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The Programme de Productivité Agricole en Afrique de l'Ouest (PPAAO) has made a substantial contribution to resolving the most critical challenges in agricultural research in West Africa, concludes a new report from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

"The program has invested heavily in building and rehabilitating research infrastructures and providing laboratory equipment for the priority products defined in advance. As such, it has consolidated the position of West African countries to conduct high-quality priority research over the coming years."

According to the report, by funding the post-graduate training of over 1,000 young scientists across West Africa, the WAPP has helped "to offset the significant loss of human resources due to the retirement of qualified researchers. 30% of the young people who benefited from PPAAO-funded training were women.

Nine National Specialization Centers (NSCs) focusing on the region's priority products have been set up under the WAPP. Two of these centers have since met all the technical criteria to become Regional Centers of Excellence (RCE).

"Through the creation of national centers of specialization, the coordination of sub-regional research and new funding mechanisms, the PPAA0 has promoted collaboration between countries in the field of research, reduced duplication of research efforts and improved the circulation of relevant technologies across the region".

To maintain the regionalization approach, the report recommends identifying regional research priorities and allocating them to the appropriate countries. CORAF's coordinating role is central to this model.

"National governments also need to decide how to allocate their research funds between national and regional priorities," the report added.

"Orphan cultures

The report states, however, that despite the impressive results of the WAPP, some important research priorities have been neglected.

"Yams, for example, occupy a very important economic position in the tropical zones of West Africa, but the PPAAO has not addressed the issue of creating a regional center of excellence in yam research. The same can be said for cowpeas in the Sahel".

"Farmers growing these crops need new, high-yielding varieties that are resilient to drought, flooding or extreme temperatures, and less vulnerable to pests and diseases."

"It is, therefore, essential that research on these orphan crops, which also receive less research effort from CGIAR centers than rice, maize and wheat, for example, is not ignored."

Further progress needed in technology adoption

"Efforts still need to be made to scale up the adoption of improved technologies to meet the food and nutritional needs of the population, and stimulate economic development and poverty reduction across West Africa."

PPAAO is currently considering a more ambitious program aimed at massively promoting the adoption of existing technologies to transform the agricultural industry in West and Central Africa.

"The proposed West Africa Agriculture Transformation Program aims to address these challenges by scaling up the adoption of climate-smart technologies to sustainably improve productivity, reduce post-harvest losses, increase value creation, promote an enabling policy environment, strengthen the regional market and create jobs for young people."

• Also read:Towards a more ambitious WAPP

The WAPP is an initiative of the Economic Community of West African States(ECOWAS). It is financed by the World Bank and technically coordinated by CORAF.

This report was written by Gert-Jan Stads and Nienke Beintema, both of whom work forIFPRI's Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators program.