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.
This four-year Maize Lethal Necrosis Diagnostics and Prevention of Seed Transmission project will coordinate regional efforts to strengthen response to the rapid emergence and spread of Maize Lethal Necrosis (MLN).
Coordinated by CIMMYT, it will establish a community of practice among national plant protection organizations in eastern Africa for implementing harmonized MLN diagnostic protocols for detecting MLN-causing viruses and enable commercial seed companies to implement necessary standard operational procedures to produce MLN-free clean seed at various points along the maize seed value chain. It will also step-up MLN surveillance and monitoring in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, three of the major commercial maize seed exporting countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
The MLN project will be implemented in close partnership with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, national plant protection organizations and commercial seed companies in eastern Africa. It will also pool expertise from relevant public- and private-sector partners, regional organizations, and seed trade organizations operating in the region.
Partners: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, national plant protection organizations and commercial seed companies in eastern Africa
Following the recent emergence and rapid spread of the fall armyworm pest in Africa, the Fall Armyworm Response project is bringing together expert partners to develop and disseminate science-based recommendations to manage the pest.
Following the recent emergence and rapid spread of the fall armyworm pest in Africa, the Breeding for Resistance to Fall Armyworm in Africa project is beginning the process of identifying and developing new varieties of maize resistant to the pest.
GENNOVATE is a global comparative research initiative which addresses the question of how gender norms influence men, women and youth to adopt innovation in agriculture and natural resource management.
Carried out in conjunction with 11 CGIAR research programs worldwide and across 125 rural communities in 26 countries, this qualitative comparative study aims to provide authoritative research to advance gender-transformative approaches and catalyze change in international agricultural and natural resource management research for development.
In discussion groups and individual interviews, roughly 6,000 rural study participants of different socioeconomic backgrounds and age groups are reflecting on and comparing local women’s and men’s expected roles and behaviors — or gender norms— and how these social rules affect their ability to access, adopt, adapt and benefit from innovations in agricultural and natural resource management.
The initiative’s research process strives to give rural women and men a voice by providing authoritative, contextually grounded evidence on how gender interacts with agricultural innovations. It also aims to strengthen CGIAR research program capacities to know the target beneficiaries, design for them, and be accountable to them.
Central to the qualitative field study is an exploration of women’s and men’s agency at the core of which is the capacity to make important decisions pertaining to one’s life. For rural women and men, these decisions relate to agriculture and natural resource management, as well as to other significant events in the private (household) and public (community) spheres.
OBJECTIVES
What are the most important new agricultural practices and technologies for the men and for the women in a given village?
What qualities make a woman or a man a good farmer?
Do young people in this village follow local customs of women doing certain agricultural activities and men others?
Are there differences between a woman who is innovative and a man who is innovative?
Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia (NuME) is implemented in collaboration with research institutions, international non-governmental organizations, universities and public and private seed companies in Ethiopia.
Through the development and dissemination of new maize varieties, including quality protein maize (QPM), and the deployment of improved agronomic practices, NuME is helping to reduce food insecurity by strengthening Ethiopia’s capacity to feed itself.
NuME brings QPM to rural maize producers in the Ethiopian maize belt and beyond, where consumers – especially young children and women – are at risk of lysine deficiency. Since 2003, the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research and CIMMYT have made good progress in breeding, resulting in new QPM hybrids and open-pollinated varieties adapted to all major maize-producing agro-ecologies in Ethiopia, including the high-potential mid-altitude and highland zones, as well as adapted to drought-prone zones.
Partners: Ethiopian research institutions, international non-governmental organizations, universities and public and private seed companies
The Sustainable Intensification of Maize-Legume Systems for Food Security in Eastern and Southern Africa (SIMLESA) program aims to improve maize and legume productivity by 30 percent and to reduce the expected downside yield risk by 30 percent on approximately on approximately 650,000 farm households by 2023. Launched in 2010, the focal countries of program research are Australia, Botswana, Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The main thrust of the SIMLESA program is increasing farm-level food security, productivity and incomes through promotion of maize-legume intercropping systems in the context of reduced climate risk and change.
