Boosting Incomes through Improved Access to Banana and Orange-Fleshed Sweet Potato Plant Materials

GKI is proud to announce the release of the LINK (Learning and Innovation Network for Knowledge and Solutions) Uganda Context Analysis, which fits into a larger initiative to forge, optimize, and sustain an international network aimed at solving challenges in propagating and distributing plant materials in rural Uganda.  The goals of this Context Analysis are twofold: (1) to help the LINK Winner better understand the socio-economic and business context surrounding this challenge, and (2) to help newcomers to the budding LINK Uganda network quickly understand the features of the prevailing innovation system that bear on their collective efforts toward a solution.  The rationale for this analysis is to establish a shared understanding of the contextual features—national, sectoral, institutional, and systemic—that affect solutions to the LINK Uganda challenge.

To understand the challenges and opportunities that exist in developing and distributing improved plant material for banana and orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP), it is essential to investigate the innovation system of Uganda—as noted above—but also to buttress this innovation systems analysis with analyses of the value chains for banana and OFSP in Uganda.  Accordingly, this document combines a condensed treatment of the enabling environment for innovation on this challenge, the actors important to agriculture (and specifically tissue culture) development, as well as detail on how they interact, and what possible outcomes to this challenge might look like.  These value chain analyses specifically are designed to provide a coherent picture of the strengths and weaknesses of banana and OFSP production.  Check out the full Context Analysis here!

Biotechnology: An answer to food insecurity and malnutrition?

In Uganda, food insecurity and malnutrition pose enormous challenges.  Large proportions of rural Ugandans face food insecurity, and nearly half of Uganda’s population suffers from malnourishment.  Compounding this challenge, up to 80% of Uganda’s main staple crop of bananas have been destroyed by disease over the past decade.  Sweet potato, which in its orange fleshed variety can fight malnutrition due to its high concentration of iron and vitamin A, suffers from a number of diseases, and has also failed to reach many Ugandans.

BioCrops Uganda Ltd., a small firm led by Dr. Geofrey Arinaitwe and winner of the Global Knowledge Initiative’s LINK (Learning and Innovation Network for Knowledge and Solutions) program, uses biotechnology to take on these challenges by expanding access to clean banana and orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) tissue culture planting materials.  Tissue Culture (TC) planting material, which is free of disease and used to propagate banana and OFSP—can not only slow or even halt the spread of banana diseases, but can also encourage the uptake of OFSP through healthier, more productive plants.

In April 2015, building off of a year of work with BioCrops to clarify the specific challenges that need to be addressed to scale TC across Uganda, GKI returned to Uganda with two international experts to launch a LINK problem solving network.

Developing networks and innovations for food security and nutrition

For two weeks in April, GKI worked with the BioCrops team to develop strategies to improve distribution of planting materials, increase capacity along the value chain, improve productivity in the lab, and boost farmer

uptake of TC planting materials. Based on these goals, GKI had identified two key experts to begin building the BioCrops LINK network.  Dr. Nina Fedoroff, former Science and Technology advisor to the US Secretary of State, is a biotechnologist with great experience in lab techniques and Mr. Rami Alsouqi, an agri-business expert based in the Netherlands, has extensive experience in propagating and distributing planting material.  Both joined GKI’s team in Uganda.

GKI designed and executed a week-long training aimed at identifying specific TC solutions and determining how the team could effectively work together to solve problems.  Fedoroff and Alsouqi joined this facilitated training, providing both practical and strategic advice and resources.  For example, over the course of two days at the BioCrops lab, Alsouqi identified over 20 opportunities for process improvements.  Together, the group charted those interventions that the BioCrops team could take on in the short- and long-term, and began identifying how they might bring new resources and partners into their nascent network.  A first step to activating this network: bringing together high-level actors from the Ugandan agricultural sector to share BioCrops’ work and plans, and work to better understand other actors’ needs.

