We were very impressed with the work of the organization. Indeed innovation is at the centre of the ICT, Science and Technology Division.

Innovation Africa: Briefly tell us about UNECA?

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) is one of the five UN Regional Commissions established to promote the economic and social development of its member States, foster intra-regional integration, and promote international cooperation for Africa’s development. In order to achieve this mandate, UNECA over the years has developed a number of programmes, among which is the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Programme.

The STI Programme is designed to help member States to harness the potential of science, and technology and unleash the power of innovation to accelerate socio-economic development in a sustainable manner. The STI Programme offers:

1. Policy advice on new and emerging trends,
2. Technical assistance in designing and implementation of policies and support measures and
3. Support to scientists and their institutions to unlock Africa’s creative minds and entrepreneurial talents.

Innovation Africa: In fostering economic development in Africa, what do you see as the role of Innovation?

UNECA views innovation as the process of combining resources in new or extraordinary ways to generate new or improved products (goods and services) and processes. These improvements may range from slight improvements (incremental) on existing ones to major leaps in performance (radical innovations) and changes in technology systems. Africa faces many challenges that could benefit from innovations – such as new applications of existing knowledge in agriculture, health, education, environment, information technology, infrastructure development and delivery of other key services.

Encouraging our scientists, institutions and firms to innovate could help Africa realize the immerse opportunities in the continent and around the world. This is not an impossible task – Africa has just witnessed many “African first” innovations in the mobile phone applications that were born out of combinations of existing knowledge to solve unique African challenges in the area of money transfers. These innovations created business opportunities for many firms, created jobs and reduced the costs of money transfers especially in rural Africa.

One area that has been neglected is promotion of non-technological innovations – new and improved ways of organizing internal institutional practices, external relations and market approaches. In some cases, the technology exists, applications are known and the opportunities are many but they cannot be realized because the practices do not permit. For example, few African firms invest in R&D, have links to R&D centres or participate in international industrial alliances. In a way, they are not taking on board emerging practices that cut the costs and risks of product development, manufacturing/delivery and marketing. In other cases, the internal practices are too rigid to permit use of emerging technologies.

Another area of great potential in Africa is design innovation. If African products are to compete at home and abroad, their appearance and feel has to meet the needs of increasingly sophisticated consumers. A consumer’s decision to buy a product over another may be partly based on its design (e.g. shoes, computers, cars and homes) in addition to utility. Designs also present many technological challenges that push the development of better solutions and/or more technologically advanced materials.

As such we see innovation as playing a major role in the economic and social development in Africa. First, it is crucial to promote innovation in order to meet some of Africa’s basic needs such as food security, expanding education, improving healthcare among others.

Innovation should also play a key role in creating businesses, jobs and wealth. In particular, Africa will need to create millions of jobs annually to reduce unemployment and even to just maintain its current unemployment rate given its relatively high birth rate. Africa’s young population could be harnessed to be entrepreneurial and innovative in nature, and serve as drivers of economic growth. There are many initiatives in African countries such as Egypt, Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa,  Uganda and Zambia that seek to promote entrepreneurship and innovation. These include science and entrepreneurship support funds, economic empowerment funds, innovation hubs and enterprise development centres, among others. A lot more still remains to be done to ensure these initiatives grow and benefit the continent.

Innovation Africa: What are the priority areas for UNECA?

UNECA’s STI activities fall into three broad categories:

1. POLICY RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS: In order to promote and encourage innovation, it is important that countries create an environment in which STI can flourish. In this regard, UNECA offers member states STI policy advice, supports policy implementation, undertakes assessments of their national innovation environment, monitors trends in technology transfer in African countries and gathers, analyses  and disseminates STI related information.

UNECA has finalized the African Innovation Framework which will guide our policy research and analysis. The Innovation Framework will guide most of UNECA’s policy advice, analysis, formulation and implementation. The Framework is also designed as a model that countries could use, independently or with our support, to develop and implement specific innovation policy interventions and mechanisms as well as comprehensive national innovation policies.

In addition, a member State may request UNECA to help in formulating national legislation, constituting national councils and academies of sciences and organizing key stakeholder conferences to address specific STI related policies.  For instance, UNECA has just supported the development of the draft Gambian Science, Technology and Innovation Policies. Currently, a number of requests for such support have been received from countries such as Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote D’Ivoire, Gambia, Niger and Togo, among others. In the last one year we have worked with more than 20 member States.

