IITA DG calls for a “Brown Revolution” for a “Green Revolution” in Africa

The push for a “Green Revolution” in Africa to increase agricultural production for food and economic development will not bear much fruit if adequate attention is not paid to managing soil fertility in the continent.  

Dr Sanginga making a presentation on Brown Revolution at the
 Global Cassava Partnership conference in Kampala, Uganda.

According to Dr Nteranya Sanginga, IITA Director General, Africa cannot achieve a “Green Revolution” without first having a “Brown Revolution”. He noted that the current application of 8 kg/ha of soil nutrients, whether organic or inorganic fertilizers, was very low and was a major setback to the continent’s vision of adequately feeding itself.

Dr Sanginga spoke at the Global Cassava Partnership meeting currently taking place this week in Kampala, Uganda, that brought together over 400 international scientists from all over the world to strategize on how cassava can play a bigger role in economic development by exploiting the diverse uses of this hardy crop. Cassava performs well under harsh conditions, such as poor soils and drought.

The conference was launched by the Honourble Minister of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, Hon Tress Bucyanayandi who noted that frequent droughts and floods as a result of climate change were one of the leading causes of food insecurity in the world today with millions of USD going into emergency food aid.

The Guest of honour Hon Tess Bucyanayandi makes
the opening remarks. 

He noted that cassava was a crop that performs well in drought conditions and is becoming an important food security crop. He therefore urged the researchers gathered at the conference to develop solutions to some of the challenges facing the production of the crop in the region such as Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD) and Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD), the two diseases wreaking havoc on the crop’s production. 

Participants following workshop proceedings

Dr Eugene Terry from Transfarm Africa noted that a number of efforts to transform cassava were already underway in the region starting with the development and deployment of improved better yielding varieties by IITA. He noted that over 80% of the new varieties released by national programs in Africa had incorporated these varieties released in the 1970’s and dubbed TMS series.

He said there were many challenges facing the transformation of the crop that needed to be tackled through research including control of pests and diseases and the need for early maturing and drought tolerant varieties. On marketing issues, he said there was need to research on better organization of value chains, better infrastructure support and how to reduce transaction costs.

Dr Sanginga on his part told the conference participants that while much investment had gone into developing high-yielding cassava varieties that were resistant to some of the major pests and diseases, the gains achieved cannot be realized if these varieties are grown in poor soils.

He said it was unfortunate that cassava had been tagged for many years as a poor man’s crop that does not require much input such as fertilizers. He argued that the crop harvested as much nutrients from the soil as other crops and that these nutrients needed to be replenished. It also requires nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium similar to other crops.

“Nutrient use in cassava has been very minimal as it is considered a poor man’s crop. However, if we are talking about cassava transformation, about increasing cassava production not only for food but also for commercial use, we must change these wrong perceptions. If we think of growing cassava in soils that are too poor for other crops such as maize,” he said, “then, we are missing the other half of the equation.”

The African Union has recommended for the countries in the continent to increase application of soil nutrients to 50 kg/ha of nutrients combining both organic and inorganic fertilizers.

The Global Cassava Partnership for the 21st Century (GCP21) conference is taking place on 18–22 June 2012 in Kampala, Uganda. GCP21 consists of 45 member institutions working on research and development of cassava, a staple crop relied on by more than 700 million people worldwide. The ultimate goal of the partnership is to improve cassava productivity through scientific research and development. 

Group photo of participants

The conference participants include representatives from NARS, international agricultural research centers, advanced laboratories and universities from developed and developing countries, United Nations’ agencies, governmental and non-governmental organizations, donor and development organizations, businesses in the ag-biotechnology and food processing industries.

Sanginga drums up support for IITA’s Southern Africa hub

 The IITA Director General, Dr Nteranya Sanginga, was last week, from 11 – 15 June 2012, in Zambia, to meet different partners of the institute to explore ways to strengthen relationships and support each other in efforts to find solutions to hunger and poverty in the country and beyond.

IITA DG (extreme left) talks to Dr Mick Mwala, Dean of School of Agricultural
Sciences. At the centre is Dr Chikoye, IITA Director for Southern Africa 

The partners welcomed the move by IITA to invest in first class research facilities and increase the number and diversity of scientists working in Lusaka, Zambia, its regional hub for Southern Africa and serving 13 countries in the region

Meeting with AfDB team

The hub is one of four that the institute is working through as it decentralizes its activities to have more impact as part of its ambitious plan to get 20 million people out of poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa in the next ten years as spelt out in its refreshed strategy. 


