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Location: Africa

CIMMYT’s work in Africa helps farmers access new maize and wheat systems-based technologies, information and markets, raising incomes and enhancing crop resilience to drought and climate change. CIMMYT sets priorities in consultation with ministries of agriculture, seed companies, farming communities and other stakeholders in the maize and wheat value chains. Our activities in Africa are wide ranging and include: breeding maize for drought tolerance and low-fertility soils, and for resistance to insect pests, foliar diseases and parasitic weeds; sustainably intensifying production in maize- and wheat-based systems; and investigating opportunities to reduce micronutrient and protein malnutrition among women and young children.

Solar powered dryers boost peanut production in Togo

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in Features.

Solar powered peanut dryers in Togo are helping women-run cooperatives reduce their workload and increase their profits.

A number of West African countries have climate and soil well-suited to groundnut cultivation. In the second half of the twentieth century, the region became a world leader in peanut production. In Togo, peanuts do well, but problems with postharvest processing have kept this crop performing well below its potential.

However, the introduction of the solar powered dryers has had a significant positive impact on the production and preservation of a vital crop for the local population.

From peanut stews and sauces that are staples of national cuisine to overseas export of peanut products, there is no shortage of uses for this groundnut in Togo. However, smallholding farmers struggle to preserve their entire crop in large part because of aflatoxins, which thrive when conditions are too moist and ruin peanuts.

“Peanuts are a very perishable commodity and they can spoil if not stored properly for processing,” said AĂŻssetou Koura, president of the peanut farmer cooperative in Koumonde.

This is particularly true for smallholding peanut farmers, which in Togo includes many women. The established method for drying peanuts is to lay them out in the open air, which is a labor-intensive process that leaves the crop exposed to unexpected rains and contamination by pests. “In the past, we suffered huge losses,” Aïssetou explained.

Aicha Gaba from the N’kani N’kana cooperative works with a solar dryer in Koumonde, Togo. (Photo: LarĂ© B. Penn/University of Lome)

A better way to dry

In 2021, the introduction of solar dryers began to change things dramatically for peanut farmers in cooperatives from Tovegan to Dapaong. In collaboration with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Green Innovation Centers for the Agriculture and Food Sector (GIC) in Togo helped a local manufacturer, Guema Concept, develop solar dryer technology for local peanut farmers from plans made by the University of Hohenheim.

Launched in 2014 by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development’s special initiative One World No Hunger, GIC collaborates with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) to increase agricultural mechanization in 14 countries in Africa and two in Asia.

The dryers are equipped with a ventilation system and a power kit that includes solar panels and a battery so they can operate during periods of reduced sunlight. They have a capacity of 12 kilograms and can complete a drying cycle in as little as two hours, which is about one quarter of the time a manual drying cycle takes. Depending on the solar exposure, cooperatives like the one in Koumonde can perform three or four cycles in a day.

“We have found a solution by preserving our products with the solar dryer,” AĂŻssetou said.

GIC has helped five smallholding farmer cooperatives procure solar dyers across Togo, and more than 50 women farmers are members of these groups whose work is benefitting from this technology.

Farmers like Aicha Gaba are also increasing their profit because the solar dryers allow them to do more work with fewer laborers.

“Our cooperative dries peanuts with only two people via the solar dryer, unlike conventional open drying, which requires five people to spread, turn, monitor and collect the peanuts,” Gaba said.

“This process reduces the workers’ wages and then saves us the money of three workers, which is a good thing for us.”

The new technology is producing better peanuts thanks to consistent moisture and temperature levels and faster processing speeds, said Djéri Bossa, a member of the cooperative in Bassar.

“Thanks to the solar dryers offered by GIC Togo, we can freely dry our products in good conditions,” Bossa explained.

“The products derived from the processing of peanuts are of improved quality, unlike the conventional open-drying method we used.”

All is not sunny

Despite the initial success of the solar dryers, there are challenges that remain for scaling up this innovation. The dyers are quite heavy and, for smallholding women, it can be difficult to maneuver the machines by themselves. At the same time, farmers say that – even with the greater volume the dryers have helped them achieve – they would still like a higher-capacity machine.

