From the original post published on Crawford Fund for Food Security
The Crawford Fund for Food Security and ANU’s Fenner School of Environment and Society were honoured to welcome on Monday, November 17 2025, Professors Gabrielle Persley and Kaye Basford from the School of Agriculture and Food Sustainability at the University of Queensland (UQ/AGFS), Mr Jean Claude (JC) Rubyogo, Director, Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA) and Leader of Global Bean Program at the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, Nairobi, Kenya and Professor Shimelis Hussein, Director, African Centre for Crop Improvement (ACCI), University of Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa, to deliver an engaging seminar with over 40 Australian stakeholders on The Business of Plant Breeding in Africa: demand-led and market-driven approaches to develop new varieties and new crops for African agriculture.
“JC and Shimelis provided an in-depth insight to the long-term commitment of their agriculture research for development and human capacity development efforts in Africa, which have yielded significant and multiple impacts,” said Dave Shearer, the Crawford Fund for Food Security’s ACT Committee Coordinator.
Gabrielle introduced the two distinguished speakers, who had attended TropAg25 in Brisbane from November 10-14. Both were part of a “Team Africa” at TropAg, of scientists engaged in a variety of Pan African programs to promote food and nutritional security and climate resilience in a range of countries across Africa. Both ACCI and PABRA are founding members of the Demand led breeding (DLB) program www.demandledbreeding.org. The DLB program, which is managed by UQ/AGFS, is comprised of a community of practice of some 400 African scientists coming mainly from African national agricultural research systems and universities, as well as the bean breeders from CIAT Africa Hub and the PABRA research networks. The DLB core leadership team and the community of practice have worked together over the past decade to promote a market led approach to new variety development. The DLB program has been supported since 2015 by ACIAR and the Crawford Fund in Australia, and the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, Switzerland.
JC noted in his talk that “PABRA has been innovating for over 25 years – and throughout this journey JC and his colleagues have provided stewardship to develop and deliver science, innovation and impact at scale. PABRA now has an alliance with 31 national agricultural research systems, with more than 600+ partners including farmer associations, NGOs and the private sector with seed producers, grain traders and processors through the value chain. The efforts of PABRA means that improved bean varieties are now cultivated by more than 42.5 million smallholder farmers on 3.7 million hectares of agricultural land in Africa and is a key food for over 400 million people.”
“Not only do beans provide household nutrition, the export value of beans from Africa is now valued. For example, Uganda exported in the East Africa region beans valued more than USD132M in 2022. PABRA’s work has led to a transformation of the bean sector from subsistence to being a key part of the agricultural economic boom in Africa. In recognition of this work, PABRA was the 2023 Africa Food Prize Winner.”
JC continued “PABRA continues to innovate. For instance, with ACIAR support, PABRA in partnership with the University West Australia (UWA) are developing iron and zinc dense, climate resilient, rapid cooking beans to expand the household use of beans and deliver their nutritional, environmental and economic benefits. PABRA is expanding the demand-led/market-oriented research approach to other organizations engaged in other crops such as cowpeas, soybeans, groundnuts, sorghum in Africa and beyond”. It is this broader perspective that suggested the emerging Pan-Africa Sorghum Alliance (see below) is modelled on the PABRA market led approach combined with the innovations of Demand led Breeding to develop and deliver climate resilient, value added sorghum products for farmers, markets and consumers.
But none of this is possible without huma and research capacity. Shimelis provided insight to the Pan African breeding initiatives that have trained the current and next generation of African plant breeders working on African food crops, through a network of regional plant breeding training centres, in eastern, southern and West Africa. These young African scientists have developed breeding skills in cereals (maize, sorghum, pearl millet, finger millet, rice, tef and wheat), legumes (dry bean, bambara groundnut, cowpea, pigeon pea, soybean and faba bean) and root crops (sweet potato, cassava, potato) – all critical crops to address Africa’s food and nutritional requirements. The alumni of the capacity development at ACCI have released over 210 new varieties across 20 countries in Africa – all through working within their national agricultural research systems.”
Shimelis also spoke of the emerging Pan Africa Sorghum Alliance (PASA), which he and JC are developing, together with Gabrielle and her colleagues at UQ and partners from several countries in Africa where sorghum is a widely grown and increasingly important crop, due to its climate resilience and nutritional grains. PASA is based on combining the successful PABRA approach to expanding public-private sector partnerships and entrepreneurship with small scale farmers, with the principles of demand led breeding and seed systems, to deliver improved seeds of speciality sorghums, to increase both productivity and profitability of sorghum at scale.
The goal of PASA is to transform sorghum from a low yielding, subsistence food crop for 300 million people, growing mainly on marginal lands, into a climate resilient, value added crop, suitable for both home use, and as a multipurpose crop able to produce new, incoming earning products for use as food, beverages, feed, fuel, and industrial purposes. As an example, PASA is promoting sormaize, an African innovation, of a wide cross of sorghum x maize, which combines the agronomic characteristics and climate resilience of sorghum with the preferred eating qualities of maize. Such a speciality sorghum is of considerable interest to farmers, traders and policy makers in several countries where the climate is becoming hotter and drier with each passing year.
“The final factor that shone through at the seminar was the dedicated and long-term leadership displayed by JC, Shimelis and Gabrielle. They have a vision of what it takes to transform the African food system through the application of science and innovation, and the benefits this innovation can have through crop value chains – from smallholder farmers being more profitable and climate resilient to consumers who benefit through improved diet and nutrition. We can learn a great deal from the contributions of JC, Shimelis and Gabrielle and their many partners throughout Africa– all are doing well by doing good,” Dave concluded, when thanking the speakers at the Crawford/ANU seminar event.