with groundnut sauce. Traditionally, she says the plantains were wrapped and steamed. “This is the traditional way to cook it called okusanika emere,” she says.

(End)

By Nteranya Sanginga
Ibadan, Nigeria, Feb 9 2016 (IPS)

Bolstering widespread prosperity in Africa is a key necessity if the world is to achieve its commitments to eradicate poverty and hunger by 2030.

Nteranya Sanginga, Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Courtesy of IITA

The sheer numbers indicate the scale of the challenge, and also strong hints as to the path to pursue.

The continent’s population has doubled in three decades, and while urbanization has moved at a blistering pace, it has not offset the number of people living in rural areas. Agricultural productivity has in fact increased faster than the global average, but not fast enough to resolve the paradox of the continent with a majority of the world’s unfarmed arable land remaining a net importer of food.

Those are the facts. And they highlight some basic principles: Africa has huge potential, but progress must include the rural and agricultural sectors. Smallholders contribute around 80 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s food supply, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and these are the critical enterprises that must be tapped to produce incomes, jobs and opportunities.

Much work is being done by governments and international organizations to shore up food security, through social protection and targeted agricultural development programs.

What we at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture think is essential is that people themselves have to be enabled to truly leverage their own and their continent’s potential.

While there is absolutely a role for public policies and large private-sector initiatives to make this happen, individual empowerment is also essential.

On the surface, that is obvious. While our core mandate is to be the lead research partner facilitating agricultural solutions for hunger and poverty in the tropics, our core vision is based on the idea that the connecting links for the broad array of initiatives around the land, not always perfectly coordinated, are entrepreneurs.

Family farmers are far and away the world’s largest investors in agriculture. Likewise, bottom-up business activity is the most efficient way to maximize efficiency.

That is why IITA is investing heavily in spreading our Business Incubation Platform, a model closely linked to our Youth Agripreneurs programs and aimed at accelerating the rollout of a series of useful services to be offered along the value chain. Our approach is particularly geared to fostering productive and profitable opportunities for youth, especially rural youth.

Not all youth, after all, can permanently migrate to cities; and if they were to do so, the countryside would suffer from an ageing work force.

Let me emphasize that the goal here is to make money, not just spend it! I jest, but only to hammer home the point that real sustainability requires viable networks that can carry research ideas to positive fruition.

Consider NoduMax, one of our Business Incubation Platform’s star developments. This is a legume inoculant for soybeans that allows them to access more nitrogen from the air – which ultimately also improves soil fertility – and thus lead to up to 450 kilograms of additional yield per hectare. It’s easy to use and affordable.

The technology was developed in our Business Incubation Platform in Ibadan. Now the time is ripe to produce it in larger quantities and for sales networks to spread the word. All of this is a form of sustainably intensifying agricultural production and creating greater food security, and its driving force does not involve touching a till or needing to own new land.

We’re also developing aflasafe strains to combat the aflatoxins that are such a scourge to major staple crops across Africa. Aflasafe is a natural biological control product developed by IITA and partners to fight aflatoxin contamination. Again, we incubate its development, but it can easily be transferred to the private sector and scaled up in multiple sites, meaning more jobs in construction, manufacturing and as laboratory analysts.

Both products also of course increase the food supply – through yields or reduction of losses – and thus catalyze further commercial opportunities.

Projects in the works include an innovative fish-pond system and food-processing activities for our mandate crops: cassava, soybean, cowpea, yam, plantain and banana.

Operating our business incubation platform also means individuals naturally network, meeting partners, potential funders and others useful to an array of enterprises, which may range from innovative risk-sharing or credit-supply services to the discovery and establishment of new markets for both inputs and specialty crops. These “externalities” are intrinsic to the whole idea that agriculture is not an ancestral destiny for the poor but an exciting frontier that can be conquered by Africa’s burgeoning demographic group: Youth.

While policy makers have a lot of work to do to create enabling environments for smallholder farmer families to prosper, those environments must also be populated, and that is what we are trying to do.

(End)

Excerpt:

By Nteranya Sanginga
IBADAN, Nigeria, Jan 5 2016 (IPS)

2016 is the International Year of Pulses, and we at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture are proud to be organizing what promises to be the landmark event, the Joint World Cowpea and Pan-African Grain Legume Research Conference.