2. OUTREACH AND ADVOCACY: One of the main challenges that UNECA identified is the lack of STI-related promotion in Africa. To meet this challenge, UNECA has put in place a number of activities. For example, the UNECA-led Science with Africa Conference brings together about 600 scientists, policy makers and private sector leaders in a friendly and almost informal but frank environment to address and develop strategies to advance the use and application of science and technology in Africa.  The Second Science with Africa which took place from 23 to 25 June 2010 in Addis Ababa, specifically focused of innovation and entrepreneurship in Africa. . The conferences main objectives were to identify steps that African countries could take to ensure:

1. outputs of their research and development (R&D) centres are transformed into economic and social value;
2. enterprises continuously improve existing or generate new products and processes to remain competitive and create sustainable jobs and;
3. institutions stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation at all levels (individual, firm and academia).

To achieve the above, it is important to address innovation and entrepreneurship for a number of reasons. Entrepreneurial talent is needed to transform knowledge into useful products that address Africa’s many challenges in areas such as agriculture, health, education, energy, infrastructure and climate change. In return, the private sector is also a major driver and consumer of innovation.

ECA also supports the implementation of AU/NEPAD Consolidated Plan of Action; development of guidelines for the health sector (Afro Guide) and promotes access to scientific knowledge in Africa (ASKIA)

3.  BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT SUPPORT SERVICES – This activity comprises of initiatives that seek to promote technology development and commercialization as well as emergence to technology intensive business. Some of the key activities include the African Science to Business Challenge (ASBC), African Science and Technology Innovation Endowment Fund (ASTIEF) and the African Technology Development and Transfer Network.

It is important to underline that all these programmes benefit from the expertise and inputs of the members of the Science and Technology Advisory Group (STAG) and the Committee on Development Information Science and Technology (CODIST) and participants of at the biannual Science with Africa (SwA) Conference, among others.  It is important to emphasize that the STI programme also benefits from other specialized sections with the ICT, Science and Technology Division (ISTD).  These include the Information and Communication Technology Section, Geographical Information Services Section and e-Applications Section.

What is UNECA doing to support research in Africa?

There are a number of initiatives that are primarily designed to promote and support research in Africa. Some seek to encourage development of national and regional initiatives to support research and development in a given region. UNECA, for example, has been providing support to the Inter-University Council of East African Community for the development of the East African Research Network of Excellence Observatory (EARNEO).

The regional R&D observatory will facilitate R&D collaboration, development of similar standards, exchange of researchers and students and assessing the challenges, opportunities, strengths and threats to R&D performance excellence in the region. This work is part of large effort to support the academia in Ethiopia, East Africa and North Africa.

In the area of ICTs for Development, UNECA has been supporting research at Addis Ababa University in development of electronic applications for use in the health sector. These applications include use of mobile technology to provide increased access to health services and system design and development of an on-time SMS based Mobile Health and Demographic Data Reporting and Communication System UNECA also provided support to the development of the MICTI Technology and Business Incubator in Mozambique.

The Access to Scientific Knowledge in Africa (ASKIA) initiative is a one-stop online reference database to enable scientists in Africa to access some of the premier peer-reviewed journals and periodicals. Many African learning and research institutions have limited access to new and emerging knowledge as most of their libraries face financial and technical constraints. Furthermore, we hope to bring on board other similar initiatives such as those in the areas of agriculture and environment.

To promote competition among our researchers, ECA, in partnership with the Research Triangle Institute- International (RTI), runs the African Science to Business Challenge (ASBC).  This is a competitive grant that supports the winning researcher(s) to spend a year in the United States at the Research Triangle Institute developing their ideas into a business.

UNECA also just launched the STI endowment fund and the technology development and transfer network. The African Science, Technology and Innovation Endowment Fund (ASTIEF), is a revolutionary funding mechanism to support bankable R&D outputs that are likely to make a commercial and social return. This is a novel initiative being developed through a unique public-private partnership that brings together the entrepreneurial culture and creativity of the private sector, on one hand, and the ability of the public sector to improve the business climate.  Some outstanding African business leaders such as Mr Remi Olowude, Executive Vice Chairman of Industrial and General Insurance Plc, and Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, President of African Business Roundtable, have already contributed to the fund. I thank them and all the other institutions that have already contributed to this cause and welcome others to emulate their example.

