South Africa

Since 1983 ACIAR has completed over 40 projects in southern Africa. Benefits to date have included the empowerment of individuals and farmer groups to market and receive a fair price for their cattle, vaccines for Newcastle disease in chickens in several countries, a tick-resistance diagnostic test and a tick-fever vaccine, selection of Australian trees for difficult sites, identification of low-input fertiliser strategies for crops in risky environments, and demonstration that cattle breeds preferred by emerging farmers have growth potential that is equal to commercial breeds.

ACIAR has supported IARC projects through ILRI, ICRAF, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), ICRISAT and CIMMYT in a number of African countries. Australian technical knowledge and expertise is highly relevant because similar temperate, Mediterranean and subtropical production environments are found in both continents. Water constraints and soil management requirements are also frequently similar. Australia’s advanced research, extension and farm management systems experience, together with the capabilities of its formal tertiary agricultural education institutions, is relevant to human and institutional capacity building in a range of Sub-Saharan African countries.

The program is guided by the following principles:

• Research partnerships must be focused on delivery of benefits to small-scale African farmers.
• Projects will only be considered in areas where Australian agencies and scientists have a relevant skill base and comparative advantage.
• Project selection will recognise both the technological and yield gap challenges covering crops, soil, water, livestock and value chains.

The livestock subprogram is designed to develop crop–livestock systems capable of providing opportunities for smallholder farmers to meet market requirements and raise awareness of product quality, human nutrition and sustainability imperatives. Livestock management is identified as an important source of farm-level diversification for smallholder farmers in RSA and elsewhere in the region. The animal sector can provide a source of protein and diversification as well as manure, fuel and draught animals. With population growth and increasing urban demand for meat, the pressure for intensification adds to the need for improved smallholder livestock–crop systems to achieve sustainability and productivity gains.

The second subprogram deals with food security and maize-based farming systems It addresses both dietary energy and food quality challenges, and emphasises the following research thrusts:

• identify evolving socioeconomic, commercial and climatic drivers in selected major maize–legume farming systems with potential/promising business or NGO linkages; diagnose farmer and value-chain constraints to adoption, and the impact of improved technologies in the context of complex systems and multiple livelihoods; test local innovation and learning platforms for accelerated scaling out of new maize and legume varieties and sustainable management technologies
• develop and test resilient smallholder maize–legume farming technologies based on the principles of conservation agriculture that increase and stabilise crop, land, labour and capital productivity, farm/household livelihoods and income, and system sustainability
• release nationally improved maize and legume varieties targeted to selected farming systems, supported by regional evaluation of advanced maize lines
• analyse constraints to intra-regional and Australia–Africa spillovers, and develop coordination mechanisms for enhanced subregional and regional spillover management of germplasm, practices, knowledge and research approaches
• contribute to building agricultural research capacity in partner countries and subregional organisations, including monitoring and evaluation, scaling out and incorporation of gender in agricultural research.