Nteranya Sanginga, Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Courtesy of IITA

The March event in Zambia should draw experts from around the continent and beyond and offer an opportunity to share ideas into the edible seeds – cowpeas, common bean, lentils, chickpeas, faba and lima beans and other varieties – now enjoying their well-deserved 15 minutes of fame as nutritional superstars.

Pulses may look small, but they are a big deal.

Nutritionists consistently find that their low glycemic profiles and hefty fiber content help prevent and manage the so-called diseases of affluence, such as obesity and diabetes. And the protein they pack holds great potential to assist the world in managing its livestock practices in a more sustainable way, so that more people can enjoy better and more varied middle-income diets without placing excess strains on natural resources.

First and foremost, we must make more pulses available. Global per capita availability of pulses declined by more than a third in the four decades following the 1960s. But production has been growing sharply since 2005, especially in developing countries. Cowpeas have been one of the specific leaders of this trend, which has been marked by very welcome increases in yield as well as more hectares being planted.

Importantly, almost a fifth of all pulses today are traded, up almost three-fold from the 1980s, a pace that vastly outstrips the growing trade in cereals. Moreover, while North America is an exporting powerhouse, so is East Africa and Myanmar; more than half of all pulses exports now come from developing countries.

There is a serious opportunity to scale up these protean protein sources.

The good news for the millions of small family farmers is that this may be more about reclaiming a traditional virtue than revolution. After all, the prolific Arab traveler Ibn Battuta wrote about Bambara nuts fried in shea oil while on a trip to Mali and the Sahel back in 1352. The cowpea fritters, known as akara in Nigeria and often seen at roadside stands around West Africa, are their direct descendants, and the elder siblings of acarajés, declared part of the cultural heritage of Brazil – where they are eaten with shrimp – and where their Yoruba name survived the dreadful middle passage of the slave trade.

We at IITA have been cowpea champions for decades. Just this month Swaziland’s Ministry of Agriculture released to local farmers five new cowpea varieties we developed – seeds that mature up to 20 percent faster and yield up to four times more. That latest success comes in great measure, thanks to IITA’s gene bank, which holds, for the world community, 15,112 unique samples of cowpea hailing from 88 countries.

Why so many cowpeas? Our question is why aren’t more being grown!

After all, cowpea contains 25 percent protein, is an excellent conveyor of vitamins and minerals, adapts to a broad range of soil types, tolerates drought as well as shade, grows fast to combat erosion, and as a legume pumps nitrogen back into the soil. We can eat its main product – sometimes known as black-eyed peas – and animals enjoy the residual stems and leaves.

So why don’t we hear more about it? Well, perhaps the world wasn’t listening, but it’s about to have another chance.

Seriously, though, cowpeas come with problems. First of all, the plant is subject to assault at every point in its life cycle, be it from aphids, mosaic virus, pod borers, rival weeds, or the dreaded weevils that fight with fungi and bacteria to consume the seeds while in storage. These are things IITA scientists try to combat, through seed breeding or spreading innovative technologies such as the PICS bags that keep the weevils out.

There is much more to learn, about the plant, how to grow it, and how to bolster its role in the food system. I’lll wager that in the Year of Pulses much will be learned about processing, a critical phase, and one that is already allowing many Nigerian businesses to prosper. Perhaps big global food manufacturers will find new ways to grind pulses into their grain products to produce healthier foods with more complete proteins.

As for farming cowpea, the plant can serve to reduce weeds and fertilizer for the cash crops. It is also harvested before the cereal crops, offering food security and also flexibility, as farmers can choose to let the plants grow, reducing bean yields but increasing that of fodder.

The plant’s epicenter – genetically and today – is West Africa. Nigeria is the big producer, but is also the main importer from neighboring countries. Niger is the world’s biggest exporter. But its ability to deal with dry weather and help combat soil erosion might be of interest elsewhere, such as in Central America’s dry corridor.

(End)

Excerpt:

A farmer showing a banana affected by the Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW) whose signs include premature ripening of the bunch and rotting of the fruit. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Dec 14 2015 (IPS)

In one Ugandan dialect, ‘kiwotoka’, describes the steamed look of banana plants affected by the Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW) – a virulent disease that is pushing African farmers out of business and into poverty.

A bacterial pathogen affecting all types of bananas including sweet banana (Cavendish type) and plantain bananas, a staple for more than 400 million people in developing countries, BXW is so destructive that there is a 100 per cent crop loss where it strikes.

