Brief history of IPGRi in SSA

Brief history of IPGRI in sub-Saharan Africa

The first IPGRI (then IBPGR-International Board for Plant Genetic Resources) office was established in West Africa in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in 1981. It was later moved to Niamey, Niger in l987 and given responsibility for West and Central Africa, with a single scientist. The Nairobi office was established in 1982 with, at that time, responsibility for Eastern and Southern Africa. One scientist also originally ran it. At this time IPGRI (IBPGR) was a field programme of the FAO and the initial emphasis of the work in sub-Saharan Africa was assistance to national programme in procurement and development of conservation facilities; collection of germplasm through both local and international missions and training of national programme staff in plant genetic resources conservation and use mainly at the University of Birmingham through fellowships provided by UNEP and FAO. Because of the urgent need to rescue germplasm from a multiplicity of threats IBPGR (IPGRI) located one collector in the LAC region and was based at IRAZ in Burundi while another collector was based in Harare Zimbabwe to facilitate germplasm collection in the Southern Africa region. After an internal re-organisation and the establishment of IPGRI as an independent CGIAR institute, the sub-Saharan Africa Group was established, with a main office in Nairobi. The office had four staff members (2 IRS and 2 LRS) and a sub-office for West and Central Africa in Niamey with two staff members (1 IRS and 1 LRS, the latter on a special project). This latter office was relocated to Cotonou, Benin in June 1996.

IBPGR/IPGRI has played a major role in the region in encouraging and supporting the establishment of co-ordinated national programmes. A catalytic approach has been used, whereby IBPGR/IPGRI has facilitated the establishment of necessary links between institutions at the national level, though in many cases it has also initiated and implemented specific activities. The main tool used has been the national PGR workshop. Since the first in Kenya in 1987, all countries in Eastern and Southern Africa and an increasing number of countries in West and Central Africa have now held such workshops. IBPGR/IPGRI has contributed to the development and strengthening of national programmes by the provision of scientific and technical guidance. This has taken the form of personal visits, workshops on specific topics and joint activities as well as the provision of scientific literature such as descriptors lists, the documentation manual and software, crop directories and a regional PGR newsletter. IPGRI has also assisted countries in the region to develop capacities for conservation of PGR by providing training. Increasingly, this has been in the form of national and regional training courses and also through training of trainers, in order to strengthen the capacity of local institutions to develop and conduct training in PGR conservation and use. Basic conservation equipment has been provided on occasion.

Considerable effort has also been expended in fostering collaboration among national programmes at the sub-regional level. In this regard, the establishment of the SADC Plant Genetic Resources Centre in Lusaka and the eventual formulation of a twenty-year programme is an important landmark in IBPGR/IPGRI’s work in the region. Another important set of landmarks in this context has been the series of ICPPGR sub-regional meetings organised by the SSA Group in 1995, the culmination of a country-driven process of assessment of PGR activities and planning for the future.

At the continental level, two important milestones have been meetings held in Nairobi and organised by IBPGR: the 1988 “International Conference on Crop Genetic Resources of Africa” (in collaboration with UNEP, IITA and CNR) and the 1992 meeting on “Safeguarding the Genetic Basis of Africa’s Traditional Crops” (in collaboration with CTA). These meetings gave an opportunity for region-wide priority setting and planning, something which will now be taken up by the follow-up to the ICPPGR process and the implementation of the Global Plan of Action (GPA) that was developed in Leipzig in 1996 as a result of this process.

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