Chrispus Oduori has a lot of work to do. When he graduated from the African Center for Crop Improvement (ACCI) this year, he became the first plant breeder in all of Africa to receive a Ph.D in finger millet, an indigenous grain eaten by more than 100 million Africans.
For the past several decades, funders and scientists have focused on a few crops—including maize, wheat, and rice—despite the fact that people in Africa depend on dozens of different crops. There has been no significant improvement in finger millet productivity since the 1960s. As a result, farmers who grow finger millet struggle with low yields and a number of pests and diseases that plague their crops.
Chrispus is one of nearly 90 students whose advanced degrees related to crop science have been sponsored by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). The goal of the program is to enable African students to contribute their unique passion and perspective to agriculture on the continent.
When Chrispus was a child, he would watch his mother grind finger millet into flour, and then mix and cook it into a porridge called ugali. Being able to help others grow more and better finger millet has been his goal for years. Now he has that chance. “When I heard that I’d received the scholarship to study plant breeding at ACCI, it was like a dream come true. It was like throwing a fish into water.” Chrispus is now putting his training to use at the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), where he has already immersed himself in valuable work.
The district of Teso, in western Kenya, is next door to the Busia, where Chrispus was raised. He’s familiar with the roads, speaks the language, and knows the people. On his way to meet one of the 16 farmer groups he sees each month, Chrispus pulls the car to the side of the rutted red road. About a hundred yards back from the road is a small hut with a thatched roof. Out front are two elderly farmers, several thin children, and a small plot of finger millet.
Chrispus points to the plants, which are bunched and small; the farmers have “broadcasted,” or scattered their seeds across their small plot. Without enough space between them, the plants don’t get enough nutrients and are hard to keep free of weeds. Chrispus estimates that the simple act of planting in rows instead of broadcasting their seeds would help these farmers increase their productivity by 25 percent.
This is just a small step on the road to productivity but it represents progress. The expected yield of a finger millet farmer in Kenya is between 500 and 700 kilograms per hectare. On the fields where Chrispus conducts his research, using improved seeds and fertilizer, he produces between 2,500 and 3,000 kilograms per hectare.
Farther down the road is a demonstration field where Chrispus is sharing the findings of his doctoral thesis with a group of farmers, many of whom never made it past primary school. His findings are a set of finger millet seeds with higher yields and resistance to blast disease and Striga weed, two major problems. The farmers have planted a row of the seeds they currently use in the middle of the field. On either side, they’ve planted two rows of the improved seeds Chrispus has developed. The farmers’ seeds have barely begun to sprout. Chrispus’ seeds are green and growing vigorously. The value of his education—AGRA’s investment—is clear as day.
Many farmers in town have already planted Chrispus’ seeds in order to help him test and improve them before distributing them more broadly. Members of two local farmer organizations sit on wooden pews in a stone church, testifying to the way their lives have changed since planting the new seeds. One member, Gertrude Naududu, says that last year, with the earnings from her finger millet harvest, “I bought myself an oxen. Now I have an ox plow.” Another member, Constancia Barraza, proudly declares that “finger millet helped me build my house.”
But do these individual benefits add up to something broader for the community? When asked, the members shake their heads vigorously and shout out answers. Beatrice Shiundu Etyang, the chairwoman of the farmer groups, steps in to sum up their response: “It has improved the nutrition status of the people. It has empowered us. It has helped us to pay school fees for our children. It has helped us to sustain ourselves. The KARI teams showed us how to make buns, cakes, and chapattis, [which] we go and sell during market days.”
A member named Ruth Ekasiba stands up to add a point. Chrispus and KARI “have really given us education. And we really pray that they continue to educate us so that we may not go back to poverty.”
Beatrice agrees: “When we started learning, we learned that we had been left behind. [KARI’s] workshops have developed us. Even those of us who cannot read, when the workshops come, we say, ‘You have to go and bring us the information.’”
Education, whether at the Ph.D level or a more basic one, is a powerful thing.
Next: Developing Seeds to Meet the Needs of Local Farmers