Smallholder farmers and the other actors in the banana value chain lose more than half a billion dollars in harvests and potential trade income across East and Central Africa. Signs of the disease first identified in Ethiopia more that 40 years ago, include wilting and yellowing of leaves with plants producing yellowish bacterial ooze, premature ripening of the bunch and rotting of the fruit.


Currently, there is no cure for BXW. It is spread by insects or using infected tools and has been controlled through a combination of methods. Farmers have been taught to remove and destroy affected plants, taking out the male bud which is the first point of attack by BXW, using sterilized farm tools and destroying single infected stems. But the disease has forced many smallholder farmers in Africa to abandon growing bananas, which hold the potential to improve food nutrition and income security. This is in line with the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed to by more than 160 global leaders in September 2015.

For farmer Lubega Ben from the Kayunga district in Uganda, a cure is long overdue. Each banana plant claimed by BXW on his 15-acre plot is one too many. Growing bananas for the past 40 years has helped Ben provide food and income for his family.

“Bananas are and have been very important for providing food and income for my family,” says Ben, who has been growing bananas for 40 years. “Though my children have all grown up and left home, bananas are what has seen them through their schooling and also fed them.”

Ben is convinced the 200 banana bunches he harvests each year could be more with better methods if the banana bacterial wilt is controlled.

From control to a cure
In addition to the package of efforts to control the disease, in 2007 researchers turned to science for a cure.

Scientists at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) headquartered in Ibadan, Nigeria in partnership with the National Agriculture Research Organisation (NARO) in Uganda are close to a breakthrough after more than eight years researching solutions to BXW.

In 2007, IITA and NARO, together with the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) and Taiwan-based Academia Sinica successfully engineered resistance of the African banana to BXW using genes from green pepper in the laboratory. Green pepper contains what researchers call ‘novel plant proteins’ that give crops enhanced resistance against deadly pathogens.

The genetically modified (GM) banana varieties with resistance to the banana bacterial wilt disease were developed using genetic engineering. Genetic modification refers to techniques used to manipulate the genetic composition of an organism by adding specific useful genes. These useful genes could make crops high-yielding, flood, drought or disease resistant – key traits important for smallholder farmers in Africa who are experiencing weather variability linked to climate change.

IITA biotechnologist, Leena Tripathi, has been part of the research team leading the fight against the Banana Xanthomonas Wilt.

“We are still a long way. The project has a plan for commercialisation of the GM bananas resistant to BXW in 2020 for use by farmers,” Tripathi told IPS. ” We have tested ten independent lines we picked from bigger trial of 65 lines and have found them to be completely resistant to BXW compared to the non transgenic plants for several generations in two different trials confirming durability of the trait.”

The transgenic varieties have undergone confined field trials in Uganda, a major grower and consumer of banana in Africa. The results are so encouraging that smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa could soon be growing the new varieties commercially soon, says Tripathi.

According to Tripathi, with the encouraging results so far, IITA and NARO are working on Matoke varieties which are preferred in Uganda and dessert varieties preferred in Kenya.

“With a few more trials starting next year, then meeting the biosafety, environmental safety and satisfying regulatory processes, we hope by 2020 to get approvals and deregulation for commercialization and dissemination to farmers,” Tripathi said.

Raising the Africa Banana Export Potential
Developing GM banana cultivars resistant to BXW is seen as economically viable because of the banana’s sterile character and long growth period which have been a challenge in developing a resistant banana through conventional breeding.

“Genetic engineering is one of the most important crop breeding tools in the 21st century,” Daniel Otunge, Regional Coordinator of the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB) told IPS, adding that biotechnology has given breeders a faster, cleaner and certain way of producing crop varieties resilient to climate change, resistant to pests and diseases and that are nitrogen and salt-use efficient.

“Africa should be celebrating these crops because they provide us with the best chance to be more food secure and nutritionally robust,” said Otunge.

Researchers estimate that farmers will adopt GM bananas by up to 100 per cent once it is released, with an expected initial adoption rate of 21 to 70 per cent. The financial benefits could range from 20 million to 953 million dollars across target countries where the disease incidence and production losses are high, says research study, Ex-Ante Economic Impact Assessment of Genetically Modified Banana Resistant to Xanthomonas Wilt in the Great Lakes Region of Africa published in the PLOS ONE Journal in September 2015.

