ICRISAT West and Central Africa Highlights 2017: Working in Partnership with Governments to Achieve National Goals

This annual report is an overview of the major achievements in improving the livelihoods of farmers who are end users of the results of our research. The report highlights how our scientific interventions have increased domestic food supply and created jobs in Mali. It takes you through our major findings that have reduced malnutrition and land degradation in Niger. In Ghana and Burkina Faso, the interventions are helping to improve smallholder farming. The last section throws light on how ICRISAT together with its partners has succeeded in increasing community resilience to climate change with the use of climate information services and decision support tools in Senegal. Farmers tell their stories best. Their perspective motivates us to serve them better; to help them tackle the vagaries of nature and the consequences of hunger, poverty, malnutrition and environmental degradation. The report fleshes out farmer stories from projects such as Harnessing Opportunities for Productivity Enhancement (HOPE II), Tropical Legumes (TL III), the Africa RISING Large-scale Diffusion of Technologies for Sorghum and Millet Systems (ARDT SMS), and the Increasing Groundnut Productivity of Smallholder Farmers in Ghana, Mali and Nigeria and many more project interventions in West and Central Africa. A major successful initiative in 2017 was the launch of a Smart Food campaign in the region. Millet, sorghum and groundnut were promoted as crops that are good for the consumer, the planet and the farmer. The report concludes with an overview of the driving force behind this research – the workforce in the region, and its support to building the capacity of stakeholders and partners in agricultural research for development in West and Central Africa