The program has also laid the foundation for developing conservation agriculture based sustainable intensification options, including integration of improved maize and legume varieties identified for their compatibility with CA-based practices; promoting technology adoption by both female and male farmers; capacity building for national agricultural research systems of partner countries; creating enhanced partnerships and collaboration with established innovation platforms for coordinated scaling-out of SIMLESA-generated options and practices.
Funding Institutions: Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR)
Partners: National agricultural systems of Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania, as well as international and local research centers, extension agencies, non-governmental organizations, universities and agribusinesses along the value chain.
This project will lead to the identification of genes of interest to help guide breeding efforts to boost yield stability and resilience in low fertility agriculture systems subject to drought.
The Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa Seed Scaling (DTMASS) project was officially launched in 2014 with the aim to meet demand and improve access to good-quality maize through production and deployment of affordable and improved drought-tolerant, stress-resilient and high-yielding maize varieties for smallholder farmers.
Led by CIMMYT and implemented through in-country public and private partnerships, DTMASS emphasizes scaling up and scaling out of drought tolerant maize seed, and uptake of the same among smallholder farmers. Over its lifespan, the project aims to produce close to 12,000 metric tons of certified seed for use by approximately 400,000 households, or 2.5 million people, in six countries in eastern and southern Africa.
DTMASS target countries (Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia) account for 25 percent, or 252 million, of the people in sub-Saharan Africa, and 41 percent of the maize production areas. DTMASS builds on the progress made by Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa and other complementary CIMMYT maize projects in Africa, including Improved Maize for African Soils and Water Efficient Maize for Africa.
The Stress Tolerant Maize for Africa (STMA) project aims to diminish devastating constraints in maize production across sub-Saharan Africa. The project develops improved maize varieties with resistance and tolerance to drought, low soil fertility, heat, diseases such as Maize Lethal Necrosis and pests affecting maize production areas in the region.
STMA operates in eastern (Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda), southern (Malawi, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe) and West Africa (Benin, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria). These countries account for nearly 72 percent of all maize area in sub-Saharan Africa and include more than 176 million people who depend on maize-based agriculture for their food security and economic well-being. Climate change effects like drought, a lack of access to resources like fertilizer and other stresses increase the risk of crop failure that negatively affects income, food security and nutrition of millions of smallholder farmers and their families.
The project will develop 70 new stress-tolerant varieties using innovative modern breeding technologies, and promote improved stress-tolerant varieties expected to increase maize productivity up to 50 percent. The project aims to produce estimated 54,000 tons of certified seed to put into the hands of more than 5.4 million smallholder farmer households by the end of 2019.
Objectives
Use innovative breeding tools and techniques applied for increasing the rate of genetic gain in the maize breeding pipeline.
Increase commercialization of improved multiple-stress-tolerant maize varieties with gender-preferred traits by the sub-Saharan African seed sector.
Increase seed availability and farmer uptake of stress-tolerant maize varieties in target countries.
Optimize investment impact through effective project oversight, monitoring, evaluation and communication.
The Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa project aims to mitigate drought and other constraints to maize production in sub-Saharan Africa, increasing maize yields by at least one ton per hectare under moderate drought and with a 20 to 30 percent increase over farmers’ current yields, benefiting up to 40 million people in 13 African countries. The project brings together farmers, research institutions, extension specialists, seed producers, farmer community organizations and non-governmental organizations. It is jointly implemented by CIMMYT and the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, in close collaboration with national agricultural research systems in participating nations. Millions of farmers in the region are already benefiting from the outputs of this partnership, which includes support and training for African seed producers and promoting vibrant, competitive seed markets.
