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Leading players in the West African seed and fertilizer sector are in the final stages of designing an online decision-making tool that could soon give farmers access to the information they need to make informed choices about the use of agricultural inputs.

Experts from the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), CORAF (Conseil Ouest et Centre Africain pour la Recherche et le Développement Agricole), regional partners, national research and extension partners, the private fertilizer and seed sector and civil society are meeting in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, from Monday 12 to Friday 16 August 2019 to validate the data that will enable the development of the online tool.

The Fertilizer and Seed Recommendation Map for West Africa, or FeSeRWAM for short, will be a web-based platform for querying, viewing, printing, saving or exporting crop-specific recommendations for improved seed and fertilizer varieties in the different agro-ecological zones of West Africa.

The main benefit for players in the seed and fertilizer value chains is that it opens up new ways of disseminating, sharing, displaying and processing information on seed and fertilizer recommendations for a diversity of crops based on agroecologies on the Internet.

As access to information on seed recommendations remains a major challenge, as does the use of sufficient quantities of quality fertilizers in West Africa, the experts speculated that online options could further facilitate the dissemination and adoption of improved varieties.

"FeSeRWAM, as its name suggests, will be a regional map providing information on improved seed varieties suitable for different agro-ecological zones, and appropriate fertilizer recommendations for optimal crop production", says Dr Caroline Makamto Sobgui, a technology scaling expert working for CORAF. Indeed, one of the causes of low agricultural productivity is the low use of improved varieties, due to their poor availability and/or accessibility, but sometimes even to a lack of information on existing high-performance varieties.

This project aims to take advantage of the popularization of the internet tool to better assist farmers who need information on quality inputs, in packages (seed and fertilizer) to increase yields and agricultural productivity and curb food and nutritional insecurity in the region.

The new FeSeRWAM would enable users to quickly access, regardless of their location, the most appropriate farm input recommendations and good farming practices that they can use immediately. "This tool aims to increase demand for appropriate fertilizers and improved seeds," say IFDC and CORAF, who are both spearheading the initiative.

This initiative is funded by the United States Agency for International Development, West Africa (USAID).

More specifically, EnGRAIS(Feed the Future Enhancing Growth through Regional Agricultural Input Systems) is leading the implementation of this activity on behalf of IFDC. The Partnership for Agricultural Research, Education and Development(PAIRED) is leading implementation on behalf of CORAF.

Find out more about EnGRAIS

Find out more about PAIRED