Jose Ricardo is one of the few sweet potato breeders in Mozambique. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
ACCRA, Ghana, Jan 2 2014 (IPS)

For the few plant breeders in Africa like Vivian Oduro, working for an international research institution is an obvious choice, with prestige and benefits any agricultural scientist would find hard to decline.

But Oduro – a sweet potato breeder – is staying put. She will use her expertise in Africa for the farmers with whom she now shares a special bond because she understands their challenges intimately."We have to transform African agriculture by training our scientists who can solve the problems of food crops, and by training them well in Africa for Africa." -- Prof. Eric Danquah

A PhD student at the prestigious West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI) in the Ghanaian capital, Oduro is part of a group of new thinkers in crop breeding who see fresh opportunities in Africa.

“Working overseas is attractive, but so is Africa when you understand what needs to be done,” Oduro told IPS.

She said her passion for breeding sweet potatoes has led her to develop 30 different strains after consulting smallholder farmers in Ghana. By end of 2014, Oduro anticipates the completion of field trials leading to the development of 50 varieties for multiplication and release to farmers.

“When you handle a crop for a long time, you develop love for it. I call my progenies my babies and would not want to leave this for something else or go elsewhere. My training made me better understand the challenges faced by African farmers, something I could have missed had I trained elsewhere,” said Oduro.

Accelerating Africa’s food production has brought more farmland into play, but often without a matching increase in crop yields, a problem scientists blame on climate change, low adaptation of high-yield crop varieties, poor soils and more importantly, lack of plant and seed breeders with an intimate knowledge of what Africa needs, says Prof. Eric Danquah, the director of WACCI.

Established in 2007 to train plant breeders over a 10-year period following a grant from AGRA, WACCI is aiming to become the foremost centre for the training of plant breeders for Africa. It may not be far from its goal, having made history by graduating eight PhD students in a single discipline – plant breeding – on the same day in July 2013. Currently, 54 students are at various stages of PhD training in plant breeding.

“We need political will to get the training right. We cannot adopt a partisan approach to this because this is too important to toy with. We have for too long paid lip service to agriculture,” said Danquah. “Our scientists can think like any other plant breeders anywhere in the world and a number of people around the world are looking for collaborators to access grants. Our scientists are there because they are strategic thinkers and team players, and are results-driven.”

Data on the number of plant breeders in Africa is outdated. Ideally, Danquah said, for every crop in every agro-ecological region, a country requires two well-trained plant breeders who can use both conventional and modern techniques to develop new crops.

It costs up to 140,000 dollars to train a plant breeder to PhD level (a four-year programme) at WACCI, a cost Danquah said has been criticised as too high but is justified in keeping to high standards that produce high-quality scientists.

Africa, Danquah told IPS, will continue to lose its few seed breeders to foreign institutions at the expense of its agricultural productivity and competitiveness unless there is investment in the training and retention of plant and seed technology specialists.

“We have to transform African agriculture by training our scientists who can solve the problems of food crops, and by training them well in Africa for Africa,” Danquah told IPS, lamenting that while African governments have agreed to invest at least one percent of their budgets in agriculture, many have not followed through.

“Unless we invest at least one percent of our budgets into science and development to train plant breeders Africa needs urgently, we are bound to fail,” Danquah said, calling for national research funds instituted by law and governed by independent apolitical institutions and not by politicians.

WACCI, recently named a beneficiary of the World Bank’s Africa Centres of Excellence project, has launched a 30-million-dollar endowment to bankroll the future training of plant breeders in Africa.

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has for more than five years funded more than 500 MSc and PhD students in various agricultural disciplines in 15 universities in Sub-Saharan Africa.

AGRA’s president, Jane Karuku, said the graduates have to date released 66 improved varieties of beans, cowpeas, maize, cassava, sorghum and groundnuts. Using a north-south, south-south collaboration approach, the training has ensured scientists are familiar with local tastes and preferences to develop crop varieties suitable for farmers and consumers.

“The benefits of this approach are manifold. It is considerably cheaper than it is to send the scientists over to Europe or to the U.S., ” Karuku said, adding “These students are well-versed in local problems and can offer viable as well as sustainable solutions, be it crop breeding, soil health management, policy or enterprise development.”

AGRA has invested in a programme to increase the number of crop breeders in Africa. Mozambique is one of the beneficiary countries, where Jose Ricardo is one of the few sweet potato breeders. Ricardo has helped develop and release 15 sweet potato varieties suited for Mozambique, where sweet potatoes are the third most important crop after maize and cassava.

According to AGRA’s inaugural Africa Agriculture Status Report (AASR), launched in September 2013 in Mozambique, there is a serious lack of data on existing agricultural skills capacity in Africa. The AASR seeks to provide a more accurate picture of agriculture statistics in Africa. The report shows that Africa has the lowest research capacity of any part of the world, with only 70 researchers per million population compared to 2,640 researchers and 4,380 researchers in North America and Japan, respectively.

“It is not only the numbers that are needed, the quality of scientists has to improve to match the changes in the agriculture landscape,” the report noted.

