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Can New African Super Rice Defeat Hunger?

Can New African Super Rice Defeat Hunger?

Despite the rudimentary tools of the family farms and seemingly limited growing conditions in sub-Saharan Africa, there is a concerted effort to increase rice production.

“Rice is very important. Rice is a food that really feeds the poor; it’s cheap, it has good calories and it’s definitely a staple in West Africa,” Dr. Wing told AFKInsider.

“Rice for the World”

With United Nations predictions that the world’s population will increase to more than 9 billion people – many who will be living in regions with scarce food access – by the year 2050, some feel a new African “super rice” may be part of the solution.

In fact, the upcoming Oct. 27-Nov. 1 International Rice Congress in Bangkok has the theme of “Rice for the World.”

That event is organized by the International Rice Research Institute which conducted training in the latest rice production technologies July 18 to August 15 in the Philippines for researchers from  Benin, Burkina Faso, Congo, Cote d’ Ivoire, Kenya, Guinea, Mali, Tanzania, and Togo.

The Institute had previously done training for the other Coalition for African Rice Development member countries of Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda in collaboration with – and funded by – the Japan International Cooperation Agency.

Another indication that rice may be on the verge of a major push in Africa came in April, when the organization AfricaRice announced in that its 2014-2020 Development Plan includes returning its headquarters to Côte d’Ivoire and establishing three Regional Centers: The West Africa Regional Center in Senegal; East and Southern Africa Regional Center in Tanzania; and a yet to be determined Central Africa Regional Center – each focusing on specific countries, including Madagascar, Uganda, Benin, Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

But expanding rice cultivation in some of these sub-Sahara African countries to help feed an ever-growing population will be no small feat.

“They do grow rice in these areas,” Dr. Wing told AFKInsider. “It’s basically more of a transplant of rice from West Africa or Asia into these regions and they must have enough water to be able to support it.”

According to UCLA’s Carney, in response to the 2008 global rice crisis, and to concern with climate change and the global financial crisis, new forms of investment are underway to secure food production by leasing wetlands of sub-Saharan Africa.

“Rice cultivation is expanding on the wetlands of Mali through land leasing to foreign sovereign wealth funds and investment groups. Some similar projects are occurring in Sudan and the Tanzania coast, as well,” Carney told AFKInsider.

But there remain logistical issues to this expansion.

“Where there are roads and a market infrastructure, smallholder rice growers can make a living but this is often not the case,” Carney told AFKInsider. “There is an emphasis on rice self-sufficiency by growers, however, which buffers producers a bit from spikes in rice prices.”

“But then you have to store it, and there’s a lot of problems with storage of surplus crops all through Africa,” Wing told AFKInsider.

Despite these obstacles, the new strains of African super rice being developed could be a big plus in the battle against both hunger and poverty in some regions.

“Smallholder rice growers hold much promise for Africa, which has become a major importer of the grain. Especially in urban areas and even when countries are traditionally rice growing nations like the Gambia,” Carney told AFKInsider.