Cotonou, Benin
February 13, 2008
During the recent
courtesy visit paid by the
Africa Rice Center
(WARDA) Director General Dr Papa Abdoulaye Seck, His Excellency
Mr Hamath Sall, Minister of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry,
Government of Senegal, emphasized the urgent need for strong
technical support from WARDA to help boost domestic rice
production.
Senegal, like other
rice-importing countries in Africa, is facing serious
difficulties in view of the increasing world price of this
commodity. The Government of Senegal has developed a national
strategy to attain self-sufficiency in rice by 2015.
The Minister expressed
great admiration for WARDA’s technologies, such as the
NERICA® varieties
for upland and lowland ecologies and urged their rapid
evaluation for large-scale cultivation in Senegal.
Senegal hosts WARDA’s
regional Sahel center for rice research in St Louis. The
Minister recognized the importance of the Sahel varieties
developed by WARDA and its partners for the irrigated ecology.
For more than 10 years, 70-90% of the Senegal River Valley has
been covered by three high-yielding Sahel varieties.
WARDA and its partners
have also developed the ASI thresher-cleaner (awarded Senegal
President’s award for science in 2003) and a range of integrated
crop management practices that boost the productivity of
irrigated rice in the Senegal River valley.
Building on their
success,
WARDA’s St Louis center has recently developed more productive
Sahel varieties with yield potential of 10 to 12 tonnes per
hectare. Five of these new Sahel varieties were officially
released by
the Government of Senegal in December 2007.
The WARDA Director
General was accompanied by Dr Macoumba Diouf, Director General
of the
Institut sénégalais de
recherches agricoles (ISRA), Dr Marco
Wopereis, WARDA Assistant Director General for Research and Dr
Vincent Bado, WARDA Representative in Senegal.
Before concluding the
meeting, the Minister asked the ISRA Director General to convene
a meeting of the technical wing of the Ministry with WARDA,
ISRA, the Direction régionale d’agriculture (DRA) as well as
development agencies, such as the
Agence nationale de conseil
agricole et rural (ANCAR) and the
Société d’aménagement et
d’exploitation des terres du Delta du Sénégal (SAED).
The meeting’s main
objective would be to develop joint work-plans to provide R&D
support to Senegal’s goal of attaining self-sufficiency in rice
by 2015. Both the Government of Senegal and WARDA will explore
possibilities for mobilizing resources to implement the joint
work-plans.
Thanking the Minister
for enabling a close collaboration between the national
agricultural R&D institutions in Senegal and WARDA, Dr Seck
reaffirmed WARDA’s total commitment to support Senegal in
attaining its goal.
As a follow-up to the
meeting, a concept note on possible contributions of WARDA to
the Senegalese rice self-sufficiency program was presented by Dr
Wopereis to Senegalese R&D representatives in St. Louis,
Senegal.
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