ABUJA – The African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) says it has spent 110 million dollars (about N19 billion) on agricultural research in West Africa in the last 10 years.
Prof. Prince Addae, the West Africa Representative of the foundation, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in an interview in Abuja on Tuesday that Nigeria would benefit directly from three of the research projects.
“AATF’s projects in West Africa include the Pod Borer Resistant cowpea (PBR), Newest Rice, and the Cassava Mechanisation Project.
“We normally combine all budgets for West Africa projects which are about 10 and we have spent almost 110 million dollars in the last 10 years.
“ Technology is always being developed; we have had insecticides for a long time and this technology has come; all along, we are developing technologies to combat these insects.”
He said that the AATF focuses more on those needs that were beyond the farmer and needed funding in form of research efforts.
Addae said that the Pod Borer Resistant cowpea (beans) was one of the major research products that would be released by 2017 to farmers in Nigeria, Ghana Burkina Faso and Malawi.
According to Addae, the research was necessitated by the fact that the pod borer, also known as `Maruca’, had continuously become resistant to pesticides and cost the farmer huge resources and yield loss.
He said that it was in realisation of that fact that the Maruca cost farmers 80 per cent yield loss, that the AATF took up the research to aid farmers in the West African countries. (NAN)
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