The Director at the Crop Research Institute (CRI) at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Dr. Hans Adu-Dappah has commended the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) for investing into the research activities of Agricultural Scientist in Ghana. According to the Director, such an initiative would enable Ghanaian researchers to develop improved varieties of seeds for a full range of Africa's important staple like beans , cassava ,cowpea, maize, rice, sweet potato and sorghum.
Dr. Adu-Dappah said that over the years, budgetary allocation into science research has been dwindling and this has given room for the country to lose most of its researchers.Most funds that come to our outfit is mainly used to pay salaries and there is little or nothing for research and most of my fellow researchers feel under utilized and therefore leave to other countries, he said.
He indicated that unlike other donor agencies that tend to impose their ideas on researchers in the country the AGRA initiative allows the researchers to concentrate mainly on local seeds varieties and develop it for the local market.
Dr. Adu-Dappah made these known during a visit by a team from the AGRA secretariat led by the President of AGRA ,Dr. A. Namanga Ngongi, to have a first hand information on the activities of the CRI in Kumasi. He said that their research programmes include biotechnology, horticulture, legume and cereals improvement, root and tuber improvement, resource and crop management, plant health, seed technology, socio-economics and biometrics and their non-research programmes include training, communication, commercialization and marketing.
Dr. Adu-Dappah indicated that his outfit has developed improved varieties of crops which have been released for adoption by farmers and other users including the School Feeding Secretariat. He said crops that have witnessed improved varieties include maize(17),cowpea(10), cassava(8), plantain(1), pepper(2), groundnut(4) , soybean(4), sweet potato(6), banana(1) and yam(3).
He said the impact of these researches include an annual social benefit from maize being US$84million in 1997. Besides, about 70% of farmers in 1994 began to use improved cowpea technologies from his outfit thereby increasing production. Also pineapple exports increased from 30 metric tons in 1979 to 13,000 metric tons in 1993 partly due to the use of improved technologies.
Aside all the achievements, the Director lamented challenges like poor conditions of service, resulting in high loss of scientists, inadequate irrigation facilities and inadequate funding in relation to the number of institute's mandated crops. The President of AGRA, Dr. A. Namanga Ngongi, commended the CRI for its positive initiative and pledged his outfit's support to enable them to achieve their outlined objectives.
Dr. Ngongi said that AGRA seeks to help millions of Africans to lift themselves out of poverty and hunger by dramatically increasing the productivity of small scale farmers and improving their livelihoods. He said that currently his outfit is sponsoring Agricultural Scientists to help them develop special varieties needed to help solve the food shortage in the continent.
According to the AGRA President, the population of Africa is growing rapidly while the land available for farming is of increasingly marginal quality. He indicated that the continent's population growth of 3 percent a year has outstripped the 2 percent annual growth of food production in Africa.
Dr. Ngongi was of the view to overcome poverty and hunger, small-scale farmers in the continent need to sustainably increase agricultural productivity. Only by more food and more nutritious food will Africa be able to overcome poverty and hunger, he added.
After the presentation Dr. Ngongi and his team where taken to some of the project sites. The Programme Officer in charge of Seed Production /Dissemination, Dr. Issoufou Kapran in an interview said that it was the hope of AGRA to ensure that within the next ten years the current food shortage would reduce significantly.
He indicated that they hope to train about 80 PHD holders and 170 MSc Scientist to help build the human resource capacity needed to help generate new crop varieties suitable for the African continent. Earlier the team paid a visit to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) where ten students are being sponsored by AGRA to pursue Masters Degree programmes in Seed Science Technology and Plant breeding. The ten students who are from the sub-region consist of six Ghanaians and four others from Niger, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
