Stories by John Oba
Abuja
The World Bank has distinguished the West Africa Agricultural Productivity Programme (WAAPP), as the second best project in Africa as part of the 2016 World Bank’s Africa region vice-presidential unit (VPU) team award.
The project was recognized for its outstanding contribution to the valorisation of the West Africa’s food system, to innovate, create, disseminate and adopt improved technologies as well as the creation of favourable conditions for regional cooperation in 13 recipient countries.
This is even as the Nigeria acting National Project Coordinator of West African Agricultural Productivity Programme (WAAPP-Nigeria), James Ocheme Apochi has reassured of the programme’s commitment towards meeting up with the number one objective of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), of ending poverty through building capacity of researchers and scientist to support increase in agricultural productivity in line with President Muhammadu Buhari’s change agenda in agricultural sector.
WAAPP coordinated by CORAF/WECARD moved up by eleven rank in only 5 years after its first nomination by the World Bank’s Africa Region VPU team Award in 2013 at the 13th place. This tremendous progress is fuelled by its high capacity to transform West African agriculture by boosting productivity by over 50%, reducing hunger and improving nutrition through improved and drought resistant crops, creating thousands jobs and supporting agricultural technologies transfer across borders.
The World Bank’s Africa Region Vice-Presidential Unit who commended the efforts of the WAAPP coordination unit at the World Bank lead by Dr Abdoulaye Toure, said WAAPP is estimated to have increased food production in West Africa by more than 3 million tons and raised beneficiary incomes by an average of 34%. In fact, WAAPP is positioning itself as one of the major responses of the Economic Communities of West African States (ECOWAS) to the 2006-2008 food crises rocking the region. The region’s food situation would have been worse without WAAPP’s efforts.
To date, WAAPP has successfully generated over 160 technologies enhancing productivity which are directly benefiting over 7 million farmers, processers and small businesses across the region (45% of whom are women) and about 30 million indirect beneficiaries. Our improved technologies are effectively used on close to 4 million hectares across the West African region.
On other hand, WAAPP stands out of 80 projects reviewed by the continent wide competition for its excellence in preparing quick response solutions to the rapidly emerging local and global challenges and building clients’ capacity to act on emergencies and enhance resilience. In 2015, WAAPP delivered 10,500 tons of seeds to up to 250,000 farmers in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to boost post-Ebola recovery.
On the number of researchers and scientists trained by WAAPP-Nigeria, Apochi disclosed that the programme has so far sponsored 43 researchers and scientist alike to include fourteen PhD with 3 already completed their studies and have returned to their station while 4 are at various stages of completion with 7 still having more than a year to completion.
He added that the programme is also sponsoring 17 post Graduate students out of which 9 have completed and return to their station with 8 ongoing their studies with 12 trained in various certificate courses.
The aim according to the Acting National Programme Coordinator is to strengthen the capacity of researchers and scientist in line with the funding of demand driven research in Agriculture, noting that research remains key in the agricultural sector.
