Rice Sector Development (Leader: Inoussa Akintayo)

The Rice Development Sector program actively promotes the uptake of AfricaRice research products and methodologies and their improvement through capacity building, information exchange, links with development activities and feedback to the three research programs of AfricaRice. It helps package knowledge from research into formats that can be diffused on a wide-scale, e.g. through video or radio scripts, mobile phone technology etc. and will be disseminated through development partners, such as non-governmental organizations, extension systems and with support from private-sector companies. The program will play an active role in the Rice Sector Development Hubs, where research products will be tested and put into use through partnerships with extension projects and the private sector.

AfricaRice is positioning itself within the wider development and innovation context for Africa as advocated by the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Program (CAADP) of the African Union-New Partnership for Africa's Development (AU-NEPAD) and will be contributing to Pillar IV, led by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA).

AfricaRice strongly believes in the importance of shared demand articulation and agenda setting to create regional and international public goods, and develop knowledge and innovation capacity within Africa. This is realized through AfricaRice partnership with NARS.

The Center is also collaborating with many advanced research institutes to complement the range of expertise needed to tackle the key research for development questions in sub-Saharan Africa, such as the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), the French Research Institute for Development (IRD), the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS) , and many Universities from USA, Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, UK, Japan, etc.

AfricaRice is an important partner in the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP), which seeks to be a single coordinated blueprint for global rice research that will allow researchers to address global rice challenges and to be more effective and efficient in getting impacts.

The main architects of GRiSP are three CGIAR Centers – the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), AfricaRice, and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) – CIRAD, IRD, and JIRCAS which will play a strategic role with hundreds of other partners worldwide representing governments, the private sector and civil society. IRRI will lead this initiative and also oversee the activities in Asia; AfricaRice will lead the work in Africa, and CIAT in the Latin America & Caribbean region.

The provision of coherent, up-to-date information in formats suited to extension specialists and farmers will underpin delivery initiatives. This will involve innovative use of multiple ICT formats, such as video and radio, and Internet and mobile phone technology. The Rice Knowledge Bank (RKB) of the three CGIAR centers working on rice, IRRI, AfricaRice, and CIAT and national RKBs will be the principal platforms. These resources will include information on specialist topics as well as extension training materials.