Achievements:
Between 2007 and 12, participants marketed or otherwise made available 60 drought tolerant hybrids and 57 open-pollinated varieties to smallholder farmers
In addition to drought tolerance, the new varieties and hybrids also possess such desirable traits as resistance to major diseases
Engage government officials in policy dialogue to help fast-track varietal releases and fosters competitive seed markets and more
widespread access to quality seed at affordable prices
Help ensure farmers’ access to the best possible products and services, coordinate various capacity-building events and
activities for maize breeders, technicians, seed producers, extension workers, non-government organizations and farmer groups
Provide technical and advisory support to 50 African undergraduate and 28 African graduate students
Expand smallholder farmers’ use of drought and other stress tolerant maize seed to benefit 30 to 40 million people and provide added grain worth $160-200 million each year in drought-affected areas of sub-Saharan Africa
Kick Geels is CIMMYT’s Director of Finance since 2017. In his role, Geels aims to increase the efficiency of the finance function and improve client and service orientation, while maintaining robust internal control frameworks to ensure compliance with donor and statutory regulations. Prior to this appointment, he served as CIMMYT’s Regional Finance Manager. Previously, he worked for nine years at Syngenta, in areas such as compliance, Sarbanes-Oxley, SAP/ERP implementation, process improvement, programs and multiple accounting functions. He was also Finance Statutory Head, responsible for 13 countries.
A Dutch national, he has been based in Mexico, The Netherlands, Panama and Switzerland. Geels’ original training was in law and he later earned a Master’s Degree in Internal Audit from the University of Amsterdam and a Master’s Degree in Finance from Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam). He is a member of the CGIAR Corporate Services Executives (CSE) committee.
Participants of the project closure workshop stand for a group photo. (Photo: Semu Yemane/EIAR)
The Ethiopian wheat sector has seen progress since the early 2000s, more than doubling the average farm yields from 1.13 tons per hectare in 1998/99 to 2.74 tons per hectare in 2017/18. Progressive farmers who plant improved wheat varieties and follow recommended agronomic practices could harvest four to six tons per hectare in high-potential wheat growing areas. However, the production is not keeping up with the growing wheat demand: imports reached over 1.5 million tons last year. The Ethiopian government has announced recently that the country should become wheat self-sufficient over the next four years.
One of the biggest wheat production challenges in Ethiopia has been the stem rust and yellow rust diseases caused by Pucccinia spp, which severely affected popular wheat varieties like Kubsa, Galema and Digalu that wiped out from production.
In response to these losses, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) started an emergency project to multiply and disseminate rust-resistant wheat varieties in the affected regions in 2014, with support from USAID.
The following year, CIMMYT launched the Seed Multiplication and Delivery of High Yielding Rust Resistant Bread and Durum Wheat Varieties to Ethiopian Farmers project. It benefitted people in 54 woredas (districts) of 4 regions: Amhara, Oromia, SNNP and Tigray. CIMMYT collaborated with the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), regional agricultural research institutes and the regional bureaus of agriculture.
This wheat seed scaling project wrapped up with a closure workshop on March 7, 2019. Organized by CIMMYT and EIAR, it gathered representatives from USAID, policymakers, researchers and other governmental and non-governmental institutions.
State minister of agriculture Aynalem Nigussie officially opened the workshop. (Photo: Semu Yemane/EIAR)
State minister of agriculture Aynalem Nigussie noted that the project boosted farmers’ productivity thanks to better seeds, improved farming practices and increased knowledge to deal with wheat rust diseases. She recognized that the project aligned with national priorities, as the government is devising a new seed policy to address the current challenges of the Ethiopian wheat seed sector.
CIMMYT’s representative in Ethiopia, Bekele Abeyo, highlighted some of the project outcomes. Some of the achievements in the past four years included the release and demonstration of 23 wheat varieties — 18 bread and 5 durum types —, increased access to these improved seeds for 131,132 households and production of 39,750 tons of wheat grain. Extension agents from 54 woredas participated in training in wheat rust management, recommended agronomic packages for the new wheat varieties, and field data collection and management.
Lessons learned
Abeyo explained that the project could reach a high number of farmers thanks to effective teamwork between the various stakeholders, seed support on revolving bases and a decentralized seed production to reach even remote places. Clustering farmers’ plots favored quality seed production.
