Alliance  for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)  
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As Schools Begin, Unique African Partnership  Announces Launch of  
Critical PhD Program for Crop Breeding in Africa 

Building on  Revolutionary Approach Piloted in South Africa, 
Effort Seen as Critical  to Aid Long-term Food Security in Africa 
ACCRA, GHANA and NAIROBI, KENYA  (19 September 2007)—The Alliance for a Green 
Revolution in Africa (AGRA)  announced today that it is partnering with the 
University of Ghana, Legon, to  launch the West Africa Centre for Crop 
Improvement (WACCI), to train the next  generation of African crop scientists.  AGRA 
will also strengthen a programme  piloted at the University of  KwaZulu-Natal 
in South Africa,  the African Centre for Crop Improvement (ACCI).  Together, 
the two programmes will train  approximately 120 PhD plant breeders over the 
next ten years, helping to create  the critical mass of crop breeders needed to 
end Africa’s food crisis. 
“These programmes will bridge a  wide gap in African scientific capacity, by 
training African plant breeders in African  universities to improve and adapt 
the indigenous and orphan crops needed to meet  Africa’s food needs,” said 
Joseph DeVries, Director of AGRA’s Programme  for Africa’s Seed Systems.  
With  more than 200 million malnourished and hungry people in Africa, the 
region is in  dire need of highly trained crop breeders who can develop 
high-yielding, hardy, and  nutritious varieties of African crops adapted to the wide 
range of conditions  and constraints faced by Africa’s small-scale  farmers.  
Such varieties are  essential to farmers’ ability to raise yields and incomes, 
and to end  poverty. 
The  grant to the University of  Ghana, Legon, is for US$4.9 million,  and 
the grant to the University of KwaZulu-Natal is for US$8.1 million.  The Legon 
programme will recruit  students from western and central Africa, and  the 
first class will enter in January 2008.  The South African program will recruit  
students from eastern and southern Africa.  Both grants will  significantly 
boost agricultural scientific capacity in their respective  institutions. 
The WACCI and ACCI programmes set  a new direction for agricultural higher 
education in Africa. Until now, most PhD training of African plant  breeders has 
taken place in Europe or the United States.  That training has primarily  
involved crops that are largely irrelevant to African  farming. 
“A PhD student training in  Europe might look for valuable DNA sequences in  
wheat.  An African scientist whose  country has no wheat production and no DNA 
labs will not be equipped to face the  challenges of developing local food 
crops when they go home,” said Prof. Eric  Danquah, director of WACCI at  the  
University of Ghana, Legon.   
Most of the crops important to  Africa—such as cassava, sorghum, millet, 
plantain, and cowpea—the so-called  “orphan crops,” are of little importance to 
researchers and educators in the  developed world.  As a result, there  is a 
serious shortage of breeders of these crops.  For example, there are under a 
dozen  millet breeders in all of Africa.  Yet millions of people in sub-Saharan  
Africa depend on millet as an important part of  their diet.  Conversely, most 
of the  more than US$35 billion invested by private firms in agricultural 
research is  concentrated in North America and Europe, on a  handful of 
commercially important crops. 
The new African  university programmes will ensure relevance to Africa’s food 
needs by recruiting students who already  work as scientists with African 
national research institutions and who will  return to those institutions upon 
completing their PhDs.  Furthermore, by training students in  Africa rather than 
requiring them to leave the continent, the programmes will  help to stem a “
brain drain” of Africa’s agricultural scientists, since  significant numbers 
of Africans training in the U.S. and Europe  stay in their countries of 
training.  
Both programmes will  build scientific capacity in Africa for African  
institutions.  WACCI will offer a  PhD fellowship which includes two years of 
coursework and three years of field  research.  Current crop science  programmes in 
Africa are solely research-based, lacking the critical course work  offered in 
the US and  Europe. 
First year course work will  include plant genetics, crop improvement, 
biometry, quantitative genetics,  molecular genetics and biotechnology in plant 
breeding, plant microbial  interactions and disease control and plant stress  
physiology. 
To help update and strengthen the  curriculum, Cornell University in New York 
is also joining the partnership, and  will receive a grant of US$1.7 million 
to provide services and resources.  These include assisting with curriculum  
design, assessing research capacity, and reviewing dissertation proposals.  
Cornell will also provide distance  learning opportunities and help in the design 
of information technology  infrastructure.  And the  university’s Mann 
Library will  facilitate access to world-class agricultural library resources and 
services for  WACCI and ACCI PhD students.   
Building on  Success 
WACCI will build on the  success of ACCI.  Having started in  2000 as a mere 
concept—with no staff, students or offices—the programme  graduated its first 
class of African PhD plant breeders last spring.  It is currently training 
eight new PhD  students each year, and has 46 students in the system, tackling 
13 crops.  Together with their local  co-supervisors, the students already form 
a de facto network of plant  breeders. 
"We are training applied plant  breeders with a broad set of skills so that 
they can succeed in breeding better  crop varieties, however challenging their 
home environment," said Prof. Mark  Laing, Director of the ACCI at the 
University of KwaZulu-Natal.  "By focussing our students' Ph.D. thesis  research on 
local crops, in local environments, the  programme will use the power of 
applied plant breeding on African  crops, aiming to develop  effective solutions to 
long-standing problems facing Africa's  farmers."  
The programme, which draws  students from 13 countries, has already had a 
positive national impact on plant  breeding in Kenya,  Malawi, and  Uganda, said 
AGRA’s DeVries.  One PhD student has shown that it can  take as little as 
three years to develop superior cassava varieties with  resistance to an 
aggressive virus.  In the past, plant breeders have taken 6 to 8 years to make similar  
progress, according to DeVries.  
Ultimately, AGRA envisions plant  breeding stations located in every 
agriculturally important biogeographic zone,  populated with skilled, knowledgeable 
plant breeders, working on locally  important crops to meet local needs. 
About the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa 
The African-led Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is a dynamic 
 partnership working across the continent to help millions of small-scale 
farmers  and their families lift themselves out of poverty and hunger.  AGRA 
programs develop practical solutions to  significantly boost farm productivity and 
incomes while safeguarding the  environment and biodiversity.  To  achieve 
this goal, Alliance partnerships address all key aspects  of African 
agriculture: from seeds, soil health and water to markets,  agricultural education and 
policy.  AGRA is chaired by Kofi Annan, the former  Secretary-General of the 
United Nations. 
For more information, go to _www.agra-alliance.org_ 
(http://www.agra-alliance.org/)   .



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