africa harvest horizon 2010

HORIZON 2010Africa Harvest’s Five-Year Strategic Plan2006–2010

Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International (AHBFI). HORIZON 2010. Africa Harvest’s Five-Year Strategic Plan, 2006–2010. Nairobi, Kenya; Johannesburg, South Africa; Washington DC, USA All information in this booklet may be quoted or reproduced, provided the source is properly acknowledged, as cited above.

© 2006 Africa Harvest

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HORIZON 2010Africa Harvest’s Five Year Strategic Plan 2006–2010

Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International (AHBFI)Nairobi • Johannesburg • Washington DC

CONTENTS

Executive summary 3

Introduction 7

An enabling environment 9

Defining the African agricultural challenge 11

New thinking for Africa 13

Africa Harvest’s strategy – an overview 15

Structure and governance 21

Core programmes 25

Programme implementation 27

Finance and business development 35

Appendices

Appendix A: Africa Harvest’s Board of Directors 40

Appendix B: Africa Harvest’s partners 42

Acronyms and abbreviations 44

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Vision and mission

VISIONto fight hunger, malnutrition and poverty,

targeting rural communities in Africa

MISSIONto use science and technology – especially biotechnology –

to help the poor in Africa achieve food security, economic well-being and sustainable rural development

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Executive summary

Comparative advantages

Africa Harvest’s team of professionals has unique expertise within the region in designing and implementing projects that link the entire agricultural value chain to enterprise development and rapid adoption of new technologies that promise major socio-economic gains. Africa Harvest’s pan-African experience equips the organi-zation with indigenous knowledge, cultural understanding and trusted relationships with African leaders, farmers’ associations and international organizations. The Foundation is viewed as a sincere and trustworthy ally in the fight against poverty and hunger. Core staff on the team and an array of part-time consult-ants bring into play specialized knowledge in many relevant fields.

The Foundation has three core programmes of work: a Technical Programme, a Programme for Biotech Communication and Public Acceptance, and a Capacity Building Programme. A comprehen-sive support programme for Finance and Business Development underpins these three programmes.

The Technical Programme comprises a systematic effort to focus needs-driven initiatives on resolving some of the key problems that resource-poor smallholder farmers face in Africa’s rural are-as. Current activities include consolidating existing effective agri-biotech projects in Kenya and East Africa and rolling these out to other countries and other African regions. For instance, the Tis-sue Culture (TC) Banana Project is expediting the development

Africa Harvest’s strategy for achieving its vision and mission (see opposite) is to deliver advanced, proven technologies to farmers by:• Implementing technical projects with rural communities;• Scaling up the impact of successful model projects;• Sharing lessons learned through modern communications for development approaches;• Facilitating development of new crops and products using genetic modification

techniques in partnership with others; • Building human and institutional resources with a focus on strengthening science and

technology in Africa.

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and delivery of improved TC banana plants into farmers’ fields. The initiative has proved to be an effective weapon in the fight against poverty and hunger. Africa Harvest is also the leader of a scientific consortium working on bio-fortification of key crops to boost their nutritional value. In the next five years, we will continue to allocate the lion’s share of resources to project de-velopment and implementation, with the remainder distributed in roughly equal measures to communications, capacity building and administration.

Africa Harvest augments its technical initiatives with a Communi-cations and Public Acceptance Programme designed to empower people – from national officials to grassroots stakeholders – to make informed decisions about the use of biotechnology tools and genetically modified (GM) crops. Recently, the commu-nications mandate has grown to include a public acceptance strategy aimed at sharing facts and figures essential to open and informed discussion of biotechnology processes. By dispelling the myths and misconceptions that can surround such process-es, the public acceptance strategy forms an integral part of the business of enabling new commodity production technologies to make an optimal contribution to food security, poverty allevia-tion and sustainable rural livelihoods.

A significant barrier to the introduction of improved crops and products in Africa is a lack of expertise in biotechnology, as well

as limited capacity to implement biosafety codes and policies. Africa Harvest’s Capacity Building Programme focuses on raising levels of technical skills, strengthening the ability of policymak-ers to grasp the issues that surround effective transfers and ap-plications of new technologies, and equipping Africa’s lawmak-ers with the knowledge and information they need to formulate and pass enabling legislation that stimulates agricultural pro-ductivity and bolsters food security. During the lifespan of this strategy, the Capacity Building Programme will also reach out at the grassroots level, seeking to upgrade the skills of extension workers and to enable rural communities to embrace farming more as a business than a lifestyle – as an economic dynamo with the potential to create jobs, generate income, and enhance food security.

The Finance and Business Development Programme will contin-ue to handle the support aspects of initiating projects, manag-ing accounts and finances, and administering human resources matters, documentation, reporting, legal compliance and donor liaison. This programme will also be involved in supporting the Africa Harvest fund-raising strategy through full cost recovery, charging overheads and subsidiary investments. Resource mo-bilization is designed to ensure sustainability of the Foundation in the foreseeable future, in addition to meeting the needs and expectations of our development partners.

Executive summary

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Our strategy over the next five years

During the five-year period, 2006–2010, the primary driver of Africa Harvest’s strategy will be the identification and implemen-tation of collaborative ventures that enable the Foundation to achieve its vision and mission. The goals of our Strategic Plan will be achieved by consolidating selected activities and by adding critical new areas of focus:

Consolidation – This involves ‘up and out scaling’ our current programmes by injecting greater efficiency and effectiveness, with the goal of replicating our successes. For example, the TC Banana Project will see greater emphasis on farmer-based mar-keting systems and value-addition while focusing more on repli-cating success both in-country and across the continent.

Africa Harvest has a comparative strength in media and commu-nications work; we intend to maintain our leadership in this area while focusing more on ‘enabler strategies’ that include public acceptance and regulatory issues. To do this effectively, we will strengthen the strategic alliances we currently have while active-ly exploring relationships where we share common interests.

New areas of focus – In the next five years, Africa Harvest will focus on two related areas: (a) identification of drought-resistance technologies for Africa and (b) nutrition and health.

Africa Harvest CEO, Dr Florence Wambugu, with the first TC banana farmer in Kenya, Esther Gachugu.

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About Africa Harvest

Africa Harvest Biotechnology Foundation International (AHBFI) was founded in 2002. It is incorporated in the USA as a non-profit foundation with headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. It has regional offices in Washington DC, USA and Johannesburg, South Africa. Africa Harvest cultivates an international and pan-African network of public and private partners and a network of stakeholders at national and grassroots levels composed of organizations representing NGOs, extension workers, rural communities and farmers. Together with these and other like-minded organizations it is developing new ways to generate income and jobs that support sustainable rural livelihoods.

