IITA Bulletin 2343

The IITA

CGIAR

No. 2343

5–9 September 2016

Researchers make a case to Uganda parliamentarians on gender-responsive policies on climate change and food security

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espite women’s significant contribution to agricultural production and food security in Uganda, gender issues are not well articulated in agriculture-related policies and implementation strategies.

Women and girls face discrimination and inequalities in critical areas such as access to, ownership, and control of production resources such as land, credit, and extension services, and this in turn diminishes their capacity to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

A team of researchers from IITA and partners therefore engaged parliamentarians, permanent secretaries, commissioners, and civil society organizations in a discussion on the interaction between gender, climate change, and food security. This was at a breakfast meeting with the newly elected members of the 10th Parliament on 30 August.

The team, led by Piet van Asten, country representative of IITA–Uganda, shared the findings of the Gender

and Policy Analysis research that had analyzed various policies addressing climate change and food security in the country and had identified clear gaps in addressing the concerns of women. The study reviewed over 20 policy documents in the country from national down to district level.

“Gender issues are not well articulated in most agriculture-related policies and implementation strategies. And for those that include gender issues, they lack a clear road map for implementation and implementation budgets. At district and lower levels, gender integration in extension delivery is further constrained by limited skills for conducting gender analysis and articulating identified needs and opportunities,” said Edidah Ampaire, IITA delegate and coordinator for the Policy Action on Climate Change Adaptation (PACCA), a project of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) led by IITA.

IITA’s Edidah Ampaire highlight’s the role of women in climate change adaptation issues.

According to Edidah, the policies failed to pay adequate attention to structural gender constraints such as gendered power dynamics and access and ownership to important resources―women do not own land and this limits their access to credit.

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Celebrating achievements in the IITA Year of Open Access

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he Institute is making significant progress towards ensuring compliance to adopting Open Access. As a direct outcome of implementing Open Access, a

new institutional repository was introduced in 2015 called CG Space. It is a shared DSpace implementation hosted by the International Livestock Research Institute.

CG Space stores not only scholarly publication data (journal articles, books, etc.) but also other textual and even multimedia content like reports, field protocols, pictures, posters, presentations, and the like. This repository fulfills all Open Access requirements, such as being permanently, unlimited accessible without a login and free of charge, with sufficient metadata and enabling other machines or websites to harvested content. It also comes with an easier and flexible search and browsing functionality, shows use statistics about views and downloads, gives useful metadata, and all this consistently across all 8 CGIAR Centers, 7 CRPs, 4 CGIAR programs, and 9 other CG Space partners.

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www.iita.org

Furthermore, the IITA Cassava Breeding Program developed an innovative method to securely capture cassava field data by using electronic field book applications in tablets, which capture data in milliseconds.

A barcode reader in these tablets reads barcode labels that are generated and used, for example, for accurate and efficient plot identification.

The tablets are then connected to a multifunction platform called Cassavabase, which makes the collected data readily available in compliance with the Institute’s Open Access policy and can be used for downstream analysis.

The program uses Cassavabase as its primary data management tool for uploading both phenotyping and genotyping data.

These data are useful for implementing genomic selection and will improve accuracy in estimating breeding values and genetic gain for quantitative traits compared to traditional breeding methods. Currently, Cassavabase has over 1500 phenotyping trials with ~8 million phenotypic observations and ~2 billion genotypic data points with more than 400 registered users.

suite designed to help breeders conduct their routine activities more efficiently.

Developed by the Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP) based in IITA-Nairobi in Kenya, the BMS provides interconnected tools for breeding program management, data analysis, and decision support. It also provides a database that works seamlessly to manage pedigree information, phenotypic and molecular characterization as well as germplasm evaluation.

The Bioinformatics Unit of the Institute has also began using high-throughput sequencing--an emerging technology that allows for fast and inexpensive sequencing of a whole genome, which makes the process affordable to many researchers and lead to the production of large amounts of data. However, this technology demands high computer processing power to efficiently store and analyze large data sets.

IITA has been using these sequencing data for more than a year for gene discovery and genotyping to accelerate breeding cycles.

Currently, the unit holds more than 4 TB of compressed sequencing data from different crops. To visualize this amount of stored data: if just the text of this sequencing data is printed, the printout will cover about 300 km end-to-end. For large-scale data processing, the Bioinformatics Unit is equipped with upgraded computing power IITA has also developed and implemented consisting of 64 cores and combined 900 the Breeding Management System (BMS), gigabytes of RAM. The actual capacity a comprehensive and easy to use software is set up for the storage of 30 TB of data

and processing of 2 TB compressed data in a one data analysis process. This allows IITA to master large-scale genotyping, gene expression whole genome sequencing data for advanced research in plant genomics. This important capacity enables IITA researchers to increase the precision of correlating traits, also complex traits, to markers, which, in turn, contribute towards faster and more efficient crop breeding.