But even with the need for lighter, harder-working dryers, there is enormous potential for this innovation to spread to new areas, bring additional production and income to smallholding farmers (including many women), and help make groundnuts a bigger piece of the economic pie in Togo.

Cover photo: Smallholding peanut farmers Aicha Gaba and Aïssetou Koura lay peanuts into a solar dryer in Koumonde, Togo. (Photo: Laré B. Penn/University of Lome)

Thank you to our partners, Laré B. Penn (University of Lomé) and Johanna Steinkuehler (GIZ Togo).

On Africa’s farms, the forecast calls for adaptation and innovation

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in In the media.

On a visit to Kenya, Bill Gates had the opportunity to learn how smallholder farmers like Mary Mathuli are adapting their practices to account for the impacts of climate change.

Mathuli drew attention to the innovations that are making her life easier, such as drought-tolerant maize seed varieties developed by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO). She also cited her mobile phone as a vital tool, allowing her access essential information, such as weather forecasts, market prices, and technical farming support.

“In sub-Saharan Africa, more than half of the population works in agriculture,” explains Gates. “Together, they produce about 80 percent of the continent’s food supply. And most of the people doing the backbreaking farm work—like the chores I performed—are women.”

In addition to managing her farm, Mathuli is a model farmer and Village Based Advisor with the Cereal Growers Association, encouraging other farmers to adopt new practices that will improve their productivity. “She is clearly doing a good job in this role because more than 90 percent of farmers in her area have embraced one of the new adaptation practices,” said Gates.

Read the original article: On Africa’s farms, the forecast calls for adaptation and innovation

Grace Mwai

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Grace Mwai is an innovative and strategic leader with more than 18 years of progressive leadership experience in international development programs. She has spearhead implementation projects of US$23M-$320M funding, while leading teams across 19 countries with more than 14 international and bilateral donors. Mwai holds a Doctor of Business Administration, Masters of Science in Organization Development, Masters of Business Administration, and is a Certified Public Accountant and Corporate Governance Trainer.

She has a keen ability to identify inefficiencies and create sustainable systems enabling consistent, on-time completion, regardless of project complexity. Her lived experience on both sides of the donor and recipient dividing lines affords her a nuanced understanding of stakeholder needs and the intricacies of donor requirements.

Five strides forward for CGIAR crop breeding resources and services

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in News.

Sitting at the cutting edge of science, the crop breeding domain has been improving and refining tools, technologies and techniques. But adoption by public breeding programs focusing on Africa, Asia, and Latin America has often been slow. This has hindered progress on developing the new varieties needed for farmers to overcome climate impacts, build livelihoods, and feed their communities.

But One CGIAR’s new integrated approach is changing that. Building on the work of CGIAR Excellence in Breeding, the Breeding Resource Initiative can point to major progress in 2022, moving forward on an array of shared services, capacity development programs and technical support. Here are five significant milestones helping CGIAR and its national partners deliver better results:

1. Regional hubs are on their way: CGIAR’s vision is to have regional hubs coordinating and delivering services across crops. AfricaRice is set to grow into a regional service provider and coordinator for multiple crops in West Africa. After discussions, planning and site visits with BRI, AfricaRice leadership committed to working with the BRI team to start by providing regional nutritional analysis services, aimed to launch for selected partners in 2023. The plan is to then expand AfricaRice’s role as a coordinator of other competitive services like genotyping and capacity building. This is a major step toward CGIAR’s vision of not just improving breeding stations, but serving  all CGIAR/National Agricultural Research and Extension Services (NARES) partners regionally. The aim is collaboration, efficiency and results in farmers’ fields.

2. Operations teams are amping up skills and knowledge: Breeding success hinges on good operational practices leading to accurate data. To ensure the heritability of breeding trials, BRI has offered resources, trainings and on-the-ground support for operational teams. Through its Breeding Operation Network for Development (BOND), BRI/EiB, along with IITA, ran three weeklong workshops for partners across Africa (watch all 22 sessions on plotmanship, gender, seed processing, irrigation and more), regular webinars exploring private and public sector best practices, and a series focusing on continuous improvement approaches. BRI also trained dozens of operational staff across Africa on how to use and maintain new USAID-supplied equipment. And CGIAR continued its push to harmonize rice breeding processes between IRRI, AfricaRice and CIAT through a week-long rice breeding operations training at IRRI. As well, new tools such as a gender inclusion checklist are now available to support operational excellence.

