News

CORAF has joined the Global Research Program on Grain Legumes and Dry Cereals (CRP-GLDC), recently launched in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which targets the semi-arid and sub-humid zones of Africa and South Asia. The program focuses on improving nutritional security for people living in these two regions.

CRP-GLDC aims to increase the productivity, profitability, resilience and marketability of critical, nutritious grain legumes grown in the semi-arid and sub-humid agroecologies of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

The program mainly targets grain legumes such as chickpeas, cowpeas, peanuts, lentils, soybeans, etc., and dry cereals such as sorghum, millet and millet.

Approved last November, this research program is coordinated byICRISAT, based in Hyderabad, India. With a budget of $413 million, it covers a five-year period (2018-2022) and will intervene in ''agro-ecological zones where poverty, malnutrition, climate change and soil degradation are among the most marked worldwide''.

The CRP-GLDC involves 13 countries, including 11 African countries: Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, and two Asian countries: India and Myanmar (Burma).

Research will "prioritize demand-driven innovations to increase production and market opportunities for dryland grain legumes and cereals" in the countries covered by the program.

As the largest sub-regional research coordination organization in Africa, with recognized expertise in the field of dry cereals, CORAF has been invited to join the CRP-GLDC Independent Advisory Committee. Dr Mariam Maiga, Gender and Social Development Advisor at CORAF, has been appointed to the Board.

CORAF has led research into dry cereals in West and Central Africa. The Senegal-based Centre National de Spécialisation (CNS) on dry cereals has not only developed some twenty critical technologies since its inception, but has also introduced new varieties of beans and sorghum.

As part of its research into climate-smart varieties, the center has developed new groundnut and cowpea varieties that are now helping farmers to adapt to the effects of climate change.

Ghana's Dry Cereals Center and Roots and Tubers Center have been upgraded to Regional Centers of Excellence. Their new status enables them to mobilize more funds, attract internationally recognized research skills, and wider channels for disseminating their research results.

Corn, millet, sorghum, wheat and rice are the main staple foods for most of the 430 million people living in West and Central Africa for whom CORAF works on a daily basis.