Concerned about the march of BXW, nine Uganda farmers got together in 2011 and formed a non-profit community-based organization, the Kashekuro Banana Innovation Platform (KABIP), to specifically control the pathogen on their plantations. More than 300 farmers in the Sheema District lost their plantations and 200 others were forced to replant or open new fields when BXW hit. They hope a solution lies in GM bananas.

“Our farmers have not been exposed to GM bananas. Therefore, we need to try them and test whether they can be a solution,” says Anthlem Mugume, the coordinator of KABIP representing more than 2000 farmers, told IPS.

Arguably one of the world’s favourite fruit, banana are the forth most important staple crop after maize, rice, wheat, and cassava with an annual world production estimated at 130 million tonnes, according to the African Agricultural Technology Foundation. Nearly one-third of this production comes from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where the crop provides more than 25 per cent of the food energy requirements for over 100 million people.

East Africa produces and consumes the most bananas in Africa, with Uganda being the world’s second largest producer after India.

According to the WorldTop Export, a website tracking major exports, banana exports by country totaled 11 billion dollars, a 32.8 per cent overall increase in 2014. A cleaner, healthier banana, offers Africa a sweet opportunity to break into the global export markets, reduce poverty and boost business for smallholder farmers.

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Women provide 80 percent of Uganda's agricultural labour yet gender issues are not articulated in the country's Agriculture and Climate Change policies. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Uganda, Nov 26 2015 (IPS)

Climate Change needs to be at the top of the country’s agenda, according to a project examining Uganda’s policies. It says the country hasn’t paid enough attention to climate change in national development and agriculture plans and this needs to be turned around before it’s too late.

The Policy Action for Climate Change Adaptation (PACCA) project that seeks to inform and link policies and institutions from the national to the local level for the development and adoption of climate-resilient food systems in Uganda says the policies are scattered and need harmonisation.

Edidah Ampaire, the Coordinator of the Policy Action for Climate Change Adaptation, told IPS that apart from lack of harmonisation of policies at the national and institutional levels, many of Uganda’s policies need to be reviewed to incorporate climate change and agriculture.

“Most of the policies were developed when climate change was not an issue. So they tend to focus on just environment although implicitly they talk about sustainable management of natural resource use, which are also interventions that help farmers to be climate resilient but they don’t explicitly talk about climate change,” said Ampaire.

The PACCA project, led by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), also works in Tanzania. Asked about the situation in Tanzania, Ampaire said Tanzania is not so different from Uganda. “The situation in in Tanzania could be even worse if compared what is happening in Uganda especially at local or community levels,” she said.

Ampaire said evidence in Uganda and Tanzania shows that at the moment the policies are not only fragmented and poorly implemented, but the various actors are also insufficiently coordinated and their roles are not clear.

In Uganda, policies such as the National Climate Change Policy of 2013, the National Agriculture Policy (2013) and the National Development Plan, and the Uganda Gender Policy of 1997 were analysed.

One of the striking findings according to Ampaire was that all those policies did not articulate gender issues in climate change adaptation measure.

“What we found within the policies themselves is that they don’t sufficiently cover gender issues. They don’t make particular provisions for particular groups. And I think that is what brings problems especially at lower level,” Ampaire told IPS. “They should put strategies that address those inequalities amongst different groups like youth, women. Because in Uganda, eighty per cent of agricultural labor is provided by women but they are not included anywhere and they don’t control any resources,” She told IPS.

Similarly, for the case of Tanzania, Ampaire said the Initial National Communication (INC) and the National Adaptation Plan of Action (NAPA) developed by the Government of Tanzania for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) did not incorporate gender considerations.

She said from Ugandan perspective, the recommendations were based findings of a study that had looked at the gaps in national policies and strategic plans in Uganda. The study provides recommendations for improving gender inclusiveness in Climate Smart Agriculture adoption and adaptation planning.

Ampaire told IPS that Climate Smart Agriculture must be all inclusive and not benefit one group at the expense of the other.

Finding of another study by PACCA in Uganda on gender and climate change found that gender and climate change issues are generally treated as cross-cutting issues, not given priority or a clear allocated budget. “Gender mainstreaming in most of the reviewed policies is an addendum rather than an integral aspect of the respective policies,” reads part of the report entitled “Gender and Climate Change in Uganda: Effects of Policy and Institutional Frameworks.”

