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Some twenty PhD students recruited as part of the "Anticipating and managing biological risks to strengthen farmers' resilience to climate change in West and Central Africa" (BIORISKS) project have just completed a training course aimed at developing their leadership skills. 

CORAF, which implements BIORISKS in collaboration with the WAVE program, is responsible for this initiative.

The two organizations have invited participants to Dakar, Senegal, from November 30 to December 03, 2022, to help them understand their place and role in decision-making processes as researchers, so that they can act effectively to become responsible citizens and influence other young people.

"Leadership is an essential concept in agricultural research. It is for this reason that CORAF, in collaboration with the WAVE program, has initiated this training to inculcate in students and develop in them the basic notions of leadership such as competence, action, communication, assertiveness and self-assertion", declared Dr. Ousmane NDOYE, BIORISKS Project Coordinator at CORAF.

The BIORISKS project aims to contribute to poverty reduction and improved food and nutrition security in target countries, by providing solutions to the growing threat of crop pests and diseases that affect agricultural productivity and household resilience. These include cassava viruses, fall armyworm (CLA), mango fly and other biological hazards.

• Read also: Plant protection specialists on a crusade against the army worm

It is being implemented in ten (10) countries in West and Central Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo and Sierra Leone.

BIORISKS is funded by the European Union as part of the Development of Intelligent Innovation through Research in Agriculture (DeSIRA) initiative.