The Technology Development and Transfer Network seeks to enhance the capacity of African institutions, in particular, technology transfer offices, to bring potentially useful research leads and technologies to market and facilitate inter-firm and intra-firms technology transfer. It will accordingly create a regional pool of seasoned scientists and business leaders that will help emerging scientists and techno-entrepreneurs to tap expertise and resources in and outside their national boarders.

We are aware that UNECA alone cannot meet the needs of all the scientists and technology firms in all the African countries. Therefore, our contribution in this area includes advocacy and policy promotion to help member States put in place not just policies but also the necessary support mechanisms – science and venture capital funds, technology adaptation and transfer offices, improved soft and hard science and technology infrastructure, and science education. As such, UNECA organizes, supports and participates in national and regional policy dialogues that bring together policy makers, researchers, industry and other stakeholders to address specific issues such as women in science, role of science and technology in meeting MDGs, development and management of science parks and incubators etc.

UNECA is also working with other partners to encourage research in Africa. For example, in collaboration with the AU Commission and the Good Clinical Practice Alliance (Europe), ECA is supporting the development of guidelines for health research in Africa (known as “Afro Guide”). The collaboration is a follow-up activity to the Science with Africa conference.  It seeks to establish commonly accepted African and international standards for the promotion of ethics and good clinical practice. The second meeting of Afro Guide just took place this year on 22 June 2010 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Innovation Africa: We know that innovation is becoming more Open, with collaboration, knowledge networks and alliances playing a crucial role. What are your thoughts on this?

International industrial and technology alliances have become indispensable tools in promoting innovation. Africa does not participate in many viable and innovative industrial alliances. Many of these alliances are in the areas of space science, biotechnology, information technology and automobiles. Africa is not a major player in any of these fields.

In terms of scientific collaborations, African researchers collaborate largely with researchers in developed countries rather than with those in developing countries. Current data suggests that African researchers in these collaborative activities play a minor role. There are several reasons but some of the key ones include lack of domestic funding and poor S&T infrastructure. As such, most of the funding of the research originates from the developed country partner and the sophisticated research activities are performed by the developed country partners. This is likely to influence the science and technology agenda of African institutions that largely depend on foreign funds to undertake their R&D activities.

However, there are emerging numbers of R&D collaborative projects where African institutions are taking the lead.  For example, the CSIR Satellite Applications Centre in South Africa collaborates and provides tracking, telemetry and command (TT&C) services to commercial companies and public space agencies for their space launches and Nile University in Egypt is collaborating with General Motors to undertake research of interest to the firm. There are also a number of similar collaborations among pharmaceutical and telecommunication firms.  Such collaborations can be boosted by international cooperation agreements between interested African countries and their partners abroad.

Innovation Africa: Another key factor is the need to bring research and business in win-win partnership. Some of the most innovative business/technology were the result of academic research. Do you have any initiatives in place for research and business to connect?

We have a number of initiatives that are designed to increase cooperation between researchers and the private sector. One focuses on encouraging the private sector to participate is supporting research through the STI Endowment Fund and national research support programmes such as science parks and incubators.

Many of the initiatives that are mentioned already involve the private sector. More importantly, they are intended to encouraging African researchers and their institutions to protect their intellectual assets and commercialize their research outputs. For instance, the African Science to Business Challenge (ASBC), African Science, Technology and Innovation Endowment Fund (ASTIEF) and the African Technology Development and Transfer Network are designed to help researchers work with businesses or bring their products to market – thus creating a private sector that is likely to cooperate with R&D centres.

Finally, as part of our advocacy and policy advisory programmes, we encourage national governments and their institutions to put in place similar mechanisms and develop platforms in order to work closely with their private sector. This includes our work with networks of universities, academies of sciences and national science and technology councils, and studies on best practices in technology transfer and promoting innovation.

Instead of physically trapping bacteria as most existing filters do, the new filter lets them flow on through with the water. But by the time the pathogens have passed through, they have also passed on, because the device kills them with an electrical field that runs through the highly conductive “nano-coated” cotton.

In lab tests, over 98 percent of Escherichia coli bacteria that were exposed to 20 volts of electricity in the filter for several seconds were killed. Multiple layers of fabric were used to make the filter 2.5 inches thick.

“This really provides a new water treatment method to kill pathogens,” said Yi Cui, an associate professor of materials science and engineering. “It can easily be used in remote areas where people don’t have access to chemical treatments such as chlorine.”

Cholera, typhoid and hepatitis are among the waterborne diseases that are a continuing problem in the developing world. Cui said the new filter could be used in water purification systems from cities to small villages.

