Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) | < Sub-Saharan Africa

See also:
- SECID Awarded a €1 Million Food Security Project Funded by the EU
- Emergency Response to the Outbreak of the Cassava Mosaic Disease
   Phase II
- Reintegration, Conservation and Community Recovery Project (RE-COMMIT)
- Agricultural Economic Grants
- Developing Community Driven Value Chain for Agricultural Products
- Commodity Chain Analysis for Coffee and Cacao
- Rehabilitation of the Lokutu Oil Palm Plantation
- Agricultural Economics & Outreach Project II (RAV II)
- Applied Agricultural Research and Outreach Project I


Emergency Response to the Outbreak of the Cassava Mosaic Disease
Funding source: USDA - Food or Progress/USAID

The overall goal of this project is to provide local communities with the means to
address and sustainably resolve the threat to their food security caused by the
outbreak of the Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD) in the DRC. International Institute
for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and SECID have joined together to address this
emergency situation by providing collaborative research and extension technical
assistance. Our primary mission is to quickly provide disease-resistant cassava
planting material to farmers.

As the primary center for cassava research in Africa, IITA offers its significant
resources to provide germplasm identification of CMD-resistant varieties of cassava
already available in the DRC, and to jointly provide tissue culture development with
SECID. Technical assistance includes developing strategies for improved cassava
crop protection, as well as plant quarantine methodologies that meet international
standards. Other key project components include: monitoring and evaluation,
stakeholder analysis, and baseline survey.

Since startup, project staff have: procured four promising improved varieties that
were tolerant to the cassava mosaic disease, planted more than 170 ha of rapid multiplication fields and nearly 200 ha of cassava production fields, and benefited
more than 10,000 community members.