[Back to index] [To Volume13#4 -- full graphics]

From Africa Recovery, Vol.13#4 (December 1999), page 28

Food security through science

UN institute promotes innovation and collaboration among African researchers

By Ernest Harsch in Accra

To combat hunger and improve food security in their continent, Africans must make better use of science to overcome soil degradation, says Mr. Uzo Mokwunye, director of the UN's Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (INRA). "Farmers know that low soil fertility is a major problem, but nobody is doing anything about it," he said in an interview at the institute's headquarters at the University of Ghana, Legon, near Accra.

According to UN studies, about 72 per cent of sub-Saharan Africa's cropland and 31 per cent of its pastureland is degraded, contributing to enormous losses in output. Meanwhile, 35 per cent of Africa's children are malnourished. If current trends continue, by 2025 the region will produce enough food for only 40 per cent of its projected 1 billion people.

Thus far, most agricultural research is devoted to developing high-yielding seeds, Mr. Mokwunye notes. But, he adds, a green revolution "will be impossible in Africa" unless soil quality is improved so that these new varieties can thrive. With both high-yielding seeds and more fertile soil, rice and wheat yields could double, sorghum yields could triple and maize yields could quadruple.

Research therefore must intensify to tackle the problem. "Africans must take the lead in reversing the degradation of natural resources," says INRA's "strategic plan" for 2000-2004. "The challenge is to bring modern science to bear on fully exploiting the inherent production and commercial potential of natural resources."

Networking and coordination

INRA, which is part of the Tokyo-based UN University, supports work by African scientists on soil fertility, biodiversity and other related areas. Believing that there is no single solution to improving agricultural output or better utilization of Africa's natural resources generally, the institute pursues a holistic approach that cuts across sectors and ranges from laboratory research to broad policy issues.

The institute's own resources are very limited, however. The paid-up value of its endowment fund currently stands at just $2.6 mn, a fraction of the $50 mn requirement initially estimated when INRA was established in 1986. The institute did not actually find a permanent home in Africa until 1993, when the government of Ghana agreed to host it. INRA is now seeking $15 mn to develop five regional facilities, and to further develop its Mineral Resources Unit in Zambia.

With limited means of its own, the institute seeks to further its goals by forging close collaborative relationships with African universities and research institutions. Its mission, in fact, is to help strengthen their capacities, through direct training programmes and by building up networks of scientists working on similar problems.

"Our role is not necessarily to do the research ourselves," Dr. Mokwunye explains. "But we know that there are talents in Africa's universities and research institutes. Often they don't have the resources to work. So we try to bring these people together."

INRA calls such a network a "college of research associates." The members of a college remain at their own institutions, but coordinate their work under INRA's guidance. One project -- to determine the status of herbaria (plant collections) in various African countries -- is coordinated by a professor in Nigeria, but also involves specialists in five African sub-regions.

In Bonsu, Ghana, another INRA unit is working on genetic conservation. The institute hopes to develop it into a regional facility, to help conserve plant germplasm from throughout West Africa. While each country should have its own centre, Dr. Mokwunye advises, it is vital to also have a regional repository. If civil strife leads to the destruction of national germplasm holdings, as in Sierra Leone, then the regional facility can later help reproduce them.

At the University of Ghana, the institute is developing a high-quality botanical laboratory, and has already organized courses on tissue culture for dozens of researchers from across Africa. Once the lab is fully equipped, INRA hopes to attract botanists interested in doing research there, including Africans living outside the continent. "African botanists in the diaspora, because of the lack of facilities, have not come home," Dr. Mokwunye notes. But with the existence of such a laboratory, they "can come in the summer, work in that facility, train some young African scientists, and leave a little bit of themselves behind."

Another such "centre of excellence" is being developed at the University of Dschang, in Cameroon, to train African scientists in using modern computer technology for natural resources work.

'Recapitalizing' Africa's soils

Many of Africa's soils have low levels of nitrogen and phosphorous, vital for plant growth. The decline of shifting cultivation because of growing population density in many countries has further leached African soils of such essential minerals. With the elimination of, or drastic reduction in, government subsidies for agriculture resulting from structural adjustment programmes, many farmers cannot afford fertilizers to improve the land.

One of INRA's goals is to alert African governments to the severity of the problem, and encourage them to develop national soil fertility action plans. The purpose, says Dr. Mokwunye, is "creating awareness and gaining a national momentum on what needs to be done, and how to do it," involving as many actors as possible, including government institutions, farmers, private companies and donor agencies. So far, only Ghana and Burkina Faso have drawn up such national plans, but INRA is actively disseminating those experiences to other countries in West Africa.

