4 November 2011
No. 1491
(L to R) ICRISAT Regional Director for WCA Farid Waliyar with Mali’s Minister of Agriculture, Dr Agathan Ag Alhassane and Deputy Director of IER, Dr Boureima Dembele during their meeting in Mali.
Pursuing purposeful partnership
Mali Minister of Agriculture affirms support to ICRISAT “Technology transfer will remain crucial to Mali’s sustainable and inclusive agricultural growth. Along this, we expect ICRISAT to continue its support to smallholder farmers and agro-dealers within the region, particularly in terms of introducing innovative solutions to agricultural production and marketing,” said Mali’s Minister of Agriculture, Dr Agathan Ag Alhassane, in a meeting with Regional Director for West and Central Africa (WCA) Farid Waliyar at the Cité Administrative du Mali on 28 October.
D
iscussions during the meeting, which was also attended by Dr Boureima Dembele, Deputy Director of the Institut d’Economie Rurale (IER), one of ICRISAT’s key partners in Mali, focused on agricultural research programs and climate change adaptation measures in WCA, particularly in Mali. Explaining the Institute’s plans for Niger, Mali and Nigeria, F Waliyar took the opportunity to describe ICRISAT’s inclusive market-oriented development
(IMOD) strategy and how its benefits would enable smallholder farmers in Africa and their families to go beyond subsistence farming to produce surpluses that can be stored and sold to markets. He also spelled out how ICRISAT’s systems and partnership approaches would ensure better livelihoods for the poor in the region. Since WCA has the highest proportion of subsistence-oriented smallholder farm households to page 2 ...4