During a day-long workshop on April 28 hosted at the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (UNCST) in Kampala, Uganda, GKI convened stakeholders including USAID, the World Bank, HarvestPlus, and others to (1) share BioCrops’ work in developing and refining potential solutions to TC planting material challenges, (2) begin a dialogue on specific challenge areas identified as ripe for partnership, and (3) identify new ways to collaborate within Uganda’s innovation system.  In a facilitated working session, participants developed 76 possible innovations to address these challenges, selecting eight top innovations to further explore.  By the end of the workshop, the participants had offered 86 resources and partners needed for these innovations to deliver impact.  Find an after action report detailing the outputs and outcomes of that convening here.

Since these meetings, the BioCrops team has moved forward on a number of initiatives such as identifying partners to test LED lights for growing tissue culture plantlets, optimizing growing in screen houses, and communicating with partners identified at the UNCST meeting. Moving forward, GKI and BioCrops will work together with international partners to spur action among new collaborations developed at the April workshop, identify new partners to support BioCrops’ work in Uganda, and monitor the network’s growth and optimization. GKI is thrilled to continue working with BioCrops and the expanding network of partners to address challenges across the banana and sweet potato value chains and to improve food / nutritional security across Uganda.

Sparked by France’s passage of a recent law making it illegal for supermarkets to waste food, Al Jazeera produced a 30 minute piece on an issue central to GKI’s work on innovation for global development:   food loss. France’s bold new law forces stores to donate unsold food to charities or animal feed instead of discarding it. GKI’s co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Sara Farley appeared live on Al Jazeera’s television program The Stream to discuss food waste and spoilage, balancing the French perspective with a global one infused by GKI’s work as a Social Innovation Lab on Food Waste and Spoilage for the Rockefeller Foundation. The panel, which included Corin Bell of the Real Junk Food Project, Jenny Rustemeyer of Just Eat It, and JoAnne Berkenkamp of the Natural Resources Defense Council, largely centered around food waste (food that reaches the market but is discarded and not consumed) in the developed world. Conversely, Sara brought a unique perspective to the panel by stressing the importance of reducing food loss during harvest and post-harvest storage, processing, handling, and preservation. With widespread ramifications, post-harvest food loss contributes to lost wages, lost food, and decreased health in the developing world.

“Globally, policy innovations that target farmers—as opposed to super markets alone—have a bigger impact on reducing post harvest lost,” Sara noted. “It’s a problem that reduces the income of 470 million farmers in Africa. We need to think holistically about food loss in a way that puts farmers centrally in the picture, together with consumers, policymakers, purchasers, and researchers. Many innovative initiatives in Africa are lighting the way for how these approaches can work.” One such innovation is Project Nurture, a Gates Foundation initiative to reduce food loss in the mango sector of Kenya led by TechnoServe and Coca Cola, both of whom participated in GKI’s Collaboration Colloquium, held in Nairobi, Kenya in February 2015 as part of GKI’s Social Innovation Lab on Food Waste and Spoilage initiative. Project Nurture is a great example of how a multi-sectoral approach can reduce loss and improve incomes. GKI was thrilled to be a part of this unique opportunity to draw more attention to the pressing global issue of food waste and spoilage and hopes to continue the discussion on the international stage!

The GKI team traveled to Kampala, Uganda in April, 2015 to work with The Uganda National Council of Science and Technology (UNCST) to train Ugandan researchers on key entrepreneurship skills for successfully launching ventures.

In back-to-back intensive trainings, GKI trained two cohorts on entrepreneurship tools such as value propositions, rapid prototyping, and “strategy shaping” – a tool for clarifying the resources, partners, and activities needed to reach specific outcomes.  Participants, who were applicants for a Ugandan government entrepreneurship fund, expressed their appreciation for tools they learned at the training.  One participant noted that “Right from the start, [GKI] helped us focus on the problem and find the solution.  By learning about value propositions, market segments, and strategy techniques, I was finally able to understand my solution in relation to the market/user.”

GKI and UNCST are long-term partners, having collaborated even before they signed a Memorandum of Understanding in 2013.  GKI looks forward to further engaging and building on its relationship with UNCST over the coming years.

