By Samuel Hinneh
The African Cassava Agronomy Initiative (ACAI) project seeks to improve the livelihoods and incomes of cassava farmers in Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo through research and implementing best-bet agronomic practices.
The project, which is led by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will specifically improve cassava yields, cassava root quality, cassava supply to the processing sector, and fertilizer sales, thereby engaging over 100,000 households in the focus countries and facilitating the engagement of at least 30% women farmers.
“The value of benefits from this project in Nigeria and Tanzania is projected to be over 27 million USD. Furthermore, through engagement of households in Ghana, Uganda, and DR Congo and through extra interest generated in the products developed by the project, these figures are expected to increase for at least 150,000 households and a value created of at least 40 million USD within the 5-year time frame of the project,” explained Dr Bernard Vanlauwe, IITA Director for Central Africa.
In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), cassava productivity has marginally increased to around 10–11 tons per hectare, well below attainable yields of over 30 tons per hectare. With the need for intensifying cassava production in areas where population densities have reduced access to fallow land and with cassava roots becoming important raw material for the processing sector, this yield gap needs to be reduced.
The ACAI initiative is placed within the context of intensification of cassava-based systems with a focus on the development of cassava agronomy recommendations to improve the productivity and quality of cassava roots in Nigeria, Tanzania, Ghana, and Uganda, major cassava-producing countries in West and East Africa, and some spillover into East DR Congo. The project will be phased, starting in Nigeria and Tanzania in years 1 and 2 and will expand to the other countries from year 3 onwards.
Dr Nteranya Sanginga, IITA Director General said agronomy would provide the key to unlocking the potential of cassava in Africa.
“If we want to increase the productivity of cassava, we must breed new varieties, improve the agronomy and value addition. I think we have done a lot in the area of breeding, what we need to do now is to capitalize on the agronomy,” Dr Sanginga said.
The ACAI project will harness African and international expertise, and follows a demand-driven approach whereby its interventions are responding to specific agronomy-related needs by partners already actively engaged in cassava dissemination and value chain activities in the target countries.
The vision of success of ACAI is to deliver the necessary knowledge base and tools for accessing this knowledge to cassava scaling partners and ultimately farmers in the target countries while instituting the necessary capacity and skills for national system scientists to engage in transformative cassava agronomy.
“The ultimate goal is to improve the productivity per unit area,” Dr Abdulai Jalloh, Project Coordinator for ACAI said.
It is envisaged that through institutionalization of innovative approaches for problem-solving, the initiative will build the capacity of national partners to sustain the technology development pipeline, deliver continuous improvements in cassava agronomy technologies, as well as address new constraints.