Kenya is among 18 countries in Africa that will benefit from a Sh50billion seed production and distribution project.
Agnes Kalibata, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa President said that the five-year project will ensure more farmers access improved and drought tolerant seed varieties to help boost food production.
She noted that for the last decade, many seed varieties have been developed in Africa but many farmers do not access them due to long distance between the farm and the source of seeds/agro-dealers.
“A decade ago, farmers had to travel 50 kilometres or more to access new seed varieties but today, the distance has been shortened to six kilometres. We want to further reduce it to two or four kilometers,” she said.
Kalibata was speaking on Tuesday during the launch of a new book in Nairobi on the growth of Africa’s seed sector in the last 10 years.
Joseph DeVries, AGRA Vice President in charge of programme development and innovation said despite the huge investment in the seed sector, the uptake of improved seed varieties in the continent is still minimal hence the low production leading to food insecurity.
“The adoption of improved seeds by small scale farmers in Africa is at 20 to 30 percent. Farmers are still recycling old varieties that are prone the climate change vagaries mainly new diseases and pests. Our focus is to increase the adoption rate to between 50 and 60 percent in order to realize the desired agriculture transformation in Africa,” he added.
Under a seed improvement programme which spanned 10 years, more than 600 new varieties of major African crops have been bred and released. In addition, 112 local, private seed companies have been established, up from 10 in 2007 in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa excluding South Africa. As a result, over 600,000 MT of high-quality, high-yielding seeds have been produced and distributed to an estimated 15 million farmers, with significant impact on yields and income.
The distribution has been done through a network of about 20,000 private, village-based agro-dealers who have been trained and supported to set up small rural shops that bring the seeds closer to farmers.
As a result of this initiative, millions of farmers in Africa are now harvesting two to three times more grain compared to 10 years ago, according to AGRA's estimates.
“Increasing the supply of improved seeds will continue to play a crucial role in growing Africa’s economies through agriculture, but will be made more sustainable, we believe, through the development of the entire food value chain espexially by private local agri-businesses, more forward looking policies, and stronger regulatory institutions,” Kalibata said.