3. EBS is settling in as a universal data platform: The data management platform Enterprise Breeding System has made real strides in the past year, with an updated version with new features (Milestone 5) rolling out across three Centers (CIMMYT, IITA, IRRI), with over 500 users. Other Centers, such as AfricaRice are starting to deploy the system too. On their visit to AfricaRice’s Ivory Coast station, the BRI team noted barcode deployment across the upland rice nurseries – an inspiration to spur other CGIAR Centers to accelerate their own adoption. EBS is a single, powerful, shared, multi-crop platform and its deployment will mean major time and money savings for breeders – and better breeding decisions.

4. Lab services are expanding: As breeders strive for higher-yielding, climate-resilient and nutritious crops, BRI/EiB have been improving breeding speed and accuracy through streamlined, reliable and cost-effective genotyping services. Services include Low Density SNP Genotyping Services (LDSG), Mid-density SNP Genotyping (MDSG), along with training. BRI also launched a Lab Services Process Team to connect Genetic Innovation departments and teams and ensure delivery of high quality services through standardized processes. And launching in 2023, partners will be able to access biochemical testing for nutritional traits and quality. These improved services mean CGIAR and national partners are becoming more effective and competitive as they use this data to make better decisions.

5. Regional approaches set to drive change: BRI drives change at both local and regional levels. For example, team members visited Kiboko and Njoro stations in Kenya, and ran planning sessions in Nairobi with East African breeding teams. This helped clarify challenges and priorities in the region, helping define how services could best be established. Kenya’s key outcomes included: a commitment with CIMMYT leadership to establish services in Kiboko as a pilot, an action plan to improve EBS development and adoption in the region, and endorsement by CGIAR Breeding Research Services leadership of major Crops to End Hunger grants in the region – these fill key gaps in the drive to modernization. The team plans to organize similar sessions to support CGIAR/NARES breeding networks in other regions.

These five strides forward represent but a glimpse into Breeding Resources’ progress. And these are much more than just separate achievements. They represent a shift in breeding culture across the CGIAR-NARES networks – one that will help deliver better varieties, faster. With major plans for 2023, CGIAR-NARES can look forward to the tools and services they need to deliver first-class programs.

Read the original article: Five strides forward for CGIAR crop breeding resources and services

Story and feature photo by Adam Hunt, EiB/BRI/ABI Communications Lead. We would like to thank all funders who support this research through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund. And thank you to the supporters and partners of CGIAR Excellence in Breeding, particularly the funding from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Digital Press Briefing with U.S. Special Envoy for Global Food Security Dr. Cary Fowler, and USAID Global Food Crisis Coordinator Dina Esposito

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in In the media.

Cary Fowler, Special Envoy for Global Food Security, and Dina Esposito, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Global Food Crisis Coordinator, discussed the US strategy for addressing the global food security crisis and their ongoing visit to Malawi and Zambia at a digital press briefing on January 19.

“We’ve recently supported a new project which will be operating in a number of countries, including Zambia and Malawi, that will be coordinated by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, and by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture,” said Fowler.

“They’ll be establishing innovation hubs where they’ll bring together the best and most appropriate technologies and information to help small-scale farmers with a whole variety of issues that they confront. This will give the farmers access, for example in Zambia, to drought-tolerant maize, which they’re really clamoring for. This is maize which, on a year-in and year-out basis, on average will yield about 30 percent more, rotated with legumes, which provide protein and also enrich the soil and reduce the need for fertilizer. But also other technologies and assistance in establishing markets for those products and lengthening out the value chain so that farmers are not just – and small businesses are not just dealing with raw commodities but are taking those commodities and making something more valuable and more useful to a broader population.”

