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Some 40,000 families in Burkina Faso, Niger and Senegal will benefit from a new five-year plant breeding program funded by the European Union and coordinated in West Africa by CORAF and other key partners.

The announcement was made in early March 2020, in Dakar, the Senegalese capital, at the launch of the Strengthening Networks and Institutional Capacities in Plant Breeding for the Development of Resilient Crops Meeting the Needs of West African Farmers (ABEE) project.

The new project aims to strengthen the resilience of rural communities in the Sahel to climate change by providing modern equipment and infrastructure for breeding varieties of five climate-sensitive crops (cowpea, groundnut, millet, sorghum and fonio).

In 2018, Burkina Faso, Niger and Senegal produced 72% of millet, 53% of cowpea, 41% of sorghum, 31% of groundnuts and just 7.6% of fonio in the whole of West Africa, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.

The ABEE project will bring a better approach to the coordination of varietal selection at regional and national levels by placing breeders in Burkina Faso, Niger and Senegal at the heart of the action to develop and modernize their breeding practices and better identify market demands.

A broad consortium of implementers

The ABEE project will be implemented by an extensive network of global, regional and national institutions with a proven track record in plant breeding. These include CORAF, the European Union, theFrench agricultural research organization CIRAD ( Organisme français de recherche agronomique et de coopération internationale pour le développement durable des régions tropicales et méditerranéennes ), AfricaRice through the Integrated Breeding Platform, the Institut Sénégalais de Recherche Agricole through the Centre d'Études Régionales pour l'Amélioration de l'Adaptation à la Sécheresse (CERAAS), the Institut National de l'Environnement et de Recherche Agricole of Burkina Faso and the Institut National de Recherche Agronomique du Niger (INRAN).

What they said at the launch ceremony

Dr Abdou Tenkouano, CORAF Executive Director

"Varietal improvement of the main food crops is an important tool for effectively meeting growing food needs and population growth. My conviction is that if we pool our efforts and resources, we will achieve results that meet the expectations of our courageous farmers and producers. "

Boubaca Kanouté, Programme Officer for Agriculture and Rural Development, EU Delegation in Senegal

"This project is the fruit of a political commitment at the highest level between the agriculture ministers of the European Union and the African Union. The project underlines the importance of the agricultural sector in the fight against food and nutritional insecurity, poverty and the creation of decent jobs, particularly for young people and women in rural areas".

Dr. Hamidou Traoré, Director of INERA

"The importance of cowpeas, groundnuts, millet, sorghum and fonio for communities in the target countries is well known. Reinforcing the processes involved in better breadmaking could only strengthen the resilience of smallholders in these countries".

Dr. Alioune Fall, Director General of ISRA

"ABEE will respond more effectively to the demand for productive varieties from a variety of stakeholders, where experienced breeders will come together in well-equipped stations and laboratories using modern breeding techniques."

Ms Sylvie Lewicki, Regional Director for West Africa Africa - Dry Zone

"CIRAD is delighted to be a partner in this project, which will strengthen the regional network of breeders created within the framework of the dP IAVAO (dP Innovation and Varietal Improvement in West Africa), which shares its objectives with the CERAAS (Centre d'Étude Régional pour l'Amélioration de l'Adaptation à la Sécheresse), itself a sub-regional center of the ISRA (Institut Sénégalais de Recherches Agricoles), which is also a CORAF Regional Center of Excellence".

Read also:

• Alioune Fall appointed Chairman of the FARA Board of Directors

Mali's farmers are not to be outdone

Farmers in Mali will also benefit from new varieties thanks to an ICRISAT project known as Amélioration de la productivité des cultures et de la résistance au climat pour la sécurité alimentaire et nutritionnelle (APSAN-Mali). APSAN-Mali will work in collaboration with the Accelerating Varietal Improvement and Seed Delivery for Vegetables and Grains in Africa (AVISA) project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It seeks to maximize impacts in the fields of small-scale farmers in West Africa (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali and Nigeria).

History

ABEE is funded by the Development of Smart Innovation through Research in Agriculture (DeSIRA) program, an EU initiative set up in 2017 to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. DeSIRA addresses multiple interconnected SDGs. Total funding is estimated at 300 million euros.

See also:

• What is DeSIRA?

CORAF is implementing a total of three DeSIRA projects. The other two include CAADP-XP4 and the project Anticipating and managing biological risks to strengthen farmers' resilience to climate change in West and Central Africa, in collaboration with the Biorisk Management Facility (BIMAF), West African Virus Epidemiology (WAVE) and the national research systems of ten countries.

There are currently some 14 DeSIRA initiatives across West and Central Africa, worth a total of almost 70 million euros.