By Akanimo Sampson
The lives of farmers in the arid regions of Ethiopia and Sudan are currently being transformed, according to African Development Bank.
The transforming agent is the heat-resistant wheat varieties developed in part with the Bank Group funding under its Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) programme.
Chaltu Kabele, an Ethiopia wheat farmer, recalls the difficulties she faced providing for her family of 10 with standard wheat seeds that produced very low yields in the hot, dry lowlands of the Awash community where she lives.
Following the introduction of TAAT heat-resistant wheat varieties, she now produces up to 5 tons of wheat per hectare. Kabele is one of 28,000 farmers tilling 20,000 hectares of farmland who have benefitted from the TAAT program to date.
In neighboring Sudan, where temperatures exceed 38°C during the wheat-growing season, wheat yields remained low before the introduction of TAAT heat-resistant wheat varieties – impacting both nutrition outcomes and farmers’ incomes.
Recognizing wheat’s growing importance to the Sudanese diet, the government adopted the TAAT programme during the 2017-18 season.
Since then, it has worked with more than a dozen private seed companies to produce more than 45,000 tons of certified wheat seeds, to the benefit of 15,000 farmers – nearly half of which are youth and women.
Overall, the TAAT programme aims to help the continent fulfill its agricultural potential by exploring and employing high-impact technologies to boost output. TAAT seeks to raise food output across the continent by 100 million tons and lift 40 million people out of poverty by 2025
