Improved Seeds: A Concrete Solution to Break the Cycle of Rural Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
In the heart of sub-Saharan Africa, where agriculture serves as the lifeblood of many communities, the battle against poverty faces a critical impediment: the availability and quality of improved seeds of food crops. While various interventions, such as humanitarian aid, education, and infrastructure development, play essential roles in addressing poverty, the focus on high-quality seeds […]
A Quiet Revolution in Africa’s Seed Supply
Across Africa, a quiet revolution is transforming how smallholder farmers access improved seed. For decades, they depended on saved seed, informal exchanges, or costly imports poorly adapted to local conditions. Today, the rise of African-owned seed companies is giving farmers access to high-quality, climate-resilient, and quality-assured seeds, produced and distributed within their own communities. This […]
Strategic Germplasm Transfer: SSG and ITRA Advance Togo’s Seed Sovereignty Through Research Partnership
Sustainable seed systems rely on locally adapted research and autonomy over genetic resources. In Togo, dependency on annual imports of basic seed materials has constrained the scalability of hybrid varieties and national breeding capacity. Over the past three years, the Seed Systems Group (SSG) has partnered with the Togolese Institute for Agricultural Research (ITRA) under the IDRC and AGRA […]
2020 in review
2020 has been an unusual year with the impact of COVID-19 not only on health and health systems but also on food security and livelihoods. If anything positive can be said to have come from the pandemic, it is the increased focus of Africa’s governments on basic needs – first and foremost on food supply, […]
COVID-19 Worsens Africa’s Seed Supply Challenges
“Just get us the seed. The rest — we can do it ourselves,” he said, and down the road he went. The appeal came from a small-scale rice farmer in Sevaré, Mali. He had just bought a bag of fertilizer and was loading it on his donkey outside an input supply shop. I had told him about […]
Africa’s Food Supply Challenges During COVID-19
Like, I suspect, many agriculturalists working in Africa, when the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic first became apparent I couldn’t suppress a gut reaction along the lines of: “Oh no, people here are going to go hungry”. My mind sped through a series images of knock-on effects of a virus spreading to all corners of […]
Small-scale Farmers Key to Ensuring Food Supply Amidst COVID-19 Pandemic
Seed Systems Group’s (SSG’s) unwavering commitment to assisting over 38 million small-holder farmers in the furthest reaches of Africa is affirmed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant disruption of food production and supply chains caused by restricted movements and social distancing, affecting access to local markets and availability of labor. Cooperation and collaboration with […]
Madagascar
I was welcomed to Madagascar by Mr. Mbosa Rabenasola, agronomist and agricultural consultant who has long promoted the role of both research and the private sector in achieving a Malgasy Green Revolution. Mbosa, as he is known, had come highly recommended to us by Justin Rakotoarisaona, Secretary General of AFSTA, the African Seed Trade Association, […]
Sierra Leone
Located on the western coast of Africa, Sierra Leone is known for its beautiful, white-sand beaches lining the Freetown Peninsula. Leaving those asides for the time-being, I and Dr. Vithal Karoshi from the Cornell/Sathguru consortium embarked on a weeklong visit to learn about the seed systems of the country. We came to learn that Sierra […]
Guinea
Driving with our host and national consultant, Mr Ibrahima Diallo, from the capital city of Conakry to the agricultural research station of Koba, situated 150km further North, in maritime or lower Guinea, what strikes a newcomer like myself is the natural beauty, tropical forest, and of course you get just a glimpse of the plentiful […]