Well-known Kenyan scientist Florence Wambugu founded and continues to lead Africa Harvest. Born and raised in Kenya, she is an agricultural plant pathologist with a PhD degree in Virology/Biotechnology, an MSc in Pathology, and a BSc in Botany. Her postdoctoral research fellowship in genetic engineering involved a stint as an Associate Fellow in the USA. Dr Wambugu has led consortia implement-ing five major projects for improvement of maize, bananas, trees, pyrethrum, and sweet potatoes. She was has been a member of the Private Sector Committee (PSC) of the

Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the DuPont Biotech Advisory Panel in the USA and of the Board of Trustees of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI). She is a founding member and former Vice-chair of the African Biotechnology Stakeholders Forum (ABSF). She also participated in the Science Board of the Challenges in Global Health initiative of the Gates Foundation and the United Nations Millennium Project Task Force on Hunger (UN-TFH). She has authored or co-authored over 100 publications in local and international journals and books, including Modifying Africa: How biotechnology can benefit the poor and the hungry: A case study from Kenya.

Executive summary

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Value-adding technologies for agriculture and forestry

We distribute a range of tissue culture (TC) products, such as banana TC stock and improved hybrid multi-purpose trees for afforestation. Our demonstrations of good agronomic prac-tices have helped to increase adoption by rural communities of hybrid maize varieties and enabled farmers to unlock their genetic potential. In partnership with others, we are developing strains of Africa Biofortified Sorghum (ABS), which promise to reduce malnutrition in the semi-arid topics. We facilitate the transfer of products that offer improved yield and higher quality from various sources, both public and private, including but not limited to: national agricultural research centres, universities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the international agricultural research centres of the CGIAR. Private-sector sources

Introduction

By making science work for Africa’s poorest people and communities – especially for small-scale rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa that for too long have been stranded at the margins of economic and social progress – Africa Harvest labours to reduce poverty and bring sustainable livelihoods and well-being within reach of every rural household. Africa Harvest has brought together a team of research and development specialists committed to sustainable human devel-opment in Africa. Special contributions and competencies that we bring to this task include the following.

of improved products include both local and multinational seed companies.

Agri-biotech expertise

Our team’s knowledge and skills in biotechnology and other specialized aspects of agriculture enable us to support the cap-acity building efforts of organizations and communities from the grassroots up. We specialize in project design, development, implementation and monitoring for development impact. Our work emphasizes the building of international consortia and management planning. If rural communities decide to tackle their own whole-value-chain (WVC) projects, we can help train the facilitators and sensitize intended beneficiaries.

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Fast-tracking development of new biotech products for Africa

Biotechnology is currently open to criticism for a lack of products suitable for African needs, such as biofortified food products or drought-tolerant crops for semi-arid regions and rainfed areas where rainfall is unreliable. We counter this defi-ciency by bringing together consortia of institutions that have complementary expertise and comparative advantages, to focus on product development and the transfer of appropriate inputs to receptive rural communities.

Expertise in communicating biotech and bio-safety information and canvassing public acceptance

Africa Harvest is versed in designing appropriate ways to con-vey the complex scientific concepts that lie at the heart of new biotechnological advances to a broad public, together with authoritative information on issues surrounding biosafety, risk and public acceptance of these novel technologies.

Introduction

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An enabling environment

The application of modern biotechnology requires a supportive environment to ensure responsible deployment of new or im-proved products and to maximize their value to poor and mar-ginalized communities. Africa Harvest seeks to create such an environment by actively nurturing:

• Public acceptance of biotechnology through communica-tions projects that empower policymakers and stakeholders to make informed decisions and enable improved biotech-nology products to make a positive, problem-solving impact on the lives and prospects of African households.

• Regulatory and biosafety codes and instruments that foster the safe development and application of GM agricultural crops and products.

• Intellectual property stewardship, ensuring public-good donation of proprietary technologies for the benefit of Africa’s resource-poor.

Communicating factual information about biotechnology and its benefits is essential to enable the public, as well as policy- and decision-makers, to make informed decisions. Here Dr Florence Wambugu participates in a BBC interview.

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An enabling environment

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Among the many constraints that have hindered agricultural progress in Africa (see box page 12) is the dominant role given during Africa’s post-colonial era to public-sector national agricul-tural research centres. While the central role per se may not be a problem, poor government funding means the implementation of agricultural policies is seriously hampered. This state of affairs has led to the emergence of research programmes better-sup-ported by donors. Over time, donors have had significant input to agricultural policymaking, which used to be the exclusive mandate of African governments – based on the assumption that African governments were, through their national agricul-tural research centres, linked to what the people wanted. The existence of government and donor-driven agricultural policies is compounded by the fact that both offer inadequate exten-sion services or systems to relate and deliver research-based knowledge or its practical outcomes to farmers. African govern-ments tend to believe that ‘donor-driven’ agricultural policy and research introduces a disconnect between indigenous knowledge and local social and cultural preferences on the one hand, and how these factors influence technology adoption and agricul-tural development on the other.

Africa Harvest sees potential synergistic value in the activi-ties of both the African governments and the international donor community. Indeed, other players – such as the African

Defining the African agricultural challenge

agricultural NGOs and the private sector (including multina-tional corporations) – can contribute substantially to Africa’s agricultural development. African agricultural NGOs, however, are often not consulted by governments during the agricultural policymaking process, and hence they are usually left out when government funds for agricultural development are allocated. As a result, these NGOs are forced to rely on foreign funding sources to maintain their operations, leading to the concerns noted above about ‘donor-driven’ agricultural policies and re-search. Furthering limiting the potentially beneficial role of other players in the development process are the suspicion and mis-trust with which multinational corporations are often treated, as well as the lack of government concessions provided to local private-sector agricultural companies.

During the last five years, African leaders and opinion-shap-ers have come to believe that the best way of reviving Africa’s agricultural growth is first to put Africans in charge at all levels. Africa Harvest agrees with this perception and is a strong advo-cate of creative partnerships with local and international private-sector organizations and NGOs working to build African human capacity and infrastructure, facilitating the acceptance of new technologies and enabling African countries access to regional and global markets.