Read the original article: Digital Press Briefing with U.S. Special Envoy for Global Food Security Dr. Cary Fowler, and USAID Global Food Crisis Coordinator Dina Esposito

Mekides Woldegiorgis Gardi

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Mekides Woldegiorgis Gardi is a Post-Doctoral Fellow (System Agronomist – Crop Modelling) in the Sustainable Agrifood Systems (SAS) program in Ethiopia.

Michael Kariuki Ndegwa

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Michael Ndegwa is a Market and Value Chain Specialist at CIMMYT with experience in evaluating agricultural policies and technologies using cutting edge evaluation methodologies. As a scientist in the SAS program, he is currently working on strategies for enhancing the performance of seed systems in East Africa, with a particular focus on seed marketing innovations for achieving faster varietal turnover. He has also conducted research on innovative models for financing and derisking agricultural production for smallholders in Africa, evaluation of postharvest technologies such as hermetic bags and metal silos, evaluation of drought maize varieties, among other research agenda.

Gatien Falconnier

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Gatien Falconnier is a systems agronomist interested in the impact of sustainable agricultural intensification on food security and income, in the smallholder context of sub-Saharan Africa. His work combines on-farm and on-station experimentation, crop and farm modelling, to explore scenarios of change in farmers practices, with current and future climate.

Blessing Mhlanga

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Blessing Mhlanga is a cropping systems agronomist working under the Sustainable Agrifood Systems (SAS) program to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Eastern and Southern Africa by adapting innovative cropping systems. He obtained his PhD from the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy in 2022. He joined CIMMYT as an intern in 2009 and has served as a consultant under different CIMMYT projects since 2016. Blessing has also co-led workpackages under some CG initiatives.

Mazvita Chiduwa

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Mazvita Chiduwa works with smallholder farmers in maize-based, mixed farming systems under pressure to improve system resilience. Chiduwa’s training and background are in legume integration into farming systems, including a focus on rhizobia inoculant production, quality control, regulation, and application.

Chiduwa joined CIMMYT in 2022 and is working on diversification of maize-based farming systems in Malawi using conservation agriculture and different intercrop arrangements between maize and the legumes cowpea, groundnut, pigeon pea and soybean. She is also working on developing a digital agronomy decision tool for smallholder farmers, working with farmers in Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia. The pilot work is being implemented in the context of soybean in maize-based systems with the intention to develop it for other crops in future. The main research questions are to do with soybean variety choices, planting dates, crop establishment methods and site-specific nutrient recommendations.

Geoffrey Muricho

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Geoffrey Muricho works for CIMMYT as a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Specialist based in Nairobi. Before joining CIMMYT, he was a scientist (Monitoring, Learning and Evaluation Specialist) at ICRISAT where he coordinated monitoring, learning and evaluation activities of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded projects (TL III, HOPE II and AVISA) in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

Besides monitoring, learning and evaluation, Geoffrey is an experienced research economists with expertise in agricultural technology adoption and impact assessments using quantitative and qualitative methods. Previously, he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) where he focused his research on technology adoption, gender analysis and impact assessments. Before joining ICIPE, he worked as a Research Associate with CIMMYT and ICRISAT. Geoffrey obtained his PhD (Economics) and MSc. (Agricultural Economics) from the University of Nairobi. He also holds BSc (Agr. Econ).

Maxwell Mkondiwa

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Maxwell Mkondiwa is a CIMMYT Associate Scientist – Spatial Economist based in New Delhi, India. He joined CIMMYT in January 2022.

His research focuses on ex-ante and ex-post spatial economic assessments of the adoption potential and impact of agricultural technologies. The general fields in which he conducts his research include spatial economics, economics of agricultural research, production economics, marketing economics (industrial organization), development economics, applied spatial Bayesian econometrics, and economic applications of mathematical optimization.

He holds a PhD in Applied Economics from University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, an MSc in Applied Economics from University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, an MSc in Research Methods from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, and a BSc in Agricultural Economics from Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (Bunda College Campus).

In maize research, farmers’ priorities are our priorities

Written by Alison Doody on . Posted in Publications.