Faster filtering by letting bacteria through

Filters that physically trap bacteria must have pore spaces small enough to keep the pathogens from slipping through, but that restricts the filters’ flow rate.

Since the new filter doesn’t trap bacteria, it can have much larger pores, allowing water to speed through at a more rapid rate.

“Our filter is about 80,000 times faster than filters that trap bacteria,” Cui said. He is the senior author of a paper describing the research that will be published in an upcoming issue of Nano Letters. The paper is available online now.

The larger pore spaces in Cui’s filter also keep it from getting clogged, which is a problem with filters that physically pull bacteria out of the water.

Cui’s research group teamed with that of Sarah Heilshorn, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering, whose group brought its bioengineering expertise to bear on designing the filters.

Silver has long been known to have chemical properties that kill bacteria. “In the days before pasteurization and refrigeration, people would sometimes drop silver dollars into milk bottles to combat bacteria, or even swallow it,” Heilshorn said.

Cui’s group knew from previous projects that carbon nanotubes were good electrical conductors, so the researchers reasoned the two materials in concert would be effective against bacteria. “This approach really takes silver out of the folk remedy realm and into a high-tech setting, where it is much more effective,” Heilshorn said.

Using the commonplace keeps costs down

But the scientists also wanted to design the filters to be as inexpensive as possible. The amount of silver used for the nanowires was so small the cost was negligible, Cui said. Still, they needed a foundation material that was “cheap, widely available and chemically and mechanically robust.” So they went with ordinary woven cotton fabric.

“We got it at Wal-mart,” Cui said.

To turn their discount store cotton into a filter, they dipped it into a solution of carbon nanotubes, let it dry, then dipped it into the silver nanowire solution. They also tried mixing both nanomaterials together and doing a single dunk, which also worked. They let the cotton soak for at least a few minutes, sometimes up to 20, but that was all it took.

The big advantage of the nanomaterials is that their small size makes it easier for them to stick to the cotton, Cui said. The nanowires range from 40 to 100 billionths of a meter in diameter and up to 10 millionths of a meter in length. The nanotubes were only a few millionths of a meter long and as narrow as a single billionth of a meter. Because the nanomaterials stick so well, the nanotubes create a smooth, continuous surface on the cotton fibers. The longer nanowires generally have one end attached with the nanotubes and the other end branching off, poking into the void space between cotton fibers.

“With a continuous structure along the length, you can move the electrons very efficiently and really make the filter very conducting,” he said. “That means the filter requires less voltage.”

Minimal electricity required

The electrical current that helps do the killing is only a few milliamperes strong – barely enough to cause a tingling sensation in a person and easily supplied by a small solar panel or a couple 12-volt car batteries. The electrical current can also be generated from a stationary bicycle or by a hand-cranked device.

The low electricity requirement of the new filter is another advantage over those that physically filter bacteria, which use electric pumps to force water through their tiny pores. Those pumps take a lot of electricity to operate, Cui said.

In some of the lab tests of the nano-filter, the electricity needed to run current through the filter was only a fifth of what a filtration pump would have needed to filter a comparable amount of water.

The pores in the nano-filter are large enough that no pumping is needed – the force of gravity is enough to send the water speeding through.

Although the new filter is designed to let bacteria pass through, an added advantage of using the silver nanowire is that if any bacteria were to linger, the silver would likely kill it. This avoids biofouling, in which bacteria form a film on a filter. Biofouling is a common problem in filters that use small pores to filter out bacteria.

Cui said the electricity passing through the conducting filter may also be altering the pH of the water near the filter surface, which could add to its lethality toward the bacteria.

Cui said the next steps in the research are to try the filter on different types of bacteria and to run tests using several successive filters.

“With one filter, we can kill 98 percent of the bacteria,” Cui said. “For drinking water, you don’t want any live bacteria in the water, so we will have to use multiple filter stages.”

Cui’s research group has gained attention recently for using nanomaterials to build batteries from paper and cloth.

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Evolution – Natural selection – Human – Evolutionary psychology – Gene
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The average yearly income in Kenya is less than US$1,000, 60 percent of the population is below poverty level, and one-fifth of children under the age of five are malnourished. Already, the nation has experienced at least 28 cycles of drought in the last century, as well as 15 floods of epidemic proportions, according to Mahboub Maalim, Executive Secretary of the Inter Governmental Authority on Development.

