Pan-African

PABRA's programme is composed of a range of projects and research activities designed from a common pan-Africa framework developed by partners and based on shared vision and objectives. The focus is on improving the bean crop and increasing its productivity for the benefit of the urban and rural poor. The alliance's ultimate goal is to enhance food security, income generation and the health of resource-poor communities. The major beneficiaries of PABRA activities are women, who play the main role in the crop's production and post harvest handling in Africa.

PABRA facilitates collaborative research within and between the networks by providing a forum for building and maintaining linkages to multiple partners (researchers, NGOs, CBOs and farmers). These collaborative linkages are maintained and strengthened through joint priority-setting, planning, agreed division of responsibilities, joint implementation of activities and joint reporting. In this way research technologies are shared among countries, and significantly contribute to scaling up and wider dissemination efforts.

CIDA, SDC and USAID, contributed to founding the alliance in 1996, and met with implementing organisations in an annual meeting of a steering committee. The Assocation for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA), DFID of the UK and the Rockefeller Foundation also support components of the PABRA agenda.

Over the last decade, research by PABRA partners has yielded much fruit. With market liberalisation placing purchased fertilisers out of the reach of most smallholder farmers, PABRA is focusing on providing low-cost solutions such as management of green manures, and identifying bean lines tolerant to infertile soils. Recent studies show significant adoption of bean varieties and pest management practices in Eastern and Southern Africa, with smallholder farmers, mostly women, reporting higher yields, fewer crop losses (to pests, diseases & low soil fertility), improved family nutrition and more cash income. By 2004, 245 releases of new bean varieties were made across all 18 countries, some with completely new attributes including resistance to previously intractable problems of African agriculture (such as the bean stem maggot, soils low in phosphorus). Improved climbing beans (with a yield three times that of the bush types traditional in Africa); continue to spread from Rwanda to other countries in the region.

While the economic returns from bean R&D have been excellent, our emphasis since 2000 has been to strengthen local institutions. The pan-Africa bean breeding strategy is now managed by regional breeders based at the University of Nairobi (for ECABREN) and in Malawi (for SABRN), with more than 2,200 elite bean materials distributed to PABRA countries for use in their breeding programmes.

Surveys to assess impact of new bean varieties now underway in 6 African countries are providing extremely encouraging results. More than 70% of households interviewed in Northern Tanzania and Western Kenya have adapted new bean technologies. In all cases those who adopt new technologies were better off than non-adopters in terms of both consumption and income from beans. For example in Uganda, household bean consumption was 40% higher and income was 45% higher for those households who had adopted the new varieties.

A small revolution has also taken place in national programmes’ approaches to reaching larger numbers of farmers at reasonable cost. From earlier PABRA “action research” in pilot sites (and in the absence of a formal bean seed sector), a new approach to seed dissemination has been adapted in several countries. This involves distributing seed in affordable small packs using a wide variety of local outlets, supported by a decentralised seed production programme. PABRA alliance members are currently using this approach with the target of reaching a total of 10 million people (or 2 million households) across the continent within the next four years using a committed partnership of service providers. This target is likely to be passed sooner: in 2004 alone, partners produced seed of over 120 improved bean varieties which reached 1.25 million households across 10 countries.

In the process, PABRA has already catalysed the signing of more than 60 collaboration agreements among local R&D partners (Government organisations, NGOs, CBOs and commercial seed companies) committed to reaching these targets. In some countries (such as Uganda for example), an emerging private seed sector has begun to work with the public sector and seed producers, at least for those varieties with large urban market demand. Across many countries, groups of small farmers are developing their own local seed enterprises. Again, PABRA support is proving crucial - for example, a series of technical manuals in bean seed production & marketing, has become one of the most popular items in CIAT’s publications list for Africa, and have already been published in 8 African languages, through collaboration with NARS and with NGOs.

PABRA Member Countries