Benefitting Smallholder Farmers in Africa: Role of ICRISAT

Smallholder farmers across the drylands of Africa and Asia face similar challenges—low agricultural productivity, lack of profitable alternative livelihoods, lack of access to technology, capital, and markets, low resilience to face climate change and other issues. The challenge before African countries is to transform agriculture from the predominantly subsistence orientated smallholder systems to more sustainable, efficient and market-orientated ones which create jobs for the youth on a rapidly growing continent. International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) provides a global platform for regular knowledge exchange between agricultural research and development professionals from Africa and India. We share some of our experiences over four decades of work in Africa and India mainly through: i. Exchange of germplasm and breeding material to develop new varieties suitable to the agro-ecologies of African countries and ii. Supporting market-orientation through entrepreneurship and innovations in the agribusiness sector in Africa. ICRISAT uses crop improvement as a core approach to providing crop varieties that are adapted to the ecologies of sub-Saharan Africa. These include varieties that are resistant to a wide range of biotic and abiotic stresses and acceptable by farmers and markets. These successful crop improvement programmes have been underpinned by the genetic resources available in the ICRISAT gene banks in India and Africa, resulting in the development and release of over 452 varieties and hybrids of cereals and legumes in 34 African countries. Agri-based entrepreneurship promotion is another key approach towards improving the economic prosperity of smallholder farmers in the region and harnessing Africa’s youth bulge. Through its Agribusiness and Innovation Platform (AIP), ICRISAT has developed and implemented novel agribusiness entrepreneurship promotion models in twelve African countries in partnership with a diverse set of stakeholders from the agricultural and rural development ecosystem. Other areas of intervention which are not discussed in this paper include the natural resource management programmes that have created knowledge, technologies and practices that enable resilience in the farming system. In addition, the socio-economic programmes are key to understanding the potential for adoption of technologies including new varieties.