Figuring out what kinds of crops and crop varieties farmers want – high yielding, disease resistant, drought tolerant, early maturing, consumer-preferred, nutritious etc. – is a crucial step in developing locally adapted, farmer-friendly and market preferred varieties as part of more sustainable seed grain sectors.

While scientists aim to develop the best crop varieties with multiple traits, there are always trade-offs to be made due to the limits of genetics or competing preferences. For example, a variety may be more tolerant to drought but perform less well in consumer taste preferences such as sweet grains, or it may be higher yielding but more vulnerable to pests and diseases. Some of these trade-offs, such as vulnerability to pests or adverse climate, are not acceptable and must be overcome by crop scientists. The bundle of traits a crop variety offers is often a major consideration for farmers and can be the difference between a bumper harvest and a harvest lost to pests and diseases or extreme weather conditions.

Economists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) have been working with smallholder farmers across sub-Saharan Africa to document their preferences when it comes to maize. Results from Ethiopia were recently published in the journal PLOS ONE.

In a survey with almost 1,500 participants in more than 800 households, researchers found that both male and female farmers valued drought tolerance over other traits. For many farmers in areas where high-yielding, medium-maturing hybrids were available, early maturity was not considered a priority, and sometimes even disliked, as farmers felt it made their harvests more vulnerable to theft or increased their social obligations to share the early crop with relatives and neighbors if they were the only ones harvesting an early maize crop. Farmers therefore preferred varieties which matured more in sync with other farmers.

The team also found some gender differences, with female farmers often preferring taste over other traits, while male farmers were more likely to prioritize plant architecture traits like closed tip and shorter plants that do not easily break in the wind or bend over to the ground. These differences, if confirmed by ongoing and further research, suggest that gender differences in maize variety choices may occur due to differentiated roles of men and women in the maize value chains. Any differences observed should be traced to such roles where these are distinctly and socially differentiated. In aspects where men and women’s roles are similar — for example, when women express preferences in their role as farmers as opposed to being custodians of household nutrition — they will prioritize similar aspects of maize varieties.

The results of the study show that overall, the most important traits for farmers in Ethiopia, in addition to those that improve yields, are varieties that are drought and disease tolerant, while in taste-sensitive markets with strong commercial opportunities in green maize selling, farmers may prioritize varieties that satisfy these specific consumer tastes. The findings of the study also highlight the impact of the local social environment on variety choices.

By taking farmers’ preferences on board, maize scientists can help develop more sustainable maize cropping systems which are adapted to the local environment and respond to global climatic and economic changes driven by farmers’ and consumers’ priorities.

Harvesting maize cobs at KALRO Katumani Research Station in Machakos, Kenya. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

Drought and striga tolerance come out top for Kenyan farmers

In related research from western Kenya, published in June 2022 in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, results showed that farmers highly valued tolerance to drought, as well as tolerance to striga weed, low nitrogen soils and fall armyworm, in that order. CIMMYT researchers surveyed 1,400 smallholder farmers across three districts in western Kenya.

The scientists called for a more nuanced approach to seed markets, where seed prices might reflect the attributes of varieties. Doing so, they argue, would allow farmers to decide whether to pay price premiums for specific seed products thereby achieving greater market segmentation based on relative values of new traits.

“Both studies show that farmers, scientists and development experts in the maize sector are grappling with a wide array of demands,” said Paswel Marenya, CIMMYT senior scientist and first author of both studies.

“Fortunately, the maize breeding systems in CIMMYT, CGIAR and National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) have produced a wide range of locally adapted, stress tolerant and consumer preferred varieties.”

The results of both these studies provide a framework for the kinds of traits scientists should prioritize in maize improvement programs at least in similar regions as those studied here in central Ethiopia or western Kenya. However, as Marenya noted, there is still work to do in supporting farmers to make informed choices: “The challenge is to implement rigorous market targeting strategies that sort and organize this complex landscape for farmers, thereby reducing the information load, search costs and learning times about new varieties. This will accelerate the speed of adoption and genetic gains on farmers’ fields as envisaged in this project.”