Participants flagged weak market linkages, particularly for farmers producing durum wheat, , as a bottleneck to address. Workshop participants recommended the establishment of a wheat task force involving the private sector and with continuous support from funders like USAID.
The director general of EIAR, Mandefro Nigusse, said that the issues raised are inputs for further actions, and some will have to be directed to researchers and breeders to come up with additional solutions for the challenges the wheat sector is facing.
Eyasu Abrha, Advisor to the Minister of Agriculture, officially closed the workshop. He noted that the government of Ethiopia is putting effort into ensuring nutritional and food security, and that projects such as this one are important to address critical challenges in the sector. Abrha acknowledged the support of CIMMYT, EIAR and USAID, and called for a continued collaboration with the government of Ethiopia to meet nutritional and food security goals.
CIMMYT’s representative in Ethiopia, Bekele Abeyo, presents the achievements of the project. (Photo: Semu Yemane/EIAR)
Pieter Rutsaert is a markets and value chain specialist with CIMMYT, based in Kenya. His work focuses on the demand side of formal seed systems development in Eastern Africa with special focus on the role of agro-dealers, farmer drivers for varietal turnover and collecting market intelligence data for breeding priorities.
He obtained his MSc in Tropical Natural Resources Management from KULeuven and a PhD from Ghent University in Belgium. Before joining CIMMYT, he worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at IRRI in the Philippines and as research director for Haystack International, a market research consultancy firm in Belgium.
Aflatoxins are harmful compounds that are produced by the fungus Aspergillus flavus, which can be found in the soil, plants and grain of a variety of legumes and cereals including maize. Toxic to humans and animals, aflatoxins are associated with liver and other types of cancer, as well as with weakened immune systems that result in increased burden of disease, micronutrient deficiencies, and stunting or underweight development in children.
Efforts to breed maize varieties with resistance to aflatoxin contamination have proven difficult and elusive. Contamination of maize grain and products with aflatoxin is especially prevalent in low- and middle-income countries where monitoring and safety standards are inconsistently implemented.
Biofortification also serves to address “hidden hunger,” or micronutrient deficiency. Over two billion people are affected globally — they consume a sufficient amount of calories but lack essential micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals. Vitamin A deficiency specifically compromises the health of millions of maize consumers around the world, including large parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
Provitamin A-enriched maize is developed by increasing the concentration of carotenoids — the precursors of vitamin A — and powerful antioxidants that play important roles in reducing the production of aflatoxin by the fungus Aspergillus flavus. The relative ease of breeding for increased concentrations of carotenoids as compared to breeding for aflatoxin resistance in maize make this finding especially significant as part of a solution to aflatoxin contamination problems.
Breeding of provitamin A-enriched maize varieties is ongoing at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), with the support of HarvestPlus. Several varieties trialed in sub-Saharan Africa have demonstrated their potential to benefit vitamin-deficient maize consumers.
The researchers highlight the potential in breeding maize with enhanced levels of carotenoids to yield the dual health benefits of reduced aflatoxin concentration in maize and reduced rates of vitamin A deficiency. This result is especially significant for countries where the health burdens of exposure to aflatoxin and prevalence of vitamin A deficiency converge with high rates of maize consumption.
Financial support for this study was partially provided by HarvestPlus, a global alliance of agriculture and nutrition research institutions working to increase the micronutrient density of staple food crops through biofortification. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of HarvestPlus. The CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE) also supported this research.
This research builds on the Ph.D. dissertation of Dr. Pattama Hannok at University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, United States (Hannok, 2015).
Tabitha Kamau checks the maize at her family’s farm in Machakos County, Kenya. (Photo: Joshua Masinde/CIMMYT)
How do young rural Africans engage in the rural economy? How important is farming relative to non-farm activities for the income of young rural Africans? What social, spatial and policy factors explain different patterns of engagement? These questions are at the heart of an interdisciplinary research project, funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), that seeks to provide stronger evidence for policy and for the growing number of programs in Africa that want to “invest in youth.”
