The Access to Seeds Index is now part of the World Benchmarking Alliance. All indexes up to 2020 can be found here. New indexes and methodologies are published on the website of the WBA.
Stay here worldbenchmarkingalliance.orgThe 2019 Access to Seeds Index Western and Central Africa is made up of 23 leading seed companies present in the region. The insights below are based on publicly available information and information disclosed by the companies upon engagement. The 17 companies headquartered in Africa are referred to as regional companies. The six companies headquartered outside the continent are referred to as global companies.
Eleven index companies have breeding stations in the region, which are typically modest in size. Syngenta has breeding stations in Mali, Nigeria and Senegal. East-West Seed has one breeder operating in Benin who focuses on developing local vegetables. Premier Seed has a breeding station in Nigeria, where it develops maize and sorghum varieties. SOPROSA has a breeding station in Mali, where it is developing a cowpea variety and intends to develop hybrid maize and sorghum varieties in the future. Seed Co operates a breeding station in Ghana. Maslaha Seeds and Value Seeds have embarked on company breeding programs in Nigeria.
With breeding stations for vegetables and local crops in Senegal, Cameroon and Burkina Faso, Technisem is the only company that reports having breeding programs in more than one index country. Technisem is part of the Novalliance, which includes Tropicasem, Semagri and Nankosem. Each Novalliance company has a breeding location in the country where it is headquartered, namely Senegal, Cameroon and Burkina Faso respectively. Although not specifically reported as such, it is likely that Technisem’s breeding programs in these countries are joint programs with other Novalliance companies.
In 15 of the 22 countries in scope (70%), no breeding by index companies was found.