Work is now in progress to develop sister platforms: Musabase and Yambase arising from the success of Cassavabase.

IITA is also an active contributor to the development of CGIAR’s “Big Data Platform Project”. The envisaged data pool to be generated from this multi-CGIAR center platform could be used, for example, to directly feed agronomic information and advice to farmers through electronic or mobile technology-based means.

GeoNode is an Open Access repository for geodata. This repository, successfully implemented by the Spatial Lab, is specifically for data, ready for spatial analysis. It stores geodata in layers that can be individually compiled to maps, which can also be stored. It also contains map pictures, associated documents and proper metadata, all downloadable in various formats.

In the pipeline is the CKAN data repository.

This web-archive stores research data that does not fall under the other repositories mentioned earlier. A first test implementation is planned for early October.

Researchers make a case to Uganda parliamentarians on gender-responsive policies on climate change and food security Cont’d from page 1

There was also a lack of harmonization of approaches and implementation of plans to address gender issues across the different sectors.

“Gender was considered a cross-cutting issue in all the sectors which translated to it being no one’s responsibility and having no budget,” Edidah said.

While presenting the national perspective on gender and climate change, Hon. Winnie Masiko, the gender and climate change negotiator for Uganda at the The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), told legislators that there are no clear guidelines to incorporate gender in projects. She highlighted challenges

and opportunities for mainstreaming gender in climate change such as the forthcoming climate change bill.

“We need to develop a gender and climate change strategic plan,” she said.

Representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Water and Environment, and the Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development also made presentations on the strategies they had in place to address gender issues as well as the challenges encountered in their implementation.

The event enabled the new members of Parliament to understand the key issues they have to grapple with to improve the

food security in the country. It was also an important step towards inclusive and integral gender discussion at the climate change adaptation and mitigation negotiations currently occurring at the Parliamentary Forum on Climate Change, including discussions on the Uganda Climate Change Bill, the Biotechnology Bill, and more generally, the preparations for the upcoming negotiations at the COP22 in Morocco.

The meeting was organized by the Uganda Parliamentary Forum on Climate Change (PFCC) and Parliamentary Forum on Food Security, Population and Development (PFFSPD), in partnership with CCAFS-PACCA.

Announcements

IITA 50th Anniversary Kick-off Event: Lecture by IFAD President Kanayo Nwanze, IITA, Ibadan, Nigeria, 19 October.

First Regional Cocoa Symposium, IITA, Ibadan, Nigeria, 8–10 November. More details available here.

P4D (Partnerships for Delivery) Week, IITA, Ibadan, Nigeria, 21–25 November.

Commissioning of the AgriServe Building by AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina, IITA, Ibadan, Nigeria, 25 November.

7th International Nitrogen Initiative Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 4–8 December. More details available here.

IITA Bulletin 2343

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IITA builds capacity of NARS to conduct quantitative genetics and advanced plant breeding

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hirty three plant breeders from the national agricultural research systems (NARS) of eight African countries have undergone capacity building so they can competently take on the demands of advanced plant breeding using the latest technologies.

Through a training coordinated by Ismail Rabbi, IITA’s Molecular Geneticist/ Breeder and organized by IITA’s Capacity Development Office (CDO) in Ibadan, 5-9 September, breeders from the Gambia, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Uganda learned about Advanced Plant Breeding and Quantitative Genetics from Bruce Walsh, a renowned authority from the University of Arizona. The curriculum covered recent tools in Genetics and Statistics as well as Quantitative Trait Locus and Association Mapping.

Bruce Walsh from the University of Arizona: I have a real passion for teaching students in Africa.

as a contribution towards creating opportunities for the skills of several African plant breeders to be improved.

This, we believe, will assist us in our mission to tackle the challenges facing African agriculture and food security,” Walsh described the training as Rabbi said. “challenging but essential”. He added “I have a real passion for teaching students Zoumana Bamba, Head, CDO, also and I really enjoy teaching in Africa. The said that the researchers need to be students actively participate and are keen keep abreast of developments in the challenging world of plant breeding. about learning”.

“This course is vital for breeders…IITA “The constantly changing environment hopes to regularize this training annually and new knowledge and technologies in

plant breeding require that IITA invests in continuing professional development for scientists. IITA is investing to keep scientists abreast of new knowledge, techniques, and developments and for them to be keenly aware of the changing landscape of agricultural research to improve IITA’s research-for-development agenda”.

Stanley Nwachukwu, IITA Training Manager, said “This is a great training from IITA; participants should use the opportunity and the acquired skills efficiently and come out better after this training,” he said.