“The way in which gender issues are approached in agriculture-related policies and strategies in Uganda is diverse and not homogenized. There is need for stronger cross-sector coordination and accountability since gender mandates for respective interventions fall under different ministries and agencies,” says the report co-authored by Edidah Ampaire, Wendy Okolo and Jennifer Twyman.

In the Masaka and Rakai Districts in the south of Uganda over ninety per cent of the people depend on subsistence agriculture. Most farming is on sloping land between hilltops and valley swamps with the average farm size between 2 and 3 acres.

Here population pressure is resulting in encroachment both on the riverine swamps which feed the Nile system, and also steeper slopes and watersheds. The area’s two rainy seasons have become less predictable and weaker over recent years.

Farmers face problems of water availability and depleted soils, and need to make better use of natural precipitation but the national and local environment and climate change policies are silent about the specific needs of this area.

Andrew Nadiope, is a climate change expert from Uganda’s Ministry of Local Government. His ministry has been working with PACCA to analyse policies in under the decentralised climate-change response. “We have realised that when we plan, we need to plan with climate change in minds because once we document some of the peculiar needs of specific areas, then adaptation measures can be more targeted,” Nadiope told IPS.

Rakai District located in the southwestern part of the Central Region of Uganda is water stressed and groundwater in the district often has excessive iron concentrations. The district with a population of close to half a million people faces severe water shortage. The local administration with support from central government constructed over 1300 shallow water points like boreholes but many of those have been non-functional for more than five years and are considered abandoned because the water is too salty.

Jude Sewankambo a farmer in Kagamba in Bugamba Sub County told IPS that the construction of water points was a typical case of poor planning. He explained that communities like his were not consulted when those water points were put up. “We ended up wasting money on ground water projects and we would have gone for options like rainwater harvesting,” he said.

He said his wife and children have subsequently been forced to take over a two kilometer journey for fresh water from the river.

Sewankambo told IPS that he and his wife were taught about how to construct rain water harvesting tanks but he noted that constructing such tanks required a lot of money. “If you want a ten cubic meter water tank, you pay close to 800 dollars, for rain bags of one thousand to one thousand five hundred litres, you need about 200 dollars. Many of the people here don’t have that money,” he said.

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Nteranya Sanginga, Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Courtesy of IITA

By Nteranya Sanginga
IBADAN, Nigeria, Nov 23 2015 (IPS)

Finding a way to allow youth to contribute their natural and ample energies to productive causes is increasingly the touchstone issue that will determine future prosperity.

It is a tragic irony that today’s youth, despite being the most educated generation ever, struggle to be included.

That’s true in advanced countries. But it is even more true in Africa, where almost two-thirds of the jobless are young adults, whose ranks swell by 10 to 12 million new members each year. The challenge is staggering in scale: Today there are 365 million Africans aged 15 to 35, and over the next 20 years that figure will double.

There is no magic wand. It is youth themselves who must find a solution.

Everyone else – governments, international organizations, the private sector, social groups and parents – has a huge stake in their success and so must not stand in the way. Normally one hears about the need to help cast in elaborate theories based on the need for redistribution. But the truth is, we need a step change.

That’s the spirit the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) is adopting with our “agripreneur” coaching programmes. These aim to use self-help groups so that people can indeed help themselves. As I bluntly told a group of youth in Uganda, we will provide support in the form of technology, knowledge and advocacy, but the real activity has to be done by themselves. Another message was: “be aggressive.”

It is well known that Africa is a vast land of family farmers, many living in rural areas and regularly struggling with poverty and hunger. Figures can also be easily made to show how most family farms are exercises in subsistence, and don’t always succeed without external help.

Family farming is a way of life, to be sure. But that does not mean, when you really think about it, that it cannot be done as a business. Doing so would represent a change, but the time has come. Making agriculture a commercial trade offers a set of new tools to entice talented youth to a sector we all know they tend to run away from.

As Akinwumi Adesina, formerly Nigeria’s agriculture minister and now the president of the African Development Bank, likes to say, “Africa’s future millionaires and billionaires will make their money from agriculture.”