The hubs are in Nigeria for the West, Tanzania for Eastern, Zambia for Southern and Democratic Republic of Congo for Central Africa.

Tackling succession crisis in agricultural research
Sanginga said the institute was going to especially focus on building capacity of researchers from national research institutes and institutions of higher learning.

He noted that many countries in Africa were heading towards a crisis as the current experienced civil servants in the agricultural sector who were retiring did not have qualified predecessors to take over. 

At a media briefing

“In Zambia, in Congo, in Kenya and in many other African countries, the situation is the same. We have scientists at the prime of their career being forced to retire because they have attained retirement age of 50 – 55 years. On the other hand, there are very few experienced staff to take over from them. So at IITA we are exploring how to make use of the knowledge and skills of these retirees and how to build the capacity of young researchers and attract the young people to agriculture,” he said.

This was welcomed by the Acting Director of ZARI Dr Moses Mwale and the Dean of the School of Faculty of Agriculture Sciences, University of Zambia, Dr Mick Mwala and their colleagues.

Crop diversification

Visiting a tissue culture lab at Zambian Agricultural Research Institute

Dr Sanginga also noted that there was need for African countries to diversify their staple crops particularly to avoid over reliance on maize. This was supported by country representatives of FAO, Mr Adrianus Spijker and Africa Development Bank (AfDB), Dr Freddie Kwesiga who noted that over-reliance on maize as a food staple and income crop in Zambia was not sustainable particularly in the face of climate change and dependency on rain-fed agriculture.

They identified cassava as one crop they were keen on promoting as it was a hardy crop with uses that went beyond just being a food crop.

Dr Sanginga assured them that IITA had many years of working along the cassava value chain and would lend its expertise to support the country in its diversification efforts.

He gave an example of Nigeria where the policy of including 20% cassava flour was saving the country millions of US dollars from reduced wheat importation and was creating jobs for thousands of young people.

Sanginga giving a talk at the University of Zambia, School of
Agricultural Sciences

FAO country representative, Mr Spijker noted that IITA and FAO had achieved significant success in dealing with Cassava Mosaic Diseases (CMD) in DRC. He said IITA’s new disease-resistant varieties distributed all over the country, with support from FAO and other partners, had averted a major disaster. He was therefore more than happy to collaborate with IITA to make a difference in Zambia.

A group photo with students and faculty members

Sanginga said the institute was also focusing on strengthening its research on Natural Resource Management, and partnership with National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) for better impact.   

Sanginga was accompanied by the IITA director for Southern Africa, David Chikoye and Steve Boahen, and Alene Arega, the Country representatives for Mozambique and Malawi respectively.

In his short busy program in Zambia, Sanginga also made brief presentations at the University of Zambia, at the FAO offices, had a media briefing in addition to holding a meeting with all IITA staff in Zambia.  

Project to save farmers from bogus agricultural commercial products launched

Most small holder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are struggling to make ends meet and are always on the lookout for ways to boost their production. And they are even more desperate now in the face of unpredictable weather due to climate change.

Unfortunately, they sometimes fall prey and loose huge sums of their hard earned money to unscrupulous companies selling them ‘miraculous’ products that promise to increase their yields but which turn out to be fake or sub-standard and do  not live up to their claims.  

Moreover, the regulatory bodies established to control these products and safeguard farmers’ investments are often poorly funded, poorly equipped and the regulations are not up to date to include some of these new innovative products coming into the market such as bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticides.

To address this, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) recently launched the second phase of the Commercial Products (COMPRO-II) project that aims to benefit two million smallholder farmers in East and West Africa by providing information on which agricultural products are genuinely effective to boost their production among the myriad currently available in the market.

IITA's Director General Dr Sanginga speaking during the project launch. 

 “We have all these products in the market which, like the witchdoctors’ potions, promise to solve all the farmers’ problems. Our concern therefore is that our poor small-scale farmers are using their little hard earned money to pay for products that do not produce results. So we first set out to understand the problem then see how to help them,’ said Dr. Nteranya Sanginga, Director General for the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) during the launch that was held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on 16 May 2012.  

‘Under phase I of the project, with a grant from the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation, we screened over 100 such products in the market to see which ones are useful. And out of these only three were found to be really effective,” he said.

The three were Rhizobium inoculants for legumes, mycorrhizal inoculants for tissue-culture banana, and fertilizer seed coating of for maize.

