WACCI boosts AGRA’s African food security vision

By Iddi Yire, GNA

Accra, July 22, GNA
– The West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI), University of Ghana, has
boosted the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa’s (AGRA’s) vision of a
food secured Africa, by churning out 14 PhD plant breeders.

The graduation,
which is the last batch of WACCI trained PhD students is funded by the
AGRA,forms part of the University of Ghana’s 2018 graduation.

The July 2018
graduating WACCI cohort of 14 PhD students (eight females and six males) from
eight countries – Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone,
Senegal and Uganda researched on seven staple crops (cassava, cowpea,
groundnut, maize, pearl millet rice and sorghum) to address farmers’ production
constraints in their home countries.

Of these 14
students, six were funded by AGRA.

Professor Eric Y.
Danquah, the Founding Director, WACCI, in an interview with Ghana News Agency
(GNA) on the sidelines of the graduation ceremony, said the Centre was evolving
into an Agriculture Innovations and Entrepreneurship institution to generate
game-changing products needed for the inclusive transformation of African
agriculture.

He said to that
effect, a multipurpose building to be completed in August 2018 would provide
world class research, teaching and learning facilities to attract strategic
partners from around the world to make WACCI a pre-eminent global institution
for world class agricultural research and training.

Prof Danquah urged
African governments and development partners to prioritise agricultural
research institutions like WACCI for sustained core funding if they were
desirous to transform agriculture in Africa for agribusinesses.

He noted that a
hybrid maize breeding programme established by WACCI in 2009 with funding from
AGRA had led to the development and release of superior maize hybrids (yielding
between 9 – 11 t/ha).

“These hybrids
are being commercialised in partnership with a local seed company, Legacy Crop
Improvement Centre and are expected to be in farmers’ fields in the next year
and would significantly increase maize productivity in Ghana and, therefore,
contribute significantly to the National Agenda ‘Planting for Food and Jobs
(PFAJ)’ of Ghana, a country which had to import maize seed from neighbouring
Burkina Faso to keep-start its PFJ initiative,” he stated.

He said over 60
improved varieties of staples such as maize, sweet potato, rice, cassava,
groundnut, cowpea and taro with the potential of increasing Africa’s food
production had been released by WACCI graduates in their respective home
countries.

“The promotion
and adoption of these crop varieties by farmers will increase productivity and
improve livelihoods in Africa,” he said.

He said the
game-changing products were expected to end food and nutrition insecurity in
many communities throughout the sub region as well as lift millions out of
poverty in the decade ahead. 

Prof Danquah said
WACCI was exerting huge impact across the African sub-region and had shown in
11 years that quality plant breeding education was a smart development
investment through strengthening capacity in the National Research Institutes
(NARIs) across the sub-region with the critical mass of scientists churned out
of the WACCI programme.

He said the Centre
continued to produce the much needed human resources to fight food and
nutrition insecurity across sub-Saharan Africa.

Dr Rufaro Madakadze,
AGRA Programme Officer in-charge of Capacity Building, in a message to the
graduands, said: “WACCI has been instrumental in resourcing West Africa with
brilliant, practical breeders with the ability to work with both public and
private sector with some countries like Ghana and Mali having doubled the NARs
public sector breeders.”

“The vision and
passion for these breeders speak to the excellent training they received from
WACCI. AGRA is very proud of these scientists and expects block buster
varieties from their work that transform their home countries
agriculture,” she added.

Dr Dorothy Anima
Effa, Programme Officer, Advocacy and Policy, AGRA Ghana, told the GNA that as
the AGRA support programme for WACCI ends, they would still be working with
WACCI, but in a reduced capacity.

She said AGRA’s
focus would now be funding the lower level of capacity close to the farmers,
thereby ensuring that products of research institutions get to farmers and
urged the graduates to bring to use the knowledge gained at WACCI.

WACCI was
established as a partnership between the University of Ghana and Cornell
University in 2007 with initial funding from the AGRA to train plant breeders
in Africa, who would be game changers in the transformation of agriculture in
the West and Central Africa sub-region for food and nutrition security.

WACCI now one of the
World Bank Africa Centres of Excellence has grown to become the pre-eminent
Centre for plant breeding education in Africa and has more than doubled initial
investments of $ 11.2 million from AGRA to over $ 28 million and exceeded the
expectations of AGRA in terms of sustainability.

The Centre has since
inception, enrolled 114 PhD students in Plant Breeding and 36 students in
Master of Philosophy (MPhil) Seed Science and Technology.

A total of 66 PhD
and eight MPhil students have graduated from the WACCI programme.

Of the 66 PhDs, 52
were funded by AGRA and many are leading plant breeding programmes aimed at
increasing the productivity of the staple crops at the National Agricultural
Research Institutes (NARIs) in their countries. 

GNA

قالب وردپرس