And it is quite likely that youth, being in a proverbial rush, will accelerate the transformations that will lead to better lives than a mad rush to cities where employment prospects aren’t keeping pace with urban population. Moreover, agriculture has been the weak link in terms of productivity growth across the continent – that means there is an enormous upside to doing it better.

Knowledge needs pollinators. While extension services are excellent and should be upgraded, young people are natural communicators when they think something is cool and useful. That’s what agriculture has to be.

IITA’s agripreneur campaign hinges on our version of a Silicon Valley hackathon. Incubators are created to allow youth to learn and exchange ideas of a practical nature – about how to keep accounts, new crops and farming techniques, the myriad possibilities of agricultural value chains that include roles for seed traders, food processors, weather forecasters, insurance salespeople, marketing specialists.

One of our agripreneur “interns” told me that what he took away was that success is not in fact all down to money. An enterprise really needs ideas, of course, and the ability to plan.

To be clear, his enthusiasm – as so many of our alumni say – was about the possibility of enterprise. Call it agribusiness. Agricultural commodity value chains provide just that, a series of transactional opportunities that work to improve efficiency for all and reward the talented. This is a major catalyst for youth. After all, it opens the door for the professionalization of agriculture.

To be sure, the agribusiness model crucially requires inclusive efforts to make sure credit is available to youth, to assure that gender equity becomes an operational assumption rather than just a goal, and a host of public goods including scientific research. Yet it begins with a changed mind set.

People must learn how to apply for a loan. Bankers always say they wish to fund on the basis of a business plan rather than collateral. It is time to put that to the test. IITA’s focus on agripreneurs is a well-placed bet on the idea that nobody learns faster than youth.

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Excerpt:

Laboratory Technician, Herbert Mtopa collects biological samples at a clinic in Zimbabwe's Shamva District under a CultiAF project to assess exposure of women and children to aflatoxins. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, Nov 20 2015 (IPS)

Aflatoxin contamination is a growing threat to trade, food and health security in sub-Saharan Africa, where smallholder farmers are challenged by food production and now climate change, researchers said.

Aflatoxins are toxic and cancer causing poisons produced by certain green mould fungus that naturally occurs in the soil. The poisons have become a serious contaminant of staple foods in sub-Saharan Africa including maize, cassava, sorghum, yam, rice, groundnut and cashews.

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), an international not for profit organisation based in Nigeria has led pioneering research in reducing mycotoxin contamination in Africa through rolling out innovative approaches.

According to IITA researchers, exposure to mycotoxins is an important constraint to improving the health and well-being of people in Africa where high levels of aflatoxin contamination have been confirmed. Many smallholder farmers fail to prevent contamination during production and storage of their crops because they lack cost-effective ways to determine the poisons.

Sub-Saharan Africa is annually losing more than 450 million dollars in trade revenue of major staples, particularly maize, and groundnuts as a result of contamination from aflatoxins, researchers told IPS. The health bill as a result of people unknowingly eating contaminated food runs into millions of dollars in a region with over burdened health facilities.

Africa is at risk of toxins which are linked to suppressed immunity, liver cancer in humans and stunting in children. UNICEF says 40 per cent of children in sub-Saharan Africa are stunted or have low height for their age which can be associated with impaired brain development.

Researchers say high temperatures and drought conditions favour the growth of fungus, while poor farming practises and food insecurity status of many people in sub-Saharan Africa increase their exposure to aflatoxin contamination. In addition high soil moisture content at harvest attributed to off-season rains as a result of climate variability increases contamination.

“Climate change is indeed predicted to have a profound effect on aflatoxin contamination of food and feed crops,” said Joao, adding that, “Consequently, any reduction in precipitation level or increment in temperature is expected to make aflatoxin problem more acute.”

In 2009, the IITA, the African Agriculture Technology Foundation (AATF), United States Department of Agriculture –Agriculture Research Service (USDA-ARS) and other partners developed an indigenous biological control technology, named AflaSafe to mitigate aflatoxin contamination in maize and groundnuts.

Aflasafe is a mixture of four non-aflatoxin producing strains of the green mould fungus (Aspergilllus flavus) of native origin. The formulated Aflasafe product is then broadcast in the field where it grows and prevents the toxin producing strains from colonizing, multiplying and contaminating crops.

Focused aflatoxin biocontrol research in Africa first started in Nigeria where Aflasafe is today a fully registered commercial product. Country specific products have been developed and introduced in Kenya, Burkina Faso, Senegal, The Gambia and Zambia.