Through our Learning and Innovation Network for Knowledge and Solutions (LINK)  programs and Social Innovation Labs, the Global Knowledge Initiative (GKI) actively supports top agricultural innovations that address issues of global food security. This past February, GKI COO Sara Farley participated as a judge in the Thought For Food (TFF) Global Summit in Lisbon, Portugal. At this annual competition, student entrepreneurs have the opportunity to hear from innovators from around the world and present projects that address food insecurity for the chance to win up to $10,000.

The 2015 TFF Global Summit featured creative and dynamic innovations from ten teams of finalists from Bangladesh, India, Sweden, Uganda, and more. Sara analyzed the Thought For Food finalists alongside a panel of six other judges: Puneet Ahira from Google[x], Dr. Joseph King from the Norman Borlaug Foundation, Nikolai Braun from Revolution Bioengineering, Gavin Armstrong from Lucky Iron Fish, Lorena Galvan from Jenlight, and the Kirchner Food Fellows. Continue reading →

For many people coffee is an important ritual in their daily routines—for others, coffee provides most of their income.  As the world’s second most traded commodity, after oil, coffee plays an integral role in many economies.  For countries in the so-called “bean belt” in Africa—Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo—coffee  accounts for a considerable portion of all agricultural exports; however, as the industry has matured over the past decades, an insect called the “antestia bug” has been linked to a potato taste defect that degrades the quality of the coffee, resulting in huge revenue losses in these countries.  Antestia bugs also destroy coffee cherries outright, causing some farms to lose up to 30% of coffee harvests.  In this context, Joseph Bigirimana and his team of researchers at the Rwanda Agriculture Board have taken a leading role in an international network taking on this critical challenge.

Since 2011, the Global Knowledge Initiative has worked in Rwandan coffee through its LINK (Learning and Innovation Network for Knowledge and Solutions) program, convening, training, and activating a global network based at University of Rwanda.  This network includes researchers, development practitioners, and businesses working together to combat the potato taste defect. To propel this network’s activities, GKI partnered with the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE) to organize a Potato Taste Challenge Prize, which they announced at the March 2014 Coffee Research Symposium in Kigali.

As the winner of the 2014 Potato Taste Challenge Prize, Bigirimana and research partners Dr. Dick Walyaro and Dr. Theodore Asiimwe set off with the nearly $20,000 USD prize to investigate whether pesticides such as pyrethroids could effectively mitigate and control antestia bug infestations, and potato taste more generally. They are especially interested in the efficacy of locally produced organic pesticides made from pyrethrum plants grown in Rwanda.

In the months since winning the Prize, Bigirimana and his team have collected data from 600 farms in Rwanda on antestia bug infestation, current pest management practices in use by farmers, and other data aimed at understanding what works in controlling antestia and clarifying the relationship between the insects and the potato taste defect. Following the field sampling, the team tested the efficacy of five different pyrethroid pesticides in the laboratory and has begun conducting field trials in light of the successful lab results. They hope that these field trials will clearly show how effective pesticide use and farmer support can limit the negative impacts of antestia bugs. Bigirimana and his team endeavor to leverage the network of researchers and businesses, and technical support provided by ACE and GKI to eliminate the threat of the potato taste defect to coffee in the Great Lakes region of Africa.

Contributed by: Srujana Penumetcha and Andrew Gerard

 

 

Since the devastating 1994 genocide, Rwanda has enjoyed rapid economic growth and social transformation. It now stands as a model of effective governance and economic planning for Africa. Much of this success derives from a commitment to building the capacity of Rwandans, as well as through forward-looking economic policies and investments in science, technology, and innovation (STI). To continue on this path of economic growth and to ensure that its benefits extend to all Rwandans, Rwandan policymakers recognize that they must remain vigilant about how they choose to invest Rwanda’s growing resources. To this end, GKI partnered with Rwanda’s Ministry of Education and the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to complete an evaluation of the implementation of Rwanda’s National STI Policy. Building off of this initial evaluation effort, which ended in August 2013, GKI has deepened its policy and strategy relationship with Rwanda’s government through two interconnected efforts: a Five-Year Strategic Plan and an STI Policy Implementation Strategy. Continue reading →