IITA trains staff on financial planning, management, and reporting

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elected budget handlers and finance controllers across IITA hubs in Africa converged in Ibadan for a 3-day workshop, 29-31 August, to enhance their knowledge on acceptable modes of using and managing the financial resources of the Institute. The training, tagged “Financial Planning, Management and Reporting,” was organized by the Capacity Development Office in partnership with the

Finance Office, and brought together IITA staff from Kenya, Nigeria (Ibadan, Onne, and Kano), Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Uganda. The workshop aimed to improve the effectiveness of staff in financial and project management, and keep them abreast of IITA procedures and practices in financial management and reporting.

Welcoming the participants, Kenton Dashiell, Deputy Director General, Partnerships for Delivery, urged the participants see the training as an opportunity to learn and improve their financial competencies in project delivery. “People should be able to do something differently after this training,” Dashiell stated.

Director of Finance, Omoshalewa Sholola, explained the training objectives and their importance, stressing the issue of fraud prevention. He encouraged the participants to be honest and to desist from fraudulent practices, reminding them of the zero tolerance policy for fraud at IITA.

Sholola explaining to participants the training objectives, stressing the importance of IITA’s zero tolerance policy for fraud.

IITA Bulletin 2343

“Avoid fraudulent practices at all levels… the issue of fraud should not occur anywhere

in IITA. Management has zero tolerance for fraud, and where we are able to achieve some reduction in waste and fraud will go a long way to promote IITA’s good reputation and image to the outside world,” he said.

Zoumana Bamba, Head, CDO, also encouraged the participants to make maximum use of their training time, and use the acquired knowledge in their individual offices. “When it comes to project management, finance is one of the main areas of focus. Investing in improving the skills of our staff is critical to ensure we deliver effectively in our projects and mandate,” Bamba said.

The training covered all the financial policies, procedures, and practices of IITA. The course was very interactive and participants expressed their gratitude to the training organizers. The participants also agreed that there was an immense need to regularly train project managers and budget officers across all hubs, to ensure that the best financial management practices are imbibed. Certificates were issued to the participants at the end of the course.

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IITA Southern Africa Hub holds retreat, highlights unity in R4D

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ore than 70 staff from Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique―country stations comprising the IITA Southern Africa Hub― converged on the picturesque seaside town of Nacala in Nampula Province, Mozambique, for the Hub’s annual retreat, which was held 22-26 August at the Thamole Lodge and Resort.

Officially opening the retreat, David Chikoye, IITA Regional Director for Southern Africa, summed up the spirit of the activity in a single phrase: “IITA is one.”

“Regardless of where you are based, we are all part of the same IITA family. If we Chikoye discussing the proceedings of the 2014 SA Hub retreat. are to attain our mission and succeed as Africa’s premier agricultural research goal of collectively pushing forward our institution, we should move together as R4D mandate in the region as IITA. And one family, as one multidisciplinary team.” of course, have a little bit of fun while doing so,” he added with a smile.

“This is why we are here this week, to let Boahen, IITA Country each other know what we are doing and Steve find ways to help each other with the end Representative to Mozambique and

Deputy Regional Director for Southern Africa, welcomed the group to the country. “At the close of our last Hub retreat in Malawi in 2014, Mozambique was chosen as the host of the next retreat. With the impressive showing of IITA-Malawi as host, we were challenged to raise the bar this year. I assure all of you that you will not be disappointed.

This will be the most productive retreat that we have ever had.”

During the retreat, participants deliberated to refine the SA Regional Strategy and discussed the implications of the revised institutional organizational structure. SA Hub-based scientists also made presentations about their projects and initiatives within the thematic areas of socioeconomics and agribusiness, crop improvement and biotechnology, food science and nutrition, plant health management, natural resource management, and youth-inagriculture. Posters complemented the presentations, and special sessions on improving publications and potential areas for proposal development were also held.

R4D support staff also presented their activities and plans in the areas of station/ Hub administration and finance, human resources, infrastructure development, communication, and ICT. Additionally, staff from IITA-Ibadan facilitated special workshops on the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation-TAAT (Chrys Akem) and ENABLE Youth (Evelyn Ohanwusi) via webinar, project administration (Kayode Awobajo, Project Administration Office), proposal development (Muyiwa Anthony Peters, Proposal Development Office), human resource policies (Lilian Mendoza, Human Resource Services), and presentation skills improvement and delivery (Katherine Lopez, Communication Office).

To round-off the week-long retreat, participants held a team building exercise which was facilitated by Mendoza, Helen Adeniji, and Akinyemi Akinsoji of HRS. The fun-filled event was held along a stretch of white, sandy beach fronting the turquoise-blue waters of the Indian Ocean.

Retreat participants during the HR-led group dynamics and team building exercise.

IITA Bulletin 2343

The next SA Hub retreat will be held in Livingstone, Zambia.

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