In all the six countries where the bio control products have been tested since 2008 to date, IITA said farmers have consistently achieved up to 99 per cent reduction in aflatoxin contamination by using Aflasafe in maize and groundnut fields.

“The benefits attributed to using the Aflasafe bio control product for mitigating aflatoxin contamination far outweighs its cost,” said Juliet Akello, a plant pathologist and member of the IITA team in Zambia under Aflatoxin Biocontrol. “Exposure to aflatoxin through consumption of contaminated foods is a combination of unawareness, poverty and poor enforcement of standards by governments.”

Globally aflatoxins are a known threat that have been reduced thanks to investment in food safely controls. Smallholder farmers in Africa rely on a combination of traditional storage methods and use of pesticides to prevent weevils. However, these methods are not always pest proof leading to them losing a bulk of the stored crop by the time they need it most.

Other innovative approaches are being tried in Africa to curbing pre and post harvest losses in addition to eliminating aflatoxin contamination using Aflasafe.

In Zimbabwe, researchers at the University of Zimbabwe and Action Contre la Faim are working with communities in two districts to investigate whether improved storage can reduce aflatoxin contamination in local maize grain. The two-year research, supported by the Cultivate Africa’s Future (CultiAF) programme, an initiative funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IRDC) and the Australian Centre for International Agriculture Research, will also assess levels of exposure suffered by women and infants. The project has introduced a metal silos and thick plastic “super bags,” allowing maize to be stored in air-tight conditions.

Farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are challenged by lack of drying equipment, with most maize and groundnut farmers keeping their crops in fields to dry out before harvest. Sometimes, they store it before it has dried properly, making it vulnerable to aflatoxin attack.

Exports of agricultural commodities particularly peanuts from Africa have declined by as much as 20 per cent over the past two decades. The commodities have been rejected after failing to meet the European Union’s market regulations on aflatoxin levels in foods for human consumption, a serious hurdle to international trade.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, only 15 African countries had regulatory limits for aflatoxins by 2013.

In Zambia, for example, nearly 100 per cent of the peanut butter brands sampled between 2012 and 2014 from supermarkets and local markets were found to contain unsafe levels of aflatoxins above 20ppb. Less than 30 per cent of milled groundnut flour collected from markets and homesteads had levels within the 4 ppb set by the EU as safe limits.

While in Kenya, considered the number one aflatoxin hotspot in East Africa, nearly 200 died due to acute aflatoxicosis after eating aflatoxin contaminated maize between 2004 and 2006. About 2 million maize bags were found unfit for human consumption due to high levels of aflatoxins in 2010.

IITA’s programme manager for Aflasafe in Malawi, Dr. Joseph Atehnkeng, said between 40 and 100 per cent of groundnut based-commodities in Malawi, were found to contain unsafe toxin levels.

Former net groundnut exporters; Mozambique, Senegal, The Gambia, Zambia and Malawi have lost lucrative markers in the EU, the United States and South Africa because of high aflatoxin levels in their commodities, says IITA scientist and plant pathologist, Dr. Joao Augusto.

Mozambique has since the late 70s, recorded a high prevalence of liver cancer in the southern part of the country which has been associated with consumption of aflatoxin contaminated food, especially groundnuts.

According to the Partnership for Aflatoxin Control (PACA), a regional project formed in 2009 to minimise and ultimately eradicate aflatoxins using proven and innovative strategies, there is a need for effective aflatoxin regulation policies and country-specific standards.

Researcher, Chapwa Kasoma from Zambia, warns that left unchecked, aflatoxin contamination could retard development in sub-Saharan Africa.

“If we want to overcome poverty in all its forms; combating not only the inadequacy of food but also addressing any forms of malnutrition we need to be worried,” Chapwa, also a field supervisor with Pioneer DuPont, told IPS. “Being potent carcinogens, aflatoxins are clearly a nutrition problem.”

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Sometimes the best solutions can appear to be so simple that it’s hard to imagine why they weren’t invented centuries ago.

Credit: Purdue University

Take the so-called PICS bags, big plastic storage sacks made of triple-lined plastic that can hold up to 90 kilograms of cowpeas or other farm produce. They cut agricultural waste and boost the incomes of rural smallholders, and go for around 2 dollars apiece.