Rhizobium and mycorrhizal are bio-fertilizers that make use of useful micro-organisms that are naturally found in the soils. Rhizobium is a bacterium that converts the free nitrogen in the air into a form that plants can absorb from the soil. Mycorrhizal fungus assists plants to absorb nutrients from the soil and strengthen their resistance to soil-borne pests such as nematodes.

Fertilizer seed coating for maize on the other hand, avails essential nutrient to the crop on germination making it grow better, have better root development and become better established.

Participants drawn from the six project countries at the its launch.

The second phase will primarily focus on creating awareness and disseminating to farmers these tried and tested quality products to increase their production and building the capacity of national systems to continuing screening such products coming into the market.


“The project will engage with and support national institutions to put in place systems to continue screening these products to check their quality. This will ensure farmers are not wasting money on fake products that do not work,” said Dr Prem Warrior, a Senior Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

At the end of the project, more farmers are expected to confidently use these products because their safety, efficacy, and quality will be ensured through institutionalized regulatory and quality assurance mechanisms.

“We want to make farmers’ life better. Using some of these productions that we have checked and ascertained their quality together with other good farming practices such as use of fertilizers and improved varieties, they can get better yields of maize, soybean and banana and improve their lives,” said Bernard Vanlauwe, IITA Director for Central Africa and the project team leader.

The project is targeting small-holder farmers in six African countries: Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania.

Making food safe: Two projects to combat mycotoxin contamination in Tanzania launched

Project partners pose for a group photo at a meeting to
launch and plan for the implementation of two projects to
control mycotoxin contamination in Tanzania 

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and its partners recently launched two new research projects in Tanzania aimed at understanding the extent of mycotoxin contamination and developing a comprehensive and lasting solution for reducing contamination to improve the health and livelihoods of millions of families in the country and reduce loss of income. 

Mycotoxins are poisonous chemicals secreted by naturally occurring fungi which colonize key staple crops while in the fields and during storage. In high concentrations, they make them unfit for human and livestock consumption and for trade. The most common are aflatoxins and fumonisins which have been shown to cause cancer and stunt growth of children.

They are a great constraint to improving the health and wellbeing of people in Africa where testing contamination of agricultural crops is generally not routinely carried out unless it is intended for export. As a result, millions of people living in Africa are chronically exposed to aflatoxins and fumonisins through their diets. 

Preliminary studies by the Tanzania Food and Drugs Administration (TFDA) have documented levels of aflatoxins and fumonisins in maize – the country’s number one staple food- that are way above the recommended maximum limits.

The first project, a six-month research funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the Food the Future (FtF) initiative, will establish the extent and spread of mycotoxin contamination of maize and cassava at the homestead and in the markets in Dodoma and Manyara.

The second initiative seeks to introduce a safe and natural technology developed by the United States Department for Agriculture – Agricultural Research Services (USDA-ARS) and IITA that can effectively reduce aflatoxin contamination of maize and groundnuts in the field and during storage.

Aflatoxin is produced by a fungus, Aspergillus flavus. Luckily, not all strains produce the toxin. The innovative biocontrol solution being proposed in the project therefore works by identifying and introducing the naturally occurring non-toxic strains ‘the good fungus’ that can out-compete, displace and drastically reduce the population of their poisonous cousins ‘the bad fungus’. 

It has been successfully piloted in Nigeria under the name Aflasafe where it has been shown to reduce contamination by 99%. Country specific biocontrol products are also being developed for Senegal, Burkina Faso, Kenya and Zambia.

This project therefore aims at extending the technology to Tanzania. Four non-toxic strains of the fungus that are most effective in displacing the toxic strains in the country will be identified and formulated into a biocontrol product. Its effectiveness in reducing aflatoxin contamination will then be evaluated under farmers’ field conditions.  If it is found to be effective, it will then be submitted to the Tropical Pesticide Research Institute (TPRI) for registration as a biopesticide for aflatoxin reduction.

The development of the biocontrol technology for Tanzania is funded by Meridian Institute on behalf of the Partnership for Aflatoxin Control in Africa (PACA) which was created at the recommendations of the 7^th Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) partnership platform where the urgent need to control mycotoxin contamination was emphasized. 

The two projects were launched at a two-day meeting from 18 – 19 April in Dar es Salaam organized by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) that brought together all the partners to plan for their implementation. 

Project partners: MAFC, IITA, Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Tanzania Food and Drug Administration (TFDA) and Tropical Pests Research Institute (TPRI).

