Catherine Riungu
9 June 2008
Nairobi — Efforts to double Africa's rice production have received a major boost following the launch of the Coalition for African Rice Development (Card).
The initiative is a joint effort between the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra), the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) and the Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA).
The partnership comes two months after stress-tolerant upland and lowland irrigated rice varieties that could significantly increase rice production in some countries were released on the continent, raising hopes that Africa could double its rice production in a decade.
The Card project comes at a time when the world is grappling with spiralling food prices that have forced major exporting regions such as Asia to ban trade in rice, threatening millions of people, especially in Africa, with starvation.
It is hoped that Card will accelerate rice production to reduce Africa's reliance on expensive rice imports through the development and distribution of resilient new varieties, and support of investment in agricultural research and rural infrastructure, which are the major objectives of the initiative.
"Rice represents Africa's best opportunity for reduction of food imports," said Dr Namanga Ngongi, Agra's president, at the recent Tokyo International Conference for African Development in Yokohama, where Card was launched.
"The price of rice and other grains in the international markets will stay at high levels for the foreseeable future. Innovative plans are called for that will contribute to improving Africa's self-sufficiency in staple food grains, including rice. This new initiative will go a long way towards helping achieve this goal."
According to Kenzo Oshima, senior vice president of JICA, although Asia and Africa are climatically different, Africans could learn from the continent, which has made rice a staple food.
"Rice is the staple food in Asia. Many Asian countries, including Japan, have a wealth of experience and knowledge about rice cultivation accumulated over centuries," he said.
He added, "Asia achieved a Green Revolution between the 1960s and 1980s and rice lay at the core of this great transformation. Given the importance of rice as an African staple food and the recent success stories of the Nerica variety in countries like Uganda, we believe that rice will also play a key role in bringing a Green Revolution to Africa."
Nerica is a resilient, high-yielding cross between an African and Asian rice species. As an upland rice, it is not restricted to growing in paddies, enabling farmers to produce rice in places where it was not possible before.
The demand for rice in sub-Saharan Africa is double the rate of population growth and consumption is growing faster than that of any other major staple food.
From 2001 to 2005, rice consumption grew in sub-Saharan Africa by 6 per cent, during the same period the average per capita rice consumption was 18 kg per year, according to a recent report by the Africa Rice Centre in Cotonou, Benin - also, a Card partner.
Across Africa, local production has been unable to keep up with increases in demand. In the past 50 years, rice production in Africa has increased from 4 million tonnes to 15 million tonnes.
Over the same period in Asia, rice production has increased on a much greater scale, to 570 million tonnes from 200 million tonnes.
In addition, Africa's increased production has required a massive expansion in cultivated land compared with Asia, raising concerns for rice growing's environmental impact.
The surge in demand for rice has come at a time when production has remained mostly stagnant. Perhaps most concerning to experts is sub-Saharan Africa's "self-reliance ratio," which is measured by the ratio of production over consumption, and the ever widening gap between rice production and consumption in Africa.
According to the Africa Rice Centre, the sufficiency ratio declined steadily over a 45-year period from 112 per cent in 1961 to 61 per cent in 2006, when the continent relied on the international rice market to satisfy about 39 per cent of its rice consumption needs.
"Today, less than half of rice consumed in sub-Saharan Africa is supplied locally," said Dr Ngongi. "In Uganda, 50 per cent of rice is imported, which amounts to $60 million annually. Kenya imports nearly 86 per cent and the recent outbreak of rice blast (see opposite page) has destroyed more than 14,000 acres of the crop under cultivation in Kenya's main rice growing area. This is a major problem."
Rice blast is a fungal disease that has had devastating effects in several rice growing regions, most recently in Kenya, where rice farmers are counting their losses after the current season's crop was attacked. Some have lost up to half of their crop.
The new initiative hopes to build on successful programmes in countries like Uganda and Nigeria, where governments have cut rice imports by half over a few years through investments in high yielding Nerica rice varieties that require little or no irrigation and are capable of growing in upland and lowland environments.
Over the next four years, Agra's investments in rice will help to improve seed systems and soil health as well as link rice farmers to markets.
A significant portion of the project will focus on training Africa's next generation of rice breeders and bolstering seed production and multiplication programmes in 14 African countries.
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