HARNESSING OPPORTUNITIES FOR PRODUCTIVITY ENHANCEMENT (HOPE) OF SORGHUM AND MILLETS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA AND SOUTH ASIA

HOPE (Harnessing Opportunities for Productivity Enhancement of Sorghum and Millets in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia) seeks to help smallholder farmers increase the yields of dryland cereal crops in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and South Asia (SA).

Focusing in carefully-selected target areas that provide a large opportunity to alleviate food insecurity and poverty in four countries in West and Central Africa (WCA), six countries in East and Southern Africa (ESA), and four states in India (SA), HOPE Project seeks to discover, develop and deliver improved technologies for producing sorghum and millets with a view to increasing productivity beyond subsistence level, in a sustainable manner.

In its first four years, the project will increase farmer yields by 35−40%, benefiting 110,000 households in SSA and 90,000 in SA through increased food security and incomes. Within ten years the project aims to benefit around 2 million households in total.

The project’s activities are implemented through six functional objectives:

• Objective 1: Target opportunities for technology development and delivery to maximize adoption and impacts of innovations on livelihoods in WCA, ESA and SA
• Objective 2: Improve sorghum cultivars and management options to increase productivity in WCA, ESA and SA
• Objective 3: Improve pearl millet cultivars and management options to increase productivity in WCA and SA
• Objective 4: Improve finger millet cultivars and management options to increase productivity and production in ESA
• Objective 5: Discover and develop improved market strategies for sorghum, pearl millet and finger millet to stimulate adoption of improved technologies in WCA, ESA and SA
• Objective 6: Enable technology adoption of sorghum, pearl millet, and finger millet by improving access to inputs and markets differentiated according to both women’s and men’s needs in WCA, ESA, and SA

Figure 1: Project countries in Africa (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania) in states in India (Rajasthan, Haryana, Gujarat, and Maharashtra)