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Opportunities and constraints

Of the world’s 800 million hungry people, half live in Africa and their numbers are rising. Many children under five are malnourished and HIV/AIDS continues to claim many thousands of lives every day. Africa is importing about 25 percent of its total grain requirements, mainly cereals dominated by maize (corn), a staple food across most of Africa. Human numbers are multiplying at 3.5 percent a year while the rate of food increase is stalled at about 2 percent, indicating a major food deficit that has raised a threat of famine in many regions. Underlying all these difficulties is the fact that Africa’s agriculture, on which its future growth and present well-being depend, is dominated by impover-ished small-scale farm units and producers with limited ability to buy improved farm inputs and not enough cash income to buy goods as consumers.

Experience shows that despite their limited scale, most of these small farms can still produce effectively and sup-port sustainable livelihoods if farmers can win access to such inputs as fertilizer, water, improved seed, information, farm credit, and supportive policies to apply relevant new

technologies to boost farm production. In several developing countries, smallholder farmers have shown they can make small farming pay (for instance, by forming cooperatives to produce and market high-value cash crops like coffee and tea) if some of these constraints are addressed.

A myriad of complex factors have resulted in very low productivity on farms, especially for food crops. The average yield of maize in Africa is 1.7 t/ha, while the global average is 4.0 t/ha and farmers in Europe and USA harvest an average of 6 t/ha. For sweet potato, African production is 6 t/ha while the global average is 14 t/ha (China produces 18 t/ha!). In the case of bananas, Africa produces 10 t/ha while globally the optimum production is 45 t/ha. These shortfalls clearly demonstrate the very low overall productivity found on African farms, which in turn leads to hunger, poverty and malnutrition on a continental scale, year after year. Drought and floods are often blamed for famine, such as in the case of southern Africa countries in 2003, but the real problem is the lack of strategic food reserves that results from a lack of stable production conditions and long-term preparedness.

The challenge

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To resolve Africa’s agricultural challenge, the ‘business-as-usual’ mentality has had to change. Over the past few years, African leaders have started a process of self-examination. Their conclu-sions are changing the way the continent relates to its develop-ment partners. Political leaders have recognized a need to ensure that democracy thrives, corruption and bad governance are dealt with and, where such ills persist, leaders must take collective responsibility for preventing negative ramifications from spilling over across national borders.

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) typifies this new spirit of mutual responsibility and relates it directly to agriculture, food security and rural development. A Declaration issued by all Parties to NEPAD in Maputo, Mozambique in May 2003 pledged to invest 10 percent of each country’s GDP in agricultural development. The effect of this landmark decision on the agricultural sector, and on biotechnology in particular, could be decisive, encouraging multinational companies with state-of-the-art technologies to form strategic partnerships with Africans.

Africa Harvest’s five-year strategy for driving agri-biotech ad-vances on the continent rests on three pillars:

• Technical programmes or mechanisms for delivering benefits of science and technology (particularly biotechnology) to the continent;

• Capacity building: in terms both of human resources and infrastructure;

• Communications initiatives coupled with relevant biosafety policy development to win public support and forestall anti-GM lobbies.

NEPAD has demonstrated this agenda as a viable way forward through several pan-African projects described in the Compre-hensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) Action Plan for fighting hunger and poverty in Africa. Among projects featured in the Action Plan are initiatives to scale up successful model projects, including New Rice for Africa (NERICA), cassava propagation and TC banana. The technical arm of NEPAD, charged with implementing the CAADP Action Plan, is the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) by way of its Dissemination of New Agricultural Technologies in Africa (DONATA) global partnership programme. Africa Harvest has entered into strategic partnership with FARA and NEPAD/CAADP to provide biotechnology expertise and leader-ship to implement the TC Banana Project across Africa.

New thinking for Africa

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New thinking for Africa

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Implementing projects through a whole value chain (WVC) model

Science and technology is changing the way business is con-ducted. For example, simple technologies such as tissue cultur-ing enables farmers to produce large quantities of high-quality banana. Africa Harvest has developed and perfected the WVC model, which has emerged as a critical development strategy

Africa Harvest’s strategy – an overview

(see Figure 1). The WVC model is a vertical alliance of enter-prises collaborating to achieve a more rewarding position in the market. In this context, ‘vertical’ refers to vertically integrated operations that link entrepreneurs and companies operating throughout the whole value chain, from production in farm-ers’ fields throughout the other steps in the value chain, all the way to the final marketing stages when consumers purchase a finished product (see Figure 1).

Achieving Africa Harvest’s strategic objectives hinges on eight key interrelated activities:• Implementing technical projects with rural communities through a WVC approach;• Scaling up the impact of successful model projects; • Communications and public acceptance initiatives designed to facilitate the use of advanced

technologies; • Developing projects that showcase the use of GM;• Building the capacity of human and institutional resources for science and technology

in Africa; • Supporting biosafety and the development of regulatory policies and codes in sub-Saharan

Africa; • Nurturing the development of entrepreneurial ventures; and • Developing partnerships with like-minded organizations to generate income and create jobs

through marketing.

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Africa Harvest’s strategy

Experiences in Kenya have shown that the WVC model can help farmers (both large- and small-scale), processors and retail-ers to cope with the new realities of market competition. Our WVC model begins by establishing demand, adapting the sup-ply side’s response to it and ending with the market. Interaction with the marketplace provides information to decision-makers at every link in the chain. The importance to farmers of producing enough goods to keep their own households fed is not ignored but a well-functioning value chain offers the farmer extra options and is more rewarding – even for small-scale producers – than ‘going it alone’. Farmers involved in trials of this approach have reaped notable benefits, including higher prices for goods, more market stability, lower production costs, enhanced food safety,

outputs of better quality, and access to new markets, better equipment and facilities, as well as to proprietary research and technology.

The goal of Africa Harvest is to ensure that this model is replicated whenever a new project is initiated. Assuming the availability of adequate financial resources, we anticipate that in the next five years the TC Banana Project, which uses the WVC model, will be replicated in at least five countries, three in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and two in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) sub-region. Dis-tribution of new inputs such as the proposed Africa Biofortified Sorghum (ABS) varieties will also reflect the WVC thinking.

Figure 1. Africa Harvest’s whole value chain (WVC) strategy

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Victoria Ndung’u of Africa Harvest shows a tissue culture plantlet. The idea of getting banana seedlings ‘from the lab’ was a novel one, but has been widely accepted (as TC banana adoption figures over the last 10 years show)

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Scaling up and scaling out the impacts of a successful model project

Through its Technical Programme Africa Harvest has demonstrat-ed in tangible ways the scope of biotechnology and its potential to improve the lot of marginalized rural communities in Africa. In particular, the TC Banana Project has successfully shown how science and technology combined with good agronomic practice and entrepreneurial incentives can transform the lives of those in greatest need. TC banana technology has already helped thou-sands of farmers in Kenya; NEPAD, the African Union (AU) and the UN-TFH and FARA/DONATA acknowledge that a highly ben-eficial impact could be achieved if such model projects could be scaled up and scaled out to other parts of Africa.

