Every farmer deserves good seed
Rapidly growing populations and a changing climate contribute to widespread child malnutrition and frequent social unrest in rural areas of Africa, and are placing ever-greater pressure on farmers to improve their harvests.
In 15 target countries
Approximately 38 million farmers live in 15 African countries where there is virtually no access to seed of improved crop varieties, including Angola, Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Guinea, Madagascar, Republic of Congo, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.
The Seed Systems Group works to establish regular, dependable supply of high-yielding, resilient seed of a wide range of food crops among poor, smallholder farmers to help them improve their crop yields, nutritional status, and income. The Seed Systems Group is a non-profit organization registered in the United States and headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya.
COUNTRIES TARGETED
ESTIMATED POPULATION
EST. SMALL HOLDER FARMERS
IMPROVED VARIETIES RELEASED
15 target countries
With improved crop varieties now available to allow farmers in virtually any African country to intensify production systems, and a proven method for developing seed delivery systems, we seek to bring the power of high-yielding, locally adapted seed to the tens of millions of farmers living in the 15 countries below in the push for food security in All of Africa.
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Additionally for the RPSF, one regional project is working with Seed Systems Group (a Kenya-based NGO) to stimulate local production of climate-resilient seeds in Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia and South Sudan. By introducing improved varieties developed by local and international research centres to local seed multipliers (including government agents, NGOs, and the private sector), the project is securing seed access of improved varieties for 90,000 smallholders. This project has also been used to enable the Intergovernmental Authority on Development to improve the policy for resilience-building of the seed sector in the region. Several other assessments are under way to continue to inform policy with lessons learned.
IFAD - A Crisis Response Initiative (CRI)