Read the studies:

Maize variety preferences among smallholder farmers in Ethiopia: Implications for demand-led breeding and seed sector development

Building Resilient Maize Production Systems With Stress-Adapted Varieties: Farmers’ Priorities in Western Kenya

Cover photo: Roadside vendor sells roasted maize cobs to a customer in Timau, Kenya. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

Farmers in Zimbabwe embrace agroecology

Written by Tawanda Hove on . Posted in News.

Smallholder farmers display a range of small and large grains at the agroecology seed fair in Mbire, Zimbabwe. (Photo: Tawanda Hove/CIMMYT)

Smallholder farmers in resource-poor communities of Zimbabwe and much of the Global South have been experiencing low crop productivity due to many factors, including inappropriate seeds and seed varieties, labor shortages, loss of agro-biodiversity, insufficient inputs, degrading soils, and recurrent droughts. These threats are now amplified by climate change.

This has resulted in broken food systems rendering food and nutrition insecurity commonplace. The One CGIAR initiative, Transformational Agroecology Across Food, Land, and Water Systems, led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Zimbabwe, is designed to bring agroecological advances to smallholder famers in an effort to strengthen local food systems.

Smallholder farmers in the Mbire and Murehwa Districts of Zimbabwe were introduced to innovative agroecology interventions, premised on harnessing nature’s goods and services while minimizing adverse environmental impacts and improving farmer-consumer connectivity, knowledge co-creation, and inclusive relationships among food system actors.

Smallholder farmers register for the agroecology seed fair in Mbire, Zimbabwe. (Photo: Tawanda Hove)

Farmer to farmer collaboration at seed fairs

In response to challenges related to lack of appropriate seeds and eroding agrobiodiversity and, as a way to transition prevailing food systems to more sustainable ones, farmers were invited to take part in seed fairs. The seed fair’s objective was to enable smallholder farmers to access improved and locally adapted seeds of food crops originating from the private sector and fellow farmers. In addition, the seed fairs provided a platform for learning about agroecological practices. Farmers were also given a chance to see different machinery that could aid in land, food, and feed preparation, and address their labor shortage challenges.

At the opening of the seed fair in Mbire, Dorcas Matangi, CIMMYT research associate, acknowledged that smallholder farmers operate in challenging and complex ecological, social, and economic systems and there is a need for interventions that address the natural resource base without ignoring the social and economic dynamics within communities.

“The communal culture of sharing and trading between community members can be capitalized on for a collective benefit, said Matangi. “One such case is through events such as seed fairs where we encourage farmers to showcase and sell seeds they know perform very well.”

She further explained to the participating farmers how increasing their crop diversity and using practices such as conservation agriculture techniques benefit the environment and improves food security and nutrition.

“I am grateful for these efforts,” said Grace Musandaira, supervisor of the Agriculture Advisory and Rural Development Service. “Our region is arid, and as such, it is very difficult for our farmers to achieve significant yields to assure them there is enough food for the year. In addition, the knowledge provision relating to preserving and improving agrobiodiversity through agroecological practices is set to improve rural livelihoods.”

Senzeni Nyagonye, a farmer in Mbire, said “This initiative is teaching and exposing us to so many new concepts such as conservation agriculture with mechanization. If we can apply conservation agriculture with the seeds we bought at this seed fair, we are optimistic about a great harvest.”

A total of 1,058 farmers attended two seed fairs in Mbire and Murehwa. Farmers had the opportunity to access a variety of crop seeds ranging from maize, to sorghum, millets, groundnuts, bambara groundnuts, and sunflowers. More than 200 farmers exhibited local seeds that were available for sale or exchange. Private seed companies also showcased and sold certified drought-tolerant maize, sorghum, bean and cowpea varieties.

“The seed fairs in Mbire and Murehwa were very successful”, said Matangi. “And we feel these efforts will serve as a useful case study to guide a national scale-up.”

For women in Ivory Coast, processing cassava no longer has to be a grind

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in Features.

Attieke is the national dish of Ivory Coast. Served with fried fish or a vegetable stew, this tangy, fermented side is the heart and soul of Ivorian cuisine. And because it’s made from cassava, attieke is gluten free. So, in addition to its status as an iconic food of hospitality from Abidjan to Yamoussoukro, attieke has the potential to catch on in distant locales.