Communication for developmentThe rapid spread of information technology has made it easier to reach out to specific communities of interest within society by providing information in timely and open ways. Timely access to information results in better decision making, which can contrib-ute to social and economic development. Africa Harvest will focus on increasing awareness of the benefits of biotechnology and will generate and share knowledge that empowers stakeholders, such as farmers, policymakers, and the public, to make informed decisions about agricultural biotechnology’s value to sustainable

development. In many African countries, famine-stricken com-munities have been caught in the crossfire between those who advocate the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and those who oppose it. Africa Harvest’s communication programme has developed a media strategy for Africa that is designed to help ensure factual and science-based decisions guide the on-going debate. Often, this has helped counteract food aid refusals by dispelling the myths and preconceptions that sometimes surround GM technology.

Developing projects that use genetic modification to produce specific new crops and products needed in Africa

Relatively few applications of commercial GM technology can be found in Africa, with the exception of those in South Africa. Such applications are limited to field trials in a number of countries, including Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda. But judging by past experiences with commercialized transgenic technologies, biotechnology can offer benefits of overwhelming value when compared to perceived risks, especially in situations where the priorities are increasing food production and overcoming biotic constraints. Africa Harvest will seek to leverage donations of back-ground technology and development of transgenic technologies that cater to high-priority national needs, regional needs,

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or both, particularly where comparative advantage can be argued for biotechnology and major socio-economic benefits are expect-ed. A consortium of like-minded agricultural science institutions will spearhead these projects and urge donors to sponsor them. A strategic imperative will be to guarantee open access to the gen-etic outputs arising from such projects and global registration of intellectual property rights in them as philanthropic free goods.

Building capacity for applied science and technology in Africa

Achieving sustainable development in Africa will require capacity building initiatives as an integral part of any programme that sets out to tackle constraints on food and nutrition. Africa Harvest’s Capacity Building Programme will focus on human resource development in terms of technical agri-business skills and under-standing of policy issues that surround the effective application of technology and development of entrepreneurial know-how.

Supporting regulatory development in sub-Saharan Africa

One of the major barriers to introduction of crops and products in Africa that involve GM materials is the scant availability of

biotechnology expertise and of capacity to draw up and imple-ment biosafety policies and regulatory codes. In Africa only six countries have National Biosafety Regulatory Agencies (NBRA) and of these only one (South Africa) has commercialized GM crops. Other countries, such as Egypt, Kenya, and Zimbabwe, have conducted transgenic field trials. Namibia and Nigeria have NBRAs, but they are not yet fully operational.

African countries that have succeeded in introducing operational regulatory agencies can in every case trace the origins of each agency back to a biotechnology capacity development project that involved GM crops and products and was driven by an internal or North–South partnership. Africa Harvest intends to establish model projects directly involving local African scientists and incor-porating the development, transfer and application of GM technol-ogy, on the assumption that biosafety policy development and capacity building can only be effectively driven by such projects.

Nurturing entrepreneurshipEntrepreneurial ventures linked to the TC Banana Project (see box page 19) have taken such forms as curios made from banana leaves, commercial production of starch, wine and juice-making, and dried fruit. Some entrepreneurs are also exporting banana within the East African community market. The development of hybrid multipurpose banana plants under the project has also


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prompted improved seedling nurseries, distribution nurseries, small woodlot farming and the like. Africa Harvest’s strategy hinges on further empowering Africa’s entrepreneurs to seize opportunities presented by adoption and diffusion of this and other innovations.

Breeding choices

Africa Harvest’s Tissue Culture Banana (TC Banana) Project combines the use of a whole value chain strat-egy, coupled with entrepreneurship development. It has benefited thousands of small-scale farmers in Kenya. The project’s success was recognised in 2000 when it won the World Bank Global Development Network Award. Field surveys and interviews have shown dramatic increases in both food production potential and income, in many cases amounting to well over 100 percent rises in earnings for some of Africa’s poorest households, vastly increasing their range of economic and lifestyle choices.

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Partnerships with like-minded organizations

Tackling the challenges of hunger and poverty require synergies that can only be created by like-minded organizations work-ing together. Africa Harvest will work on level terms with other relevant organizations in partnerships that offer potential advan-tages on both sides. Examples include:

• International research and development centres, such as the CGIAR centres, focusing on work in technology develop-ment and transfer;

• Local and international private sector companies, for fast-track development of new biotech products needed in – and for – Africa;

• Philanthropic foundations and other funders, for developing, transferring and applying technologies and for socio-eco-nomic studies;

• International initiatives, such as the UN-TFH, NEPAD and FARA, for developing bankable projects and advancing the economic status of women;

• NGOs such as ABSF, ISAAA, Africa Bio, and BTA, for project implementation and sharing of experiences; and

• INTERFACE – a network of agro-food industry professionals and entrepreneurs in Africa.


Africa Harvest CEO, Dr Florence Wambugu at IPIGRI, Rome (top left), with Premier Edna Molewa of the North West Province in South Africa (top right) and Koji Omi, Chairman, Science and Technology in Society (STS) Forum (bottom).

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Structure and governance

Core operating principles

Africa Harvest has adopted the following core operating principles to guide it in pursuit of the tasks it has set itself:

• Provide leadership by building scientific partnerships through coalitions and consortia that focus on projects for improving and increasing crop productivity and pro-duction that curb malnutrition, hunger and poverty and advance food security, income generation and sustain-able rural development (see also Appendix B);

• Demonstrate a commitment to service delivery that extends through all its activities, focusing on rural development in poor communities;

• Dedicate African resources, expertise and talents to promoting pan-African agricultural development,

particularly initiatives or institutions that aspire towards sustainable agricultural development for poor communities;

• Provide technical and professional expertise to organi-zations such as NEPAD and FARA to achieve greater good and impact in Africa through local and national networking and in pan-African and international fora, to find the best solutions and practices to combat hunger, malnutrition and poverty across the continent. ‘Whole value chain’ project implementation will remain Africa Harvest’s prime strategic aim.

• Join in strategic partnerships and collaborations that promise access to additional expertise and products that could broaden its impact.

Africa Harvest currently consists of a number of specialists grouped into areas within its array of technical programmes (see below and Figure 2). Consultants and contract personnel are engaged as and when required for additional assignments, ranging from overseeing project technical matters, to fundrais-ing, legal compliance issues and as external reviewers to provide

feedback. Given sufficient funding, Africa Harvest will carefully grow its core staff along with its programmes.

