East African Business Week (Kampala)
Phillip Nabyama
5 May 2008
As world food prices continue to soar, African rice breeders are casting their nets wider to find remedies to bolster local production of the cereal whose local consumption is growing faster than any other major staple food on the continent.
Meeting in Uganda's capital Kampala, rice breeders from 11 African countries agreed that ambitious and critical steps were required towards ensuring self-sufficiency to boost African rice production on the backdrop of new restrictions on rice exports from Asian countries.
"African rice consumption exceeds production. Only 54% of sub-Saharan Africa rice consumption is supplied locally," Dr. Jane Ininda, the project officer for crop improvement at the Kenyan based Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) said at the three-day meeting in Kampala recently.
"There is need for urgent action here. If the productivity continues to decrease, we shall begin to import up to 70 to 80% of all our rice," the crop scientist told East African Business Week.
Compared to Madagascar where each person consumes about 113 kilogrammes of rice per year, Kenyans and Ugandans consume about 10 kilogrammes while each Tanzanian consumes about 13 kilogrammes. Rwanda and Burundi consume less than four kilogrammes each.
The inaugural meet, organised by AGRA, brought together breeders from Benin, Malawi, Mozambique, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana and Mali.
To improve rice production, AGRA is the final stages of starting a fund, the African Seed Investment Fund that will give out grants and loans to the breeders.
Preliminary arrangements show that recipients will be required to pay back the loan ranging from $2,000 (Ush 3.36 million) to $1million (Ush1.68 billion) over a long-term period of between five to eight years.
Grants to the maximum of $150,000 (Ush252 million) are to also be disbursed to boost production and create awareness about the value of using improved seeds.
Dr. Ininda told the breeders under the Rice Breeders Network that the continent needed new high-yielding, locally adapted varieties to raise yield and turn around Africa's food situation that if not addressed, could led to a major crisis.
The breeders among other things, discussed the challenges and opportunities for rice production and marketing in Africa, new breakthroughs and strategies to strength breeding and delivery of new varieties to farmers in Africa.
In the early 2000s, scientists were successful in creating New Rice for Africa (Nerica), a high yielding upland rice variety after crossing African and Asian rice species.
As an upland variety, Nerica is not restricted to growing in paddies thus enabling African farmers to grow rice in places that no one before thought possible.
One hectare of Nerica that is planted in March, flowers in May and gets harvested in July (110 days).
It yields about five tonnes which when translated peaks at about 50 standard sized bags of rice.
The traditional paddy rice takes about 130 days and rewards poorer yields.
For example in Uganda, since the introduction of upland rice in 2002, rice farming has grown from 4,000 farmers to over 35,000.
In the process, the country has seen rice imports drop from 60,000 metric tonnes in 2005 to 35,000 metric tonnes today.
This trend of events, according to the National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO), saved the country about $30 million (Ush 50.4billion) in foreign exchange earnings.
According to AGRA, Kenya spends $60 million (Ush100.8billion) on rice imports annually.
The rice breeders, researchers and seed companies visited trial fields in the central district of Wakiso where Ugandan scientists have worked on new rice varieties and farmers who have benefited by planting the new Nerica rice varieties.
"I was given eight kilos of upland rice and from it, I managed to get 750kgs even after birds had feasted on quite some good quantities," Mr. Kaleb Kamure, an upland rice farmer in Uganda's West Nile district of Arua said.
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