Farmers in Africa should switch to biopesticides - SciDev.Net

Farmers in Africa should switch to biopesticides - SciDev.Net

Biopesticides are better and safer than chemical pesticides — policymakers must do more to promote them, says insect ecologistManuele Tamò.

Agriculture is, and will remain for years to come, the main driver of economic development in Africa. Vegetables such as cowpea in West Africa and the common bean in East Africa are an important source of cash and nutrition.

Vegetable and horticultural crops will soon become more important due to increasing urbanisation. But they are plagued by insect pests and diseases that can reduce yields by up to 80 per cent.

Farmers often resort to using chemical pesticide sprays to mitigate the problem. But pesticides are usually applied without taking basic safety precautions such as protecting oneself against the spray mist, or using the correct dosage and intervals between applications.

The problem is compounded by aggressive selling strategies, where retailers target barely literate growers to market toxic pesticides of dubious quality that are sometimes inappropriate — for example destined for use on cotton, not vegetables.

As a result pesticides can pose risks to the health of consumers, theenvironment, and producers. They include acute and chronic side effects including the development of skin and neurological disorders. And indiscriminate use of broad-spectrum insecticides can wipe out pests' natural enemies.

Most growers ignore the natural ways in which pests and disease can be managed. Yet biopesticides — derived from plants as well as microorganisms such as viruses and fungi — have virtually no adverse impact on environmental and human health.

Biopesticide benefits

If prepared and used correctly, biopesticides can be as effective as conventional pesticides. But their killing action is a few days slower, and for farmers accustomed to seeing dead insects an hour after a chemical pesticide has been applied, this can be a critical concern that needs careful explanation.

Training programmes in using biopesticides often provide plots where farmers can compare chemical against biopesticide treatment — an essential tool for education about the effectiveness of biopesticides.

At the end of the cropping season biopesticides protect crops well, providing the same yield as chemical treatments. This has been shown by on-farm trials using the fungus Beauveria bassiana against the diamondback mothPlutella xylostella, a serious cabbage pest.

And the issue of 'slow kill' has now lost some significance because some of the most important agricultural pests have developed resistance to chemical pesticides.

Insects have developed detoxification mechanisms as a result of farmers'overreliance on the same chemical substance. This is particularly well-documented for the diamondback moth; it is now resistant to almost all commercial insecticides.

By contrast, resistance is not a problem with bio-pesticides and there are no signs of it so far. There are two good reasons for this.

First, if living organisms are deployed as biopesticides against pests, the insect-specific fungus or virus can co-evolve to counterattack if the target organism begins to develop resistance.

Second, the plant extracts used in biopesticides contain several different active substances, which are much more difficult for insects to develop resistance to than the one or two active molecules present in most chemical pesticides.

The development of insect resistance to chemical pesticides has been extensively reported, so that even farmers with low literacy are becoming aware that it is better to use a slow killing biopesticide than a chemical insecticide.

Local production

Bio-pesticides can be produced locally with cheap materials and simple equipment, and can generate additional household income by engagingwomen groups or unemployed youth.

Recent examples of the production of a baculovirus to attack the cotton bollworm in India clearly demonstrate the feasibility of this approach.

Community-based production of this virus was initially funded by a grant from the UK's Department for International Development. But it has continued beyond the end of the project, prompting nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), the private sector and even the government to set up production units.

In another example from Benin in West Africa, the international NGO SENS is encouraging community-owned enterprises to help farmers co-invest in producing biopesticides.

One of these start-up enterprises, Phileol-HVC is already marketing a mixture of neem oil and essential oils branded BioPhyto. Designed for spraying horticultural crops, it costs a fraction of the price of synthetic pesticide, yet still provides the desired pest control and environmental benefits.

Scaling up

So why aren't more farmers using bio-pesticides in Africa?

In West Africa, the main reason is the lack of 'off the shelf' availability. Some farmers may know the advantages of using botanical extracts, such as the absence of hazardous side-effects, but are reluctant to invest extra time and labour to produce them by themselves during the peak cropping season.

This is particularly true for male farmers. So engaging women groups or unemployed youth in producing biopesticides, as well as making them affordable and of good quality, helps promote their use.

Research institutions and NGOs need to develop appropriate training materials to support the use, production, and quality control of biopesticides. Because there is no lab accreditation for quality control of biopesticides in Africa, it is currently done by producers in Africa — and they need appropriate training materials.

Similarly, vendors, consumers and policymakers need to be made aware of the higher quality and safety of products treated with bio-pesticides.

Manuele Tamò is the Country Representative of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Benin. He can be contacted at: m.tamo@cgiar.org.