Energized to tackle poverty in the Kamwenge district of Uganda, LINK Finalists Dr. Fredrick Tumwine and Dr. Frank Mugagga of Makerere University joined team members Jeniffer Tumwine of Kyabanswa Rural Integrated Farming Systems (KRIFS) and Mr. George Tunanukye of Bee Keepers Cooperative Savings and Credit Society (KABECOS) in Kyabanswa Village in mid-August. With approximately 65% of the Ugandan population living on less than $2 a day, effective poverty reduction mechanisms are critical to national economic development. The LINK Finalist team is motivated to leverage innovative bee farming techniques to raise household incomes in the Kamwenge district, which features one of the highest poverty rates in Uganda. As bee farming enterprises represent a lucrative and relatively low-cost venture for generating income, the LINK Finalist team hopes to elicit enthusiasm and openness to innovative and integrative approaches to poverty reduction among community members. Continue reading →

If GKI had a 2014 “back to school” reading list, this would be it. Take a look at some of the interesting, inspiring, and provocative books and articles our staff has been reading lately.  We’d also love to hear about the best things you’ve read this month, or what you’re looking forward to reading next!  Continue reading →

The Green Revolution saved billions of people on the brink of starvation. Yet, nearly 50 years later, 1 in 8 individuals in the world are still hungry. We know the right tools and technologies for maximizing agricultural productivity, so where is the missing link?

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the most food insecure region in the world, crop yields are actually sufficient to feed most of the population. However, from the moment crops are harvested until they—in theory—reach market, up to 50% are lost or spoiled.   This staggering waste carries high stakes for the food and nutritional security of millions of Africans. To mitigate post harvest loss in Africa, The Rockefeller Foundation created its Food Waste and Spoilage initiative. Through this initiative, the foundation seeks to ensure that two million African smallholder farmers have greater income and economic opportunities, improved resilience, and increased food and nutritional security through reduced post harvest loss in food crop value chains by 2020.

Named a Global Engagement Network Social Innovation Lab in November, 2013, the Global Knowledge Initiative (GKI) was chosen to facilitate this year-long, four-phase process that consists of: (1) framing the Food Waste and Spoilage Challenge as understood by a variety of agricultural value chain actors across the world, (2) assessing the resources available and needed globally to address the challenge, (3) envisioning possible solutions meriting further investigation, and (4) connecting key stakeholders and resources involved in bringing the highest potential solutions to scale.

GKI completed phases one and two with the input and expertise of a diverse set of agriculture value chain stakeholders. From November, 2013 until January, 2014, GKI undertook a six country wide problem framing exercise to map opportunities and barriers to reducing post harvest loss in Africa. Then, from among the opportunities prioritized by participating experts, GKI identified ten opportunities warranting further investigation. In phase three of this process, GKI held a “Solutions Visioning” high-level workshop that brought together a diverse group of participants hailing from a variety of sectors including Africa-based exporters, global standards companies, local-level non-profit organizations, foundations, consulting firms, financial institutions, and more. Set against the backdrop of the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association and Corporate Council on Africa World Form 2014, in Cape Town, South Africa, these international experts put their heads together to come up with a number of truly innovative and integrated strategies to reducing post harvest food loss along the value chain. Focused on accessible financing mechanisms, improved distribution channels, better access to market information, and more, the workshop was a powerful incubator for solution design. 

For example, one group developed an innovative new twist to the Farmer-Based Organization: FBO 2.0.  Specifically focused on boosting the selling power and market access of FBOs, this group proposed a new professionalized model that would include a Production Manager, Steering Committee, and Sales Manager.  Moreover, the FBO 2.0 would hire traders / middlemen, capitalizing on resources that are usually exogenous to the system.  Serving as a dynamic agro-industry, the FBO 2.0 would fill a critical gap by connecting smallholder farmers to market.

To learn more about these exciting strategies, please read the Solutions Visioning After Action Report. Additionally, stay tuned to learn more about how these tools and approaches will influence the fourth and final phase of the innovation lab: the Collaboration Colloquium.