A
farm manager and research discuss hybrid maize varieties in an
experimental plot. The SARD-SC project looks to enhance the productivity
of maize, wheat, cassava and rice throgh technology, capacity building
and project management.
Did you know that Africa consumes 24 million tons of rice yearly, and only 11 million of them are produced in Africa?
Africa has always been held back by issues
of food sustainability, and the problem has remained large in the mind
of its leaders. With governmental and non-governmental organisations
only tentatively getting into these issues and with no concrete
solutions in sight, the issue of food sustainability has continued to
cause unrest amongst Africans.
With the Support to Agricultural Research for Development of Strategic Crops in Africa (SARD-SC) plan, in collaboration with the African Development Bank (AfDB) and CGIAR institutions, Africans are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
SARD-SC has launched a project to enhancing
productivity and income, focusing specially on Africa’s four major
crops: maize, wheat, cassava and rice.
Relying on several hubs in African countries
for each of the different crops, SARD-SC aims to drastically reducing
the number of small–scale farmers living in poverty in Africa.
Developments in new varieties of these crops, like stress-tolerant wheat
that can stand climatic conditions in African countries like Nigeria,
Sudan and Ethiopia, are being actively promoted.
Also, SARD-SC is behind the innovative idea
of creating a wiki for farmers to be run by journalists, where farmers
can get information relating to agricultural issues and also have some
of their problems answered. A similar initiative is the “nutrient
manager,” an application for farmers that gives pre-season
recommendations as to fertilization and helps distribute information and
planning advice. The nutrient manager, says SARD-SC, has the to
increase agricultural produce by thirty percent while promoting the more
efficient use of agricultural inputs.
With SARD-SC continuing to work on their
four key components–agricultural technology and innovation generation
technology and innovation dissemination, capacity building and project
management– for Africa’s four priority crops, the continent is surely
not far away from feeding itself.
Blogpost by Emmanuel Ohiomoba, a social media reporter for AASW6.
Photo: A. Wangalachi (CIMMYT)
