Quarterly Notes
| Date | 01 October 1968 |
| Published date | 01 October 1968 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1968.tb00352.x |
Quarterly Notes
Africa -Agricultural
Research
The establishment of an Association for the Advancement of Agricultural
Sciences in Africa (AAASA) highlighted the recent Conference on Agri-
cultural Research Priorities for Economic Development in Africa. Agri-
cultural research in Africa has long been dominated by the English, Belgians
and particularly the French, organized along widely differing lines and
ultimately responsible to London, Brussels and Paris.
The
recently
independent countries can profit by sharing common experience and pooling
their limited resources of trained manpower in the search for ways of
increasing agricultural production, both to feed their increasing populations
and to export for valuable foreign exchange currency.
This was the theme set by Robert Gardiner, Executive Secretary of the
UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), in his keynote address and
echoed by Otto Fischnich, Assistant Director General of the UN Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) and agriculture Minister Abdoulaye
Sawadogo of the host Government of the Ivory Coast at the opening
ceremonies in the modern capital
of
Abidjan, in April, 1968.
The
conference brought together as individuals agricultural scientists,
planners, government
officials
and educators from thrcughout inter-tropical
anglophone and francophone Africa to examine the research needs and
priorities in the various fields of agriculture contributing to the economic
development of their countries. Hitherto such discussions have been
primarily conducted at meetings sponsored by FAO or the Organization
of African Unity (OAU) between government delegations seldom comprising
representation from the pure science as well as socio-economic disciplines
involved in their diverse ways with the problems of agricultural research and
development.
Approximately two hundred participants from 32 countries attended the
conference which, although organized by the US National Academy of
Sciences in co-operation with FAO and the Government of the Ivory Coast
and with financial support from the Agency for International Development
(AID), was structured and developed by an advisory group of prominent
African agriculturalists meeting in Ghana in early 1967. Other international
organizations