Africa Harvest was legally incorporated in the USA in 2002 as a non-profit organization with 501(c) 3 ‘charitable organization’ status and registered in Kenya and South Africa as an NGO.

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Figure 2. Organizational structure


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It has operational offices in each of these three countries. Africa Harvest has a single international Board; the same Board is incorporated in each of the three countries where the organiza-tion is operational, namely USA, Kenya and South Africa. This unified Board brings the Foundation’s operations into focus and ensures their effectiveness.

Actual and virtual networks – a three-tier strategy

Africa Harvest has developed a three-tier institutional structure that incorporates:• An international network with both public and private sec-

tor partners. This network is coordinated through our office in Washington DC with a view to sourcing technologies, capacities and resources required in Africa to achieve Africa Harvest’s vision, mission and substantive goals.

• A pan-African network of public and private agri-research and other regional research institutions, involving networks of both local and international NGOs and other qualified development partners.

• National downstream networks, which include NGOs, extension workers, rural communities and farmers.

From right: Africa Harvest CEO, Dr Florence Wambugu, and the Executive Secretary of FARA, Dr Monty Jones, and Africa Harvest Director, Gisele d’Almeida.

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The Technical Programme involves high-level scientific re-search to develop improved crops needed in Africa. This is done by Africa Harvest in partnership with other institutions in Africa and overseas. The Programme runs projects that operate across the whole crop and product value chain, giving support to pro-duction, product distribution and market linkages, with a view to ensuring gains for intended beneficiaries, mainly in small-scale poor rural communities. A good example if this kind of project is Africa Biofortified Sorghum (ABS) (www.supersorghum.org) where Africa Harvest has provided leadership to a nine-member consortium with a grant of US$17 million for nutritional improve-ment of sorghum.

The Communications and Public Acceptance Programme focuses mainly on increasing awareness of the benefits of biotechnology and on generating and sharing knowledge that empowers stakeholders at all levels to make informed decisions about agricultural biotechnology for sustainable development. To implement this programme effectively, Africa Harvest continually monitors the state of biotechnology across the African continent. It also:• Identifies information gaps and keeps track of organizations

providing biotech information;• Evaluates the effectiveness of biotech information and mat-

erials in helping target groups make informed decisions;

Core programmes

Extension worker trains a smallholder in the post- harvest handling of his banana crop.

• Works with like-minded organizations to promote biotechnol-ogy and GM technology as ways to add value to African lives.

The main focus of the Capacity Building Programme is human resource development, in terms of technical skills in general and the capacity of public officials to grasp policy issues that surround effective transfer and application of new technolo-gies. Africa Harvest’s outreach work is combined with an inter-national development programme. It links African institutions to relevant international development initiatives with which they can share information and expertise. Initiatives in all three programme areas are synchronized and interlinked to maximize synergies and interaction.

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Core programmes

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Implementing the Technical Programme

Tackling hunger and poverty in Africa with TC banana – A part of Africa Harvest’s agenda is to support implementation of the NEPAD Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) through action for more and better locally grown foods to improve and sustain livelihoods. This approach is based on identifying and scaling up models of good practice in Africa’s agriculture. NEPAD and the UN-TFH acknowledge that these practices are not widely shared at national, let alone at regional, level. NEPAD and the UN-TFH have endorsed the highly successful TC Banana Project in Kenya, East Africa as an excellent starting point for initiating a process of scaling up and documenting models of good agricultural practices in Africa. The Africa Harvest programme includes proposals to expand the TC Banana Project to several additional countries including Cameroon, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania and Zambia. It is expected that these programmes will benefit millions of rural households in these countries.

Efforts to develop these projects will concentrate on the supply side, particularly on increasing the output of food crops. The projects will take a holistic approach that pays attention to the

Programme implementation

whole value chain, recognizing the roles of the crop producers and various upstream and downstream stakeholders, right from the supply of inputs, through production itself, to product mar-keting and consumption.

More specifically, implementation activities will set out to create a high level of awareness of the TC technology and its benefits. They will involve rural communities – especially women – in all stages of project design and implementation. The next practical steps will be to:

• Marshall a large number of small-scale farmers prepared to train and work in small groups for crop production and marketing;

• Share knowledge and technology with these groups through training and demonstrations;

• Provide a financing system (or link to an existing provider) offering credit, includes access to subsidized TC seedlings;

• Develop functioning markets for crop production to a level that exceeds subsistence needs;

• Establish or robust, sustainable pathways to steady markets for the products within countries and sub-regions;

• Develop downstream processing (agro-processing) facilities for the focus crops.

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Why tissue culture crops?

Production in sub-Saharan Africa is a rural and subsidiary farming activity. In Kenya, for example, the national average size of banana farms is 0.8 acres, indicating that banana production is a small-scale farm activity. In the last 10 years, most African countries have experienced a decline in banana production for a number of reasons, the major problems be-ing environmental degradation and crop infestations with pests and diseases, particularly Panama disease, Sigatoka, weevils and nematode complexes. The cultural practice in banana production where farmers transplant banana suck-ers from one farm to the other, has contributed heavily to the transmission of banana pests and diseases, which can reduce banana yields by up to 90 percent. Africa Harvest therefore encourages farmers to use clean, disease-free and insect-free planting materials, and such materials are best obtained from TC propagation techniques.

The TC Banana Project in Kenya has demonstrated that TC technology is appropriate and manageable by small-scale farmers and it has led to an increase in the quality and productivity of bananas. The output of bananas not only satisfies home consumption, it also creates some surplus for sale in the prime marketplace, revenues from this activity can do much to reduce poverty and upgrade the social welfare of rural communities and families. Africa Harvest studies have shown that adopting TC banana has immense advantages (see Table 1).

In Kenya, many farmers have moved ‘from poverty to productiv-ity’ as a direct result of this visionary project. The many benefits it provides include the advantage of a uniformly distributed income throughout the year, cushioning farmers against uncer-tainty. On average, those farmers growing TC plants earn US$95 more per month than those using conventional planting material on a 0.2-ha plot. The challenge now is to expand this impact to other countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In this scaling out initiative Africa Harvest’s work will follow the same sequence of activities that has been pursued to proven effect in Kenya, consisting of:

• Awareness creation;• Baseline studies; • Farmer group organization; • Technology transfer and training;


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HORIZON 2010

Table 1. Comparison between TC and conventional banana

TC banana Conventional banana

Average farm size (ha) 0.2 0.2

Average establishment costs 600 200

Average annual yield (t/farm) 10 5

Average realized price per tonne 200 160

Annual gross returns per farm (0.2 ha) 2000 800

Average annual operating costs 200 140

Net average annual profit 1 800 660

Net average monthly profit 150 55

• Establishing a distribution system; and• Establishing a financing system and access to subsidies and

market development.