Much of the credit for this recent innovation is due to Larry Murdock, the Purdue University (US) professor who invented the first Purdue Improved Cowpea Storage bags – the “C “in the acronym now stands for “Crop” as the latest generation are designed for other farm outputs.

But PICS also remind us that implementing the best ideas requires more than a touch of genius, but also a fair amount of tenacity and legwork on the ground and in the fields.

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) is working on that, and has conducted more than 1,500 demonstrations of the product in more than 25 states across Nigeria.

The IITA is “the main source of information” for what is not such a simple product after all, said Tahirou Abdoulaye, a Niger-born economist who is IITA’s project coordinator and, fittingly, earned his doctoral degree at Purdue.

The case for the PICS bag is compelling. By hermetically sealing dried produce, they keep the insect threat at bay. That in turn revolutionizes the potential value of the food that farmers grow, as they face lower risks of losses from voracious weevils who can easily destroy half a crop in less than two months when traditional storage methods are used. With their crop better protected, smallholders can assure they have enough to eat at home and can actually command higher prices for what they take to market because they are no longer forced to sell into seasonal gluts out of fear that their goods would spoil. An early analysis found that cowpea farmers raised their income by almost 50 per cent by using the bags.

IITA has been promoting PICS, helped by a host of partners and the Gates Foundation, for seven years now.

One of the issues for PICS bags is that they need to be manufactured locally. That is being organized in a slew of African countries, most recently Rwanda. In Nigeria, the company Lela Agro has churned out more than a million PICS bags. But even once that process has been licensed and authorized and built, the supply chain still needs a distribution network.

Use of PICS bags jumps when there is a local dealer, Abdoulaye said. He can be surreally precise: In Nigeria, if there is a dealer within seven kilometres, farmers use the bags. That means a lot of recruiting.

IITA holds workshops to train vendors about the technology, builds capacity among existing networks of extension agents, leverages media publicity and holds scores of direct demonstrations at the farmer level.

These, too, require time. Typically, one of Abdoulaye’s staff will go back to a volunteer after two months and arrange for the farmer’s produce to be opened after two months. At that point he has clinched the sale, so to speak. Losses of cowpeas – also known as blackeyed peas and a product of which Abdoulaye’s home country is the world’s second-largest exporter – are negligible, whereas they were typically above 20 per cent using traditional granaries or simpler polythene sacks.

There are extra benefits, as well. For example, farmers can use pesticides, both during the growing season and in treating their harvest upon drying. The price of such chemicals can easily run to 10 dollars a tonne, which amounts to half the price of a PICS bag that will typically last two or three growing seasons.

Abdoulaye is shepherding IITA’s efforts across West Africa. PICS bags are gradually spreading around the entire continent, and their deployment is being fined tuned for more crops, ranging from peanuts, sorghum, bambara groundnuts, cassava chips and corn.

The IITA is a non-profit research organization that for almost 50 years has focused on hunger, malnutrition and poverty. The PICS project is an example of how all three can be tackled in an integrated way.

First, food loss rates – the bane of sub-Saharan Africa – are reduced. Second, cowpeas and similar crops – around half the region’s dry beans are grown for sale – are high-protein foods, greatly boosting affordable nutritional prospects. Lastly, secure storage methods allow small farmers to choose their time of sale of surplus produce, thereby enabling them to wait for the optimal market price.

That last factor can have dramatic impact in times of drought, and in ordinary times raises farmer revenue by 10 to 15 per cent, according to Corinne Alexander, an agricultural economist at Purdue. Many African markets also offer a quality premium for beans that have no holes and have not been discolored by other anti-pest treatments.

Another potential benefit is that the bags may help combat aflatoxin, a sneaky fungus that can rip into harvests and eventually weaken human immune systems. Intensive empirical studies have recently shown strong evidence that the air-tight bags impede mold growth and aflatoxin accumulation for corn in the storage phase.

Meanwhile, IITA is also rolling out AlfaSafe, a biological control product that basically crowds out the harmful Aspergillus molds that produce aflatoxins, and has set up a low-cost factory in Nigeria to make it.

Perhaps more importantly, technology adoption such as using the bags entails a lot of collateral learning, which IITA is designed to provide. By knowing more about their problems, rural smallholders will doubtless develop better ways to combat them.

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