Maize breeder Pedro Fato, who works for the Agricultural Research Institute of Mozambique (IIAM), returned to Mozambique after earning his PhD because he believes his skills are critical for his country. Fato has worked on a maize variety tolerant to diseases and limited water, in a nation where droughts and floods are a recurrent problem for farmers.

Working conditions on Kenya’s flower farms do not always meet international labour regulations. Credit: Suleiman Mbatiah/IPS

By David Njagi
NAIVASHA, Kenya, Jun 10 2013 (IPS)

Catherine Mumbi knows the difficulties of working in Kenya’s flower sector. She was fired as a casual worker at a flower farm after taking time off to recover from complications of the liver. But that was just the start of her problems.

“When I felt better I went back but my superior demanded that I have sex with him to keep my job,” says Mumbi, who had taken two months off while being hospitalised for her illness. “I declined.”

“The following morning a watchman knocked on my door with a letter saying my job was over and that I should immediately vacate the company’s compound,” Mumbi tells IPS. “I have been jobless since then…. I am surviving on the generosity of well wishers since December 2011.”

There is a possibility that Mumbi’s job could have also caused her illness in the first place.

IPS visited a few flower farms in Naivasha, in Kenya’s Rift Valley Province, where access is restricted and the grounds are monitored by security guards. Here, for hundreds of workers like Mumbi, a healthy rose means a shortened lifespan.

Inside the greenhouses measuring up to eight by 60 metres, all is quiet except for the occasional supervisor barking orders. The plucking and trimming goes on without a fuss as heaps of newly harvested roses keep piling up.

Even the smell of freshly-sprayed chemicals does not appear to interrupt the order and discipline in the farms that have sprung up in Naiposha, a once patchy terrain 30 kilometres away from the town of Naivasha.

According to Charles Kasuku, a social worker in Naivasha involved in a previous audit on the working conditions in Kenya’s flower sector, there are instances where the labels of chemicals are changed to disguise them from being identified as toxic.

For example, campaigning for the phasing out of methyl bromide, a highly toxic poison, began as early as 1998. But there is evidence that the chemical is still currently being used.

“This explains why incidences of patients with strange diseases are being reported in health centres around flower farms,” he tells IPS. “Recently, a former worker died from what doctors said was chemical complications.”

Experts from the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) told IPS the most prevalent diseases caused by chemical exposure include liver problems, respiratory complications and cancer, as well as sexual incapacitation.

“But the severe effects of these exposures could come many years later after workers have been sacked from their jobs,” Dr. Mohamed Karama of KEMRI tells IPS. “People should not work for extended hours in these greenhouses.”

The extent of human rights abuses in Kenya’s flower farms is no anomaly, more than a decade after civil society raised concerns. Documentaries have even been made capturing the trail of cruelty. A recent documentary, “Women of Flowers,” indicates that workers in the sector are so poorly paid that they cannot afford a hospital bill.

A parliamentary debate last year indicated that workers are paid about 47 dollars a month, way below the 118 dollars that Kenya’s constitution recommends for casual labourers.

Those working on the farms are afraid of speaking out for fear of losing their jobs and livelihoods. In addition, a report released this May by Workers Rights Watch, a registered association of workers, shop stewards and key leaders in Kenya, says 60 percent of female workers in the flower sector face sexual harassment.

The Horticultural Development Authority estimates there are more than 70,000 women working in the sector. The Kenya Flower Council (KFC) claims the sector employs close to 100,000 people. According to the KFC, small-scale farmers account for about 2,500 farms, while there are more than 150 medium and large farms.

Horticulture is one of the top foreign-exchange earners for Kenya and the KFC estimates that the industry generates about one billion dollars in earnings annually. But for thousands of women who work here, the flow in profits means suffering in silence.

Legal experts say the International Labour Organization (ILO) binds governments to protect its working force from industrial excesses and abuses.

At the same time, trade movements are backed by the Kenyan Directorate of Occupational Safety and Health Services, which is expected to empower trade unions to rally for the welfare of the worker.

“Labour inspections do not happen anymore,” Mary Kambo, a programme officer with Community Based Development Services, tells IPS while commenting on the implementation of the ILO Labour Inspection Convention.

The permanent secretary in the Ministry of Labour, Beatrice Kituyi, however, says such allegations are misplaced since records showing progress that Kenya has been making in implementing the convention can be accessed on the Ministry’s website.

“Kenya is on track in terms of implementing the ILO convention,” Kituyi tells IPS. “A lot of what we have done can be accessed at our website.”

Meanwhile, some unionists are hopeful that rallying for the welfare of workers in Kenya is not a lost cause.

The KFC also says it has rallied its members, who are mainly large-scale flower farmers, to comply with health and environmental standards.

According to Jane Ngige, KFC chief executive officer, flower farmers are expected to follow requirements such as trade, statutory, environmental, health, safety, traceability and social standards as enshrined in the Council’s Code of Practice and the Fair Trade set of rules for a safe working environment and fair working conditions.

“We do not allow farms associated with human rights abuses to be members of the council,” she tells IPS. “They have to comply with the ethical standards.”

But Benjamin Tilapei, a civil activist, tells IPS: “The flower council is only concerned about the rich producers and not the struggling poor working on the farms.”