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Zambian grocery stores are filled with processed foods from around the world, from crackers made in Argentina and soy milk from China to popular U.S. breakfast cereals. In addition to these foreign foods, however, are also variety of locally made and processed products, including indigenous varieties of organic rice, all-natural peanut butter and honey from the It’s Wild brand.

It’s Wild was started by the Community Markets for Conservation(COMACO) over 30 years ago to preserve and protect wildlife. But the organization soon learned that in order to protect wildlife, it would need to address the lack of income sources for local communities that were sometimes forced to resort to poaching elephants or other wildlife in order to earn enough to feed their families.

To do this, COMACO organizes farmers into producer groups, encouraging them to diversify their skills by raising livestock and bees, growing organic rice, using improved irrigation and fisheries management and other practices. The organization supports the creation of regional processing centers and trading depots to make it easier for farmers to process and transport their crops. Their products are then sold under theIt’s Wild brand in supermarket chains in Zambia, such as ShopRite, Checkers and Spar. And the organization tries to do as much of the product distribution as possible so that the money stays with the farmers, not middlemen, improving local livelihoods and preserving local wildlife. (See also: Peanut Butter and Progress)

And all across sub-Saharan Africa, other organizations are providing farmers with the processing skills and materials they need to improve their incomes and support their families—and that can produce unexpected benefits, including wildlife, reducing food-born health risks, and improving access to education.

In Kenya, the Mazingira Institute  is working to create awareness about climate change, human rights, and urban agriculture. And they’re also training communities to learn better skills to increase income generation and well-being—including training in how to process foods to preserve them longer and make them more appealing to consumers.

Mazingira, for example, helped Esther Mjoki Maifa, an entrepreneur in Nairobi, capitalize on a growing interest among Kenyans for natural healthy products by training her to process groundnuts without any preserves or chemicals. It takes her about one day to produce 50 kilograms of groundnuts and she sells jars from 200-300 shillings each. Eventually, Ms. Maifa is hoping to make enough money from her products to purchase her own nut grinding machine.  (See also: Mazingira Institute and NESALF: Training a New Breed of Farmers)

In Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, the East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) project is helping livestock farmers to improve the processing and preservation of milk in order to produce better tasting and longer lasting dairy products which are also safer for the consumer. EADD encourages farmers to join cooperatives (SeeInnovation of the Week: Farmers Groups and Cooperatives), giving them access to group owned and run refrigerated milk collection centers, significantly reducing the financial burden of the process. The milk is then transported to a milk processing facility and sent to market where the processed milk will receive a higher price than unpasteurized milk. It also stays good longer and reduces the risk of food borne illness. (See also:Improving Incomes with Milk Processing)

In Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria, the World Cocoa Foundation is providing cocoa farmers with hands-on training on production, pest and disease management and post-harvest techniques. The region accounts for nearly 70 percent of the world’s cocoa production, 90 percent of which is grown on nearly 2 million small family farms. Almost 16 million people depend on this crop as their main source of income and being able to properly process cocoa can make a big difference in income for a family. One farmer in Côte d’Ivoire, Ekra Marceline, was able to more than quadruple  her cocoa harvest after receiving training from a Farmer Field School supported by WCF. She was able to build a solar dryer to produce higher quality beans and the additional income she earns enabled her to send her children to school and build a new home for her family.

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PULLMAN, Wash. — An international team of scientists from Italy, France, New Zealand, Belgium and the USA have published a draft sequence of the domestic apple genome in the current issue of Nature Genetics.

The availability of a genome sequence for apple will allow scientists to more rapidly identify which genes provide desirable characteristics to the fruit and which genes and gene variants provide disease or drought resistance to the plant. This information can be used to rapidly improve the plants through more informed selective breeding.

An organism’s genome is the total of all its genetic information, including genes. Genes carry information that determines, among other things, a plant’s appearance, health, productivity and color and taste of the fruit.

The domestic apple is the main fruit crop of the world’s temperate regions. Apple is a member of the plant family Rosaceae which includes many other economically important species, including cherry, pear, peach, apricot, strawberry, and rose, to name just a few.

The state of Washington accounts for approximately 60 percent of total apple production in the U.S. and Rosaceae fruit production is a multi-billion dollar industry in the state. Washington state scientists played an important role in the project.

Led by Washington State University horticultural genomicist Amit Dhingra, the Washington-based team sequenced and analyzed a unique version of the genome of the golden delicious apple in which all duplicated chromosomes are genetically identical. This information was used to validate the sequence of the more complicated “heterozygous” golden delicious apple (in which duplicated chromosomes are not identical).

