$6.7m set aside to fight striga – IITA

This was disclosed by the head of Kano office of the IITA, Alpha Yaya Kamara, during the integrated striga management meeting held in Kano IITA secretariat.He said that the funding was made available to the institute by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, adding that the 4-year project has been formulating and deploying, through strategic […]

This was disclosed by the head of Kano office of the IITA, Alpha Yaya Kamara, during the integrated striga management meeting held in Kano IITA secretariat.
He said that the funding was made available to the institute by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, adding that the 4-year project has been formulating and deploying, through strategic partnerships, an integrated approach for managing striga, while improving soil fertility and reducing the striga seed bank for sustainable increases in crop yields.
He added that the stakeholder’s meeting will review the status of project
deliverables, identify gaps in project implementation, and plan for the year ahead.
Kamara stressed that the collaborative project aimed to achieve sustainable striga control to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Nigeria and Kenya by implementing an integrated striga threat reduction strategy that promotes scientifically proven technologies on smallholder farmers’ fields.
Reviewing the project’s achievement, the Project Manager of the
Integrated Striga Management in Africa (ISMA), Dr. Mel Oluoch, stated that striga and alectra problems were becoming acute in Sub-Saharan Africa as a result of the increasing population, leading to intensified farming, shortening of the fallow period, deteriorating soil fertility, and expansion of production land into marginal areas with little use of external inputs.