Producing attieke is complicated—transforming tubers in the ground into a delicious bowl of couscous-like cassava involves harvesting, peeling, grinding, fermenting, pressing, and effectively storing the processed crop. And in Ivory Coast, this work is traditionally performed almost entirely by women.

A cooperative member processes cassava using a manual grinder. (Photo: Sylvanus Odjo/CIMMYT)

A grueling process

Traditional methods for processing cassava, however, are very slow and extremely laborious. “We had to use a wooden plank with nails [to grind cassava]”, said N’Zouako Akissi Benedicte, president of the local agricultural cooperative in Mahounou, Nanafoue, about 30 kilometers from the capital, Yamoussoukro. To remove the liquid from the ground cassava, Ivorian women used “a kind of screw press” that required so much strength that “it caused us pain in the chest.”

In addition to being painful and grueling, these manual methods are terribly inefficient, generating about 30 kilograms of product per hour. Benedicte said a worker could process very little cassava in a day’s work using this traditional approach. Limited physically by this hard manual labor and struggling to generate enough income to establish financial independence, women working in cassava production in Ivory Coast face difficult challenges.

Hydraulic cassava press. (Photo: Sylvanus Odjo/CIMMYT)

Lightening the load

Three years ago, things started to change for Benedicte and other women working in cassava production in her area. At that time, her cooperative partnered with the Green Innovation Centers for the Agriculture and Food Sector (GIC) of Ivory Coast to receive training to use hydraulic-powered cassava grinders and presses. These machines, which GIC helped design and adapt for the climate and cultural context of Ivory Coast, promised to significantly increase speed of production while making all aspects of cassava work more accessible to women. For instance, the grinding capacity of the equipment is around 600 kg/hr.

Launched in 2014 by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development’s special initiative, ONE WORLD no hunger, GIC collaborates with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) to increase agricultural mechanization in 14 countries in Africa and two in Asia.

Beyond helping Benedicte’s cooperative finance the purchase of the new machines and providing instruction in their use, GIC offered the agricultural cooperative a broad range of seminars on topics including selecting seed varieties, soil preparation, processing, and commercialization. This comprehensive approach set the women of Mahounou, Nanafoue up for success.

Gas powered mechanical cassava grinder in Mahounou, Ivory Coast. (Photo: Sylvanus Odjo/CIMMYT)

A message for my sisters

For Benedicte, the new grinder and press are making a huge difference. “The press with the hydraulic system is very efficient and we no longer need to use so much effort to remove the juice,” she said. According to Benedicte, workers in the cooperative are now processing up 1,000% more cassava per day and are only limited by the availability of raw material.

Better yield is also generating financial improvements for these women. “A woman who is working can buy her own machine and earn money that can be used for the education of her children,” Benedicte said. “I have a message for my sisters: a woman cannot solely depend on her husband and expect him to provide everything.”

GIC is working with 32 other groups like Benedicte in Ivory Coast, and the mechanization program has impacted the work of 1,000 women so far.

Taking the next step

There are still hurdles to overcome. In Mahounou, women producing cassava are relying on men to ignite the machines, and when a grinder or a press breaks down, it can be difficult to find spare parts. Benedicte believes electric machines could help solve both problems and take their business to the next level. “We would like to increase our production and sell it at an international level,” she said. “We would like to have a small processing unit here for women that could be used to produce high quality products for the international markets.”

GIC also has plans for a technology transfer that could reproduce this successful program in Malawi. Ivorian staff are collaborating with colleagues there to develop a cassava grinder and press for the Malawian context.

For Benedicte, there is more than food and income at stake in the success of these efforts. “It is important to be autonomous in taking charge of our own expenses,” she said. “This is being a woman. So, please, I invite my sisters to work.”

Cover photo: N’Zouako Akissi Benedicte, president of the local agricultural cooperative, with cooperative members and mechanical cassava grinders. (Photo: Sylvanus Odjo/CIMMYT)