“Before genome sequencing, the best we could do was correlate traits with genes. Now we can point to a specific gene and say, ‘This is the one; this gene is responsible for this trait’. That trait of interest might be, for instance, a disease, which is why sequencing the human genome was such an important milestone. Or the trait might be for something desirable, like flavor in a piece of fruit. We are already working on finding physiological solutions to issues like bitter pit in current apple varieties with the gene-based information available to us and lay a foundation for improved varieties in the future through generation of sports (mutations) and breeding,” Dhingra said.

The Washington state contribution to the sequencing work was a unique collaboration between the cross-state Apple Cup rivals of WSU and the University of Washington.

Microbiologist Roger Bumgarner’s lab at the University of Washington provided the initial sequencing expertise and capability to the project, which was later complemented and replaced by sequencing expertise in the Dhingra genomics lab, who obtained the same DNA sequencing instrument used in Dr. Bumgarner’s lab.

“UW is a world leader in medical research and WSU is a world leader in agricultural research,” said Bumgarner. “Technological advancements and techniques initially used to study medically important genomes and problems can be rapidly applied to genomes and problems of agricultural importance. We both had something to contribute and to learn from one another. I think there are many more opportunities for such collaborations to develop in the coming years.”

After the sequencing was completed, WSU computational biologist Ananth Kalyanaraman contributed to the analysis by comparing the apple genome with that of pear, peach and grape to identify the differences and commonalities that exist between these fruit crops.

While the apple genome provides a valuable resource for future research, one pressing question answered by the international team’s paper in Nature Genetics was one of origin. Scientists have long wanted to know — and have for years argued vehemently about — the ancestor of the modern domesticated apple. The question is now settled: Malus sieversii, native to the mountains of southern Kazakhstan, is the apple’s wild ancestor. Now that that question is settled, scientists will begin using the apple genome to help breed apples with desirable new traits, including disease resistance and, potentially, increased health-benefitting qualities.

“Having the apple genome sequence will greatly accelerate our ability to define the differences between apple cultivars at the genetic level,” said Kate Evans, an apple breeder based at the WSU Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center. “This will allow us to exploit these differences and target areas of diversity to incorporate into the breeding program, resulting in improved cultivars for the consumers that are also better suited for long-term, sustainable production.”

Dan Bernardo, dean of the WSU College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences, said, “The Washington apple is an icon of quality around the globe. This is a natural home for the advanced science necessary to map the tree fruit genome and actively study how it functions.”

Uganda hopes to become the region’s leader in rice research with the opening later this year of a US$6 million centre at its crop research institute.

The National Crop Resources Research Institute (NACRRI) received the money from Japan in September last year for the construction of a training and research centre for rice farmers and scientists, which is now nearing completion.

The centre will promote North-South collaboration in research and technology transfer, said Geoffrey Asea, head of the cereal department at NACRRI, and “will be fully operational by December”.

The investment is part of Japan’s attempt to position itself as a strategic business partner to East African countries by investing in a range of infrastructure, food production and trade projects under the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV) initiative.

On the TICAD IV platform Japan launched the Coalition for African Rice Development initiative whose goal was to double rice production between 2008 and 2018.

“Japan has the expertise and history in growing rice,” said Goto Akio, coordinator of the New Rice for Africa (NERICA) project at the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). “We started helping Africa after finding out that rice consumption there was lacking and the continent was losing a lot of foreign currency through importing rice.”

The Uganda project, which is one of JICA’s biggest agricultural initiatives to date in Africa, is aimed at developing institutional capacity and superior strains of rice, Akio said.

“When we did research in Uganda in 2004 there was only one rice researcher there, but now there are more than ten,” said Akio. “We want them to increase rice research by themselves.”

The centre will allow farmers to become familiar with rice technologies and learn production skills while giving feedback to researchers, he said. This is unusual because there is normally very little interaction between researchers and rice growers in Uganda, Asea added.

The grant will also be used to promote rice production in Uganda and build the capacity of researchers, extension agents, farmers and other stakeholders in the rice value chain for production and post-harvest handling.

Asea said Uganda spent $90 million on rice imports in 2005 but, with improved varieties, the bill has been cut to $60 million a year and the area planted with rice has grown to 50,000 hectares from about 1,500 a decade ago.

“But rice is relatively new to eastern and southern Africa and has not been given much priority — crops are of poorer quality than imported rice,” said Asea.

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