This TC Banana project approach can also be adapted and ap-plied to any vegetatively propagated crop, such as pineapple and cassava.

Improved multi-purpose tree technology – Sustainable de-velopment needs a healthy background environment as well as gains in terms of rural community welfare. The need for fuel wood as a main source of energy among rural communities in Africa is increasing. Now there are ways to meet this demand and generate much-needed income from trade in fuel wood, at the same time as enhancing the environment and preserving

30

existing forests by reducing the demand placed on them by fuel gatherers. Improved multipurpose trees, including Eucalyptus hybrids were transferred from Mondi Forest Ltd in South Africa and other sources to the Karura Forestry Station, run by the De-partment of Forestry of Kenya’s Ministry of Natural Resources. Here TC and hybrid technology were applied and trees are now being scaled up in clonal hedges nurseries.

The trees have been tested and proved to be environmentally and ecologically safe and their value has already been demon-

strated in small-scale and large-scale farming neighbourhoods around Kenya. Currently the project has expanded to Tanzania and Uganda and has been embraced by the Kenyan business community for privatization and expansion. Africa Harvest is working with Abedare Technologies Limited (ATL), which has developed propagation methods for low-cost hybrid trees that make stocks more accessible and affordable for resource-poor communities.

A baseline survey conducted by Africa Harvest in 2002 revealed evidence that clonal hybrid tree technology could play an im-portant part in meeting future fuel wood energy requirements as well as serving environmental conservation and poverty alleviation imperatives. The survey also concluded that before this technology could fill such a role, certain infrastructures, such as extension services and a distribution and marketing system, would need to be set in place. Africa Harvest believes that if these conditions are met and the clonal technology made available at low cost, widespread adoption of these multipur-pose trees would have a dramatically beneficial impact on the environment, on local economies and on the livelihoods of poor rural people. Africa Harvest intends to work with other African countries that have expressed interest in transferring the hybrid trees clonal technology to small-scale farming communities in their territories.


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HORIZON 2010

of essential amino acids, especially lysine, increased levels of Vitamins A and E, and more available iron and zinc.

The ABS consortium, a strategic alliance of nine member organizations, is an example of leveraging the best of pri-vate, public and academic sectors to deliver technology that will help fight malnutrition in the developing world. Partner organizations include Africa Harvest (Project Leader), the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), the Inter-national Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), DuPont (through its subsidiary Pioneer Hi-Bred International), the University of Pretoria, the University of California, Berkeley and the Agricultural Research Council of South Africa.

The ABS Project Steering Com-mittee is chaired by Dr Florence Wambugu of Africa Harvest and includes Dr Paul Anderson of Pioneer (the Project’s Principal Investigator) and Dr Blessed Okole of CSIR.

For more details see:www.supersorghum.org

Sorghum biofortification

Millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa suffer from health problems associated with vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Poor nutrition is a major global health problem, contributing to more than half of the nearly 11 million deaths that occur each year in children less than 5 years old.

It is estimated that half of the population of sub-Saharan Africa suffers from iron deficiency, a third from zinc deficiency and 90 percent of children in the region receive inadequate amounts of vitamin A. Inadequate intake of these and other essential micronutrients can cause impaired immune systems, blindness, low birth weight, impaired neuropsychological development and stunting.

The Africa Biofortified Sorghum (ABS) Project seeks to provide a promising long-term solution by using biotechnol-ogy to create a ‘super sorghum’ that grows well in harsh climates but also contains high levels of essential nutrients.

The ABS Project is one of 43 projects involving 33 countries that were selected for funding by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the Foundation’s Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative seeks to harness the power of science and technology to dramatically improve health in the world’s poorest countries.

The ABS Project seeks to develop a more nutritious and easily digestible sorghum that contains increased levels

The ABS Steering Committee, from left Drs Blessed Okole, Florence Wambugu and Paul Anderson.

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Communicating about biotechnology

Awareness of the potential benefits and cost-effectiveness of biotechnology is sketchy, particularly in African communities where technologies in general are not well understood. Little accurate information is available in formats that will be helpful to African farmers, on the opportunities presented by bio-technology, or on biosafety factors. It can be hard to find such information, yet negative hype and publicity abound, generated by a handful of anti-biotech groups that are mostly based out-side Africa. Distorted media coverage of food issues in Africa is nothing new. Food tends to attract publicity only when lack of it reaches crisis proportions. Even so, the media is often caught flat-footed. Part of the reason why is that there are few specialist science journalists in the region who follow the climate trends that usually underlie the onset of famines or shortages.

Media coverage of GM food issues can be highly distorted. In times of active debate, most media coverage is anti-GM and even most journalists agree that coverage falls short of generally accepted standards of editorial balance. Africa does not speak with one voice on the adoption of biotechnology. South Africa has biosafety policies in place and is the only African country that has commercialized GM crops, though some other coun-tries are starting to create frameworks for doing so. There is only

limited interaction and information exchange between African scientists, agricultural groups and government departments as well as between organizations inside and outside Africa.

All these factors have contributed to an inability on the part of official policymakers, farmers’ organizations and the general public in Africa to take an informed stance on adoption of bio-technological techniques such as plant propagation using tissue culture, or the new disease- and pest-resistant crop cultivars de-veloped with sustainable development and alternatives to toxic farm chemicals in mind. With problems of hunger and malnu-trition so acute in Africa, lack of awareness of the potential of biotech processes and products to fend off these problems is a critical flaw.

Africa Harvest’s Communication Strategy hinges on increas-ing public acceptance by raising awareness of the benefits of biotechnology, and on gathering and sharing knowledge that empowers stakeholders of all kinds to make informed decisions on agricultural biotechnology and its potential contribution to sustainable development. To perform this role effectively, Africa Harvest proposes to assess continuously the state of biotech-nology on the continent to identify information gaps and to keep track of organizations providing biotech information. It will also:


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HORIZON 2010

• Evaluate the effectiveness of biotech information and mat-erials in helping target groups arrive at balanced positions based on hard facts;

• Equip farmers, policymakers and other stakeholder groups, including regular citizens, to make informed decisions about biotechnology;

• Develop a strategy designed to boost demand for agri-bio-tech products and services that satisfy the special needs of African farmers;

• Facilitate the setting-up of private–public sector coalitions that commercialize products and services in mutually benefi-cial ways;

• Encourage development of local private-sector initiatives and enhance South–South and North–South collaborations in Africa;

• Launch a continent-wide communications hub to share African knowledge and facilitate international collaboration on biotech projects.

