Collaborative seed system partnerships in Africa: debates and considerations for transformative impact

Abstract

International agricultural initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa have evolved over time to develop and disseminate crop varieties that deliver performance on yield, nutrition and climate resilience. Many of these activities are part of the New Green Revolution for Africa (GR4A), which promotes demand-oriented programs that pay attention to women and marginalized households that have not previously benefited from earlier Green Revolution initiatives. At the same time, critics view the GR4A as enabling the commercial formalization of seed systems in ways that marginalize smallholder farmers and dispose of their agency in agricultural decision-making. This paper presents research findings from an international collaborative rice partnership in Kenya to showcase the nature and impact of its activities. The study findings demonstrate how the promotion of Komboka rice variety (IR05N221) garnered success through concerted efforts to foster horizontal partnerships, based on joint decision-making and mutual respect with a diversity of key national actors, including farmer organizations. The research also found that Komboka is appreciated by women for household consumption in Kirinyaga and presents a viable alternative in Tana River where it appears to be the only rice variety that is adapted to local agro-ecological conditions. Yet, there remain gaps in realizing wider benefits from promising crop technologies such as Komboka, particularly for women rice farmers. Addressing some of these constraints would require fostering more context-sensitive and gender-responsive approaches that broaden perspectives around seed systems’ performance, to incorporate indicators, such as capacity of seed technologies to reach, benefit and empower different groups of women and men farmers when determining the success of seed system interventions.