One component of the Challenges and Opportunities for Rural Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa project, led by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), draws on data from the World Bank’s Living Standard Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) to develop a more detailed picture of young people’s economic activities. These surveys, covering eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa, were conducted at regular intervals and in most cases followed the same households and individuals through time. While the LSMS-ISA are not specialized youth surveys and therefore may not cover all facets of youth livelihoods and wellbeing in detail, they provide valuable knowledge about the evolving patterns of social and economic characteristics of rural African youth and their households.
“LSMS-ISA data are open access, aiming to help national governments and academics analyze the linkages between poverty and agricultural productivity in developing countries,” said Sydney Gourlay, Survey Specialist in the Development Data Group of the World Bank. She explained that LSMS-ISA datasets cover rural and urban livelihoods — including asset ownership, education, farm and non-farm incomes — and contain detailed information on farming practices and productivity. “LSMS-ISA data have untapped potential for valuable youth analyses that could lead to evidence-based youth policy reform,” Gourlay said.
To stimulate greater use of LSMS-ISA data for research on these issues, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), IDS, and the LSMS team of the World Bank organized a workshop for young African social scientists, hosted by CIMMYT in Nairobi from February 4 to February 8, 2019.
Early-career social scientists from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and Zimbabwe explored the potential of LSMS-ISA data, identified research issues, and developed strategies to create new analyses. The workshop was also a chance to uncover potential areas for increased data collection on youth, as part of the LSMS team’s IFAD-funded initiative “Improving Data on Women and Youth.”
What does that data point represent?
The workshop stressed the importance of getting to know the data before analyzing them. As explained by World Bank senior economist Talip Kilic in The Crowd and the Cloud, “Every data point has a human story.” It is important to decipher what the data points represent and the limits within which they can be interpreted. For instance, the definition of youth differs by country, so comparative studies across countries must harmonize data from different sources.
“Because LSMS-ISA survey locations are georeferenced, it is possible to integrate spatial information from multiple sources and gain new insights about patterns of interest, as well as the drivers associated with such patterns,” said Jordan Chamberlin, spatial economics expert at CIMMYT. “For example, in all countries we’ve examined, the degree of non-farm economic engagement is strongly associated with distance from urban centers.”
Chamberlin noted that georeferencing also has limitations. For instance, to ensure privacy, LSMS-ISA coordinates for households are randomly offset by as much as 5 km. Nonetheless, diverse geospatial data from the datasets — distance to the nearest tarmac road or population density, among other information — may be integrated via the location coordinates.
A young farmer holding a baby participates in a varietal assessment exercise on a maize trial plot in Machakos County, Kenya. (Photo: Joshua Masinde/CIMMYT)
One key variable to assess farm productivity is harvested area. The LSMS team’s research has revealed high, systematic discrepancies between farmers’ self-assessments of area, GPS measurements, and compass and rope, which is considered the most accurate method. Methodological validation data from Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Tanzania show that on average farmers overestimate the area of plots smaller than 200 m2 by more than 370 percent and underestimate the size of plots larger than 2 hectares by 13 percent, relative to compass and rope measurements. Such errors can skew yield analyses and the accuracy of assessments of national agricultural research programs’ impact.
Several workshop participants expressed interest in using the LSMS dataset for studies on migration, given that it contains information about this variable. In the case of internal migrants — that is, persons who have moved to another area in the same country — LSMS enumerators will find and interview them and these migrants will continue to be included in future rounds of the panel survey. In Malawi, for example, about 93 percent of individuals were tracked between the 2010/11 and the 2013 Integrated Household Surveys. Plot characteristics — such as type of soil, input use, and crop production — include information on the person who manages the plot, allowing for identification and analysis of male and female managed plots.
Following the training, the participants have better articulated their research ideas on youth. Prospective youth studies from the group include how land productivity affects youth opportunities and whether migration induces greater involvement of women in agriculture or raises the cost of rural labor. Better studies will generate more accurate knowledge to help design more effective youth policies.
