Local crops, also called ‘neglected and underutilized crops’, are typically the domain of regional companies. In Eastern Africa, local field crops such as cowpea or local vegetables such as amaranth and black nightshade are in the portfolio of multiple companies in nearly all Index countries. Global companies do not include local crops in their portfolio. Exceptions are East-West Seed and Technisem. As an illustration of their core mission to develop tropical vegetable seeds for smallholder farmers, these two are the only companies in the Regional Index for Eastern Africa 2016 that originate from outside the region but have breeding programs for local vegetable crops.
Integration with the World Benchmarking Alliance
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.org
