Eastern and Southern Africa (Nairobi, Kenya)
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Eastern and Southern Africa (Nairobi, Kenya)
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Note of Welcome from the Director - Eastern and Southern Africa
Said Silim Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) - that includes both the ASARECA member countries and those of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) is a challenging region for ICRISAT. Of all the SAT regions this is the only region where the UNDP human development index has remained unchanged since 1975. Nearly 30% of the region is semi-arid, more than half of the rural population lives in extreme poverty, and some 85% of these extremely poor people depend on agriculture to a greater or lesser extent for their livelihood. If there is to be any hope of achieving the Millennium Development Goal of reducing the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day to half the 1990 level by 2015 (ie, from 29 percent of all people in low and middle income economies to 14.5 percent), there is a need for substantial investment in research for development in this region. Following on the recommendations of the 2003 External Review Panel and recommendations of the Task Force that was composed of the most relevant stakeholders and shareholders, ICRISAT increased its investments in ESA to further strengthen and diversify its activities. A new regional strategy has been developed taking into consideration the current challenges and future opportunities. The strategy is translated into four innovative Regional Programs, three of these programs emphasize public-private partnerships and market led technology development, greater regional efficiency in crop improvement and dissemination (especially in terms of the development of seed systems), and the pursuit of more sustained poverty alleviation especially in the context of relief and recovery programs. In addition, we propose to initiate a fourth program for crop-livestock development, recognizing that in many semi-arid farming systems, livestock offer better prospects than crops for sustained income growth. Starting January 2005, ICRISAT reorganized its existing Africa based locations into two regional hubs, West and Central Africa and East and Southern Africa and appointed regional directors in place of regional representatives. Since the regional strategy for ICRISAT-Eastern and Southern Africa (ICRISAT-ESA) has been designed to address the priorities identified by the sub regional organizations - Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA) and SADC-FANR, the ICRISAT-ESA team based at Nairobi in Kenya works closely with ASARECA while the ICRISAT-ESA team based at Bulawayo in Zimbabwe collaborates with the SADC-FANR In addition to the teams at Nairobi and Bulawayo, ICRISAT-ESA maintains two country offices - ICRISAT-Lilongwe and ICRISAT-Maputo. Currently ICRISAT has 19 scientists based in the ESA region (shown in the Organizational Setup section). However, ICRISAT-ESA activities are not limited to the countries where the team members are based. The team reaches out to all corners of the region through a range of partners and collaborators in implementing its research agenda. On this web site we have attempted to provide you with extensive information about every aspect of our work including our strategy, our research, our products and impact of our past achievements. We invite you to browse these pages which we hope you will find informative and interesting. At the same time we value your feedback. If you have a comment or suggestion please let us know through this page. |