• Facilitate effective dialogue with all stakeholders, including farmer groups, public universities, NGOs, regulators and politicians on the risks and benefits of biotechnology, includ-ing their views ethical issues

Africa Harvest has developed a media strategy for Africa and is bringing together a coalition of biotechnology institutions and news editors to focus on hunger and poverty issues in Africa. The Communication for Development Programme will continue to be directed and coordinated from Africa Harvest’s office in Johannesburg, South Africa. It will deal with systematic retrieval, assimilation and dissemination of information for a range of audiences, focusing on the empowerment of direct stakeholders in biotechnology. It will provide reliable, accurate information on the introduction of agricultural biotechnological processes, transgenic organisms, biosafety concerns and techniques, and biodiversity concerns.

Africa Harvest’s communications agenda has been expanded to include public acceptance, especially in relation to genetic technologies that some groups consider controversial. It recog-nizes that for new technologies to win acceptance and achieve

34


and enabling legislation in stimulating agricultural productivity and food security.

The TC Banana Project will be used as a capacity building tool in addition to its primary aims. The aim will be to develop a science-based private sector that is able to supply disease- and pest-free materials to farmers using the TC technology. It will attempt to set in place services that deliver requirements to the smallholder, including extension, rural credit, input supplies and marketing of products or outputs. In the medium and longer terms, knowledge that spins off from the project will help inform critical decision-making processes, enabling policymakers, plan-ners and managers to develop appropriate agricultural policies based on the best available evidence.

Biotechnology and biodiversity issues

The Convention of Biological Diversity under United Nations Environmental Programme considers biotechnology, especially GM crops to pose potential danger to the environment. Although cur-rently with 10 years experience and over 50 million hectares plant-ed with GM crops without encountering this perceived danger, the Global Biosafety Protocol is meant to address that problem. Africa Harvest supports these biosafety requirements.

their desired impact, a lot more than mere repetition of technical information is required. Accordingly, Africa Harvest has also developed a public acceptance strategy for GM technologies, that will become an integral part of the introduction of every fresh innovation.

Building capacity

A major barrier to introducing GM crops and products in Africa is a lack of biotechnology expertise and capacity to introduce and apply biosafety policies, laws and codes of practice. African countries that have successfully developed operational regula-tory agencies and frameworks have also hosted trials with GM crops and products that provided the original impetus to intro-duce appropriate safeguards. It is clear that developing model projects involving GM is the most reliable spur to biosafety policy development and capacity.

In addition to biosafety policy development, Africa Harvest in-tends to build capacity in other ways, such as steps to upgrade biotechnology knowledge and infrastructure across the food production value chain, with an accent on human resources, technical skills, the understanding of policy issues for effective technology transfer and application, and the role of constraining

35

HORIZON 2010

Institutional development and budgeting

Africa Harvest’s budget is either core (unrestricted) or project (restricted). The core budget is used to finance the operational budget line items shown in table below and institutional devel-opment to meet increasing demand for services. Project fund-ing is directed towards specific projects, as defined in funding proposals and approved by the donor and Board of Directors. Allocation of the operational budget will be as shown in the Table 2 and Figure 3. A Financial Audit Committee appointed by the Board ensures transparency and accountability in all financial matters.

Africa Harvest is currently seeking funding from international development partners, government agencies, philanthropic

Finance and business development

Africa Harvest’s Finance and Business Development Programme will continue to provide support to the other three programmes in relation to project initiation, resource mobilization, accounting and finance administration, human resources administration, documentation and reporting, legal compliance and donor liaison. This programme also contributes to project design, implementa-tion, entrepreneurship development, overall monitoring and evaluation. Other functions include Africa Harvest’s institutional development and forward planning, the coordination of Board of Directors matters, development of institutional policies, forward planning and acquisition of consultant expertise as and when it is required.

foundations, country governments, bilateral funding agencies, private organizations, individuals, community and social groups to support Africa Harvest’s operational budget or projects that will increase food and nutritional supply; increase income to smallholder farmers, contribute to environmental sustainabil-ity and capacity building and knowledge transfer in specific countries in Africa.

Africa Harvest’s operational (core) budget

In order to ensure that Africa Harvest can continue to build core institutional capacity to support the immediate demand for food and nutritional supply projects in additional countries through-out Africa (e.g. Cameroon, Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal,

36

1 Programme Development Covers staffing costs, including salaries and benefits

2 Programme Operation Consists of funds that are to be directed towards the technical programme, food supply programme, capacity building efforts and communications and public acceptance initiatives

3 Travel Covers local field outreach activities by staff and international travel. Also covers travel during fellowship training, capacity building and technical programme development

4 Communication Covers the communications and public acceptance programme to create an enabling environment for biotechnology transfer and application

5 Consultants Allows Africa Harvest to access professional and technical expertise that the organization requires to develop its programmes but can be hired more economically on consultancy basis

6 Project Initiation These resources are required to develop new project or programme

7 Board Covers operation of the Board of Directors and associated committees to ensure the continued good governance of the organization

8 Contingency The goal is to boost this allocation to 15% in annually to ensure sufficient additional funding can be obtained in event of emergency


Table 2. Africa Harvest budget allocation

37

HORIZON 2010

Tanzania, Zambia, etc.), and implement Africa Harvest’s Capacity Building Programme, resources will be required to support the in-stitutional operational budget. This budget will ensure the sustain-ability of Africa Harvest’s Programmes.

Fund-raising strategy

Africa Harvest’s fund-raising strategy is designed to ensure the sustainability of the Foundation in the foreseeable future. This means that Africa Harvest will actively seek financial support that will ensure that the Foundation meets and exceeds its goals in project implementation. The strategy will be guided by the following policies;

• Full cost recovery;• Charging overhead;• Subsidiary investments.

Full cost recovery – Many excellent technologies exist but the challenges of delivering them and making the technology work for the poor in developing world remains enormous. Africa Har-vest has a proven track record of delivering modern agricultural biotechnology including improved plant germplasm or root-stocks or improved seeds to resource-poor farmers. These are delivered together with information and management packages

for sustainable agriculture development. The outcome our effort has consistently been invariably dramatic with households previ-ously confined to food insecurity producing surplus for income generation.