As part of this effort, the institute is drawing attention to the importance of minerals, especially phosphates, for agricultural output. "Phosphorous is missing in almost all African soils," Dr. Mokwunye points out. "And yet, almost every African country has its local deposit of phosphate rock. So if we can use these local resources, we can solve quite a bit of the problem."

The properties of such phosphate rock differ greatly from one African country to another, with the minerals in some dissolving more easily into the soil. The deposits in Mali and Niger, for example, are highly soluble, and often the soil's own acidity is sufficient to draw out the phosphorous for plant growth. But most phosphate rock in Africa is "unreactive" and requires processing before it can be used as fertilizer. One INRA researcher in Togo is studying the effects on soil fertility of partially converted phosphate rock, while the institute's Mineral Resources Unit in Zambia is working on the engineering aspects of a pilot processing plant.

INRA, Mr. Mokwunye adds, is very concerned about the economic feasibility of such projects, since a key goal is to convince the private sector that investment in phosphate processing plants can be profitable. By better tapping the continent's own mineral riches, farmers will be able to improve the fertility of their fields, a process INRA calls "recapitalizing the soil."

Indigenous crops

Another area which INRA feels has been neglected by other research institutions is Africa's indigenous crops, such as cassava, millet and a wide variety of other foods and medicinal plants that traditionally have been widely used in Africa's countryside. Not only is little research being done to improve their yields or find better uses for them, but some of the lesser-known crops actually are disappearing, surveys by INRA have found.

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), supported by the World Bank, has five centres in Africa, and all 16 of its

centres worldwide conduct research in Africa. But, Mr. Mokwunye notes, most of them work on crops such as maize, wheat, potatoes and rice. "None of these is indigenous to Africa," he observes. "And yet we have indigenous crops, including cereals like teff. Teff is still the major cereal in Ethiopia. It is difficult to work with, but Ethiopian scientists fortunately have stuck to their research and are improving it."

INRA encourages the CGIAR centres to continue working on their selected crops, since "food security involves more than just eating roots and tubers." But the institute itself chooses to concentrate its own work on these neglected, endangered crops. Apart from their importance for food security and biodiversity, there also is a commercial aspect. "If they are indigenous to us, then we have a comparative advantage in producing them," Mr. Mokwunye points out. "If we can multiply them, then we can expand our export base. We can actually be the ones to sell to Europe, rather than Europe taking the things they grow in their greenhouses and selling to us."

Preserving and better developing Africa's rich natural storehouse requires devoting greater attention to the role of women, INRA argues. "In Africa," says the institute's strategic plan, "women are not only the managers of natural resources but also the main reservoirs of indigenous knowledge on Africa's food crops and useful plants." Therefore, a high premium should be placed on research and training to enhance women's capacities as natural resource managers.

------------------------------------------

BOX 1:
Mixed progress in combating African hunger

While some African countries have achieved significant progress in reducing hunger, many others are seeing even higher numbers of undernourished people, reports the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). According to the first edition of the agency's State of Food Insecurity in the World, released in October 1999, 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa achieved a reduction of 21 million undernourished citizens between 1980 and 1996. In fact, five of them -- Ghana, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Nigeria and Mali -- marked the greatest decreases in the world. Yet at the same time another 22 sub-Saharan countries saw their numbers of undernourished increase by 114 million over the same period, while 6 had decreases too small to keep the proportion of undernourished from increasing.

In 1995-97, the latest years for which comparable data are available, sub-Saharan Africa had a total of 179.6 million undernourished people, and North Africa had another 5.4 million. In the developing world as a whole, there were 791.5 million undernourished people -- down from an estimated 830 million at the time of the World Food Summit in 1996. Another 34 million undernourished people live in the industrialized countries (22 million of them in the former Soviet Union).

Overall, the proportion of undernourished people in Africa has been declining between 1979-81 and 1995-97, from 37 per cent to 33 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa and 8 per cent to 4 per cent in North Africa. Despite this progress, sub-Saharan Africa still claims the highest prevalence of undernourishment in the world, although its total number of undernourished falls far behind the 525.5 million people in Asia and the Pacific. The prevalence rate in Asia and the Pacific has decreased markedly, however, from 32 per cent in 1979-81 to 17 per cent in 1995-97. The FAO report cites rapid economic growth as one of the key factors in this decline, while uneven economic growth combined with war, drought and other calamities have contributed to the more mixed picture in Africa.

[Back to index] [To Volume13#4 -- full graphics]

Material from this article may be freely reproduced, with attribution to "Africa Recovery, United Nations".
We would appreciate a copy of the reproduction.

Africa Recovery
Room S-931
United Nations
New York, NY 10017 USA

Tel: (212) 963-6857
Fax: (212) 963-4556
Email: africa_recovery@un.org

Website: www.africarecovery.org
Contact us by email: africa_recovery@un.org