Based on official request from governments, development work-ers or communities, the following projects are currently being implemented by Africa Harvest through support from various donor agencies: Tissue Culture Banana, Clonal Tree Technology and the Africa Biofortified Sorghum.

The magnitude of each project will depend on the amount of funds the donors have set aside for investment and currently

Figure 3. Allocation of Africa Harvest’s operational budget

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38

ranges from US$0.65–17.5 million over a period ranging from three to five years depending on the donor preference. Project funds constitute restricted funding and are strictly applied in line with a budget agreed between the donor and Africa Harvest. Africa Harvest will continue to encourage and seek partners who can support specific projects to promote the goal of increasing fuel wood, food production, nutritional supply and incomes. When projects are funded, AHBFI will adopt the policy of full cost recovery to ensure the project will be a cost centre with sufficient resources to ensure effective implementation and future sustainability.

Charging overhead – Africa Harvest will levy an overhead cost of 20% or as may be agreed with the donor for every project that is implemented or facilitated by Africa Harvest. This overhead will cover the total indirect cost required to successfully imple-ment a project.

Subsidiary investments – The success of Africa Harvest depends to a large extent on ensuring a steady input supply of quality seeds and seedlings and market access for surplus produce from the farmers. It is therefore imperative to establish mechanisms through which these key players can be anchored in all the Africa Harvest projects. On the other hand Africa Harvest has no comparative advantage to engage in input supply and marketing. Yet Africa Harvest needs to influence

these two components of the value chain for positive results and overall success. One way to achieve this will be to form partnerships and joint venture with other partners who have the necessary expertise in these fields. Through these partner-ships, Africa Harvest will enhance the supply of quality seeds and seedlings and ensure access to markets for our resource-challenged clients resulting in improved performance. Any profit from such joint venture and investment will be used towards the furtherance of the Africa Harvest mission.

Reflecting its sense of social responsibility, Africa Harvest uses most of its funds for programme activities to empower rural communities. Most of the Foundation’s projects are commu-nity driven and managed, hence building local capacity. Africa Harvest complies with international accounting standards and local laws in all countries in which it operates.

Monitoring and evaluation

Continuous monitoring and evaluation will be conducted to ensure that the Foundation is achieving its objective. This will be done through an annual financial audit, regular board meetings, multi-year commissioning of external reviews, an inbuilt project-specific monitor mechanism to assess achievement of goals and external evaluation of impact on the target client.


40

Chair

Dr Kanayo F. Nwanze (Nigeria)Director GeneralWARDA

Vice Chair/Treasurer

Joseph G. Kibe (Kenya)Former Permanent Secretary (Ministry Agriculture and Animal Husbandry)

Secretary

Andrew C. Fish (USA)Senior Director, Federal Government RelationsAmerican Cancer Society

Appendix A: Africa Harvest’s Board of Directors

Dr Florence M. Wambugu (Kenya) Chief Executive Officer AHBFI

Gisèle d’Almeida (Senegal)Director INTERFACE

Dr Mary G. Alton Mackey (Canada)Alton Mackey and AssociatesHealth and Nutrition Consultants

Appendices

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HORIZON 2010

Professor Dr Klaus Ammann (Switzerland) Director Botanical Garden, University of Bern

Caroline Kovac (USA) General ManagerIBM Healthcare and Life Sciences

Prudence Ndlovu (South Africa)Executive DirectorEagle People and Organisation Development (EPOD)

AHBFI Legal Counsel

David Farber (USA)Patton Boggs LLP

42

Appendix B: Africa Harvest’s partners

Development partners

• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation• CropLife International• DuPont USA• Ford Foundation• Forum for Agricultural Research In Africa (FARA)• Healthy Harvest

• Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI)• Kenya Banana Growers Association• National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA), Nigeria• New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD)• Pioneer Hybrid International Inc.• TechnoServe Incorporation (TNS)• University of California, Berkeley• University of Pretoria• Wangu Investments

Appendices

• Kilimo Trust• Syngenta • The Rockefeller Foundation (RF)• United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Collaborating partners

• AfricaBio• African Biotechnology Stakeholders Forum (ABSF)• Agricultural Research Council (ARC), South Africa• Biotechnology Trust Africa (BTA)• Council for Science and Industrial Research (CSIR),

South Africa• Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA)• International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-

Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)• International Service for Acquisition of Agri-biotech

Applications (ISAAA)

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HORIZON 2010

Academic partners

• Kenyatta University, Kenya• Tuskegee University, USA• University of Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa• University of Missouri, USA• University of Pretoria, South Africa

Associate partners

• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Global Health Challenge (GHC) Science Board• Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (NEPAD-CAADP)• Consultative Group International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centres, e.g., The Africa Rice Center (WARDA)• European Action Group on Global Life Sciences (EAGLES) • United Nations Millennium Project Task Force on Hunger (UN-TFH)

Other strategic stakeholders

• Aberdare Technologies Limited• BEAM Business Options Limited • Biotechnology Centre, Kenyatta University, Kenya• Genetic Technology Limited

44

ABS African Biofortified SorghumABSF African Biotech Stakeholders ForumAHBFI Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation InternationalARC Agricultural research centreARC Agricultural Research Council, South AfricaAU African UnionBTA Biotechnology Trust Africa CAADP Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme CGIAR Consultative Group on International Agricultural ResearchCSIR Council for Science and Industrial Research, South AfricaDONATA Dissemination of New Agricultural Technologies in AfricaEAGLES European Action Group on Global Life Sciences FARA Forum for Agricultural Research in AfricaGM Genetically modified ICRISAT International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid TropicsIPRGI International Plant Genetic Resources Institute ISAAA International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech ApplicationsKARI Kenya Agricultural Research InstituteNABDA National Biotechnology Development Agency, Nigeria NBRA National Biosafety Regulatory AgenciesNEPAD New Partnership for Africa’s DevelopmentNERICA New Rice for Africa

Acronyms and abbreviations

NGO Non-governmental organization PSC Private Sector Committee, CGIARR&D Research and developmentRF Rockefeller FoundationSADC Southern Africa Development CorporationTC Tissue culture TNS Techno Serve Incorporation UN-TFH United Nations Millennium Project Task Force on Hunger WARDA The Africa Rice CenterWVC Whole value chain

Credits

Photos: Jim Holmes/Panos Pictures: p. 39; Caroline Penn/Panos Pictures: p. 2. All other pictures are by Africa Harvest.

Edit, design, layout; Green Ink (www.greenink.co.uk)

Printing: Pragati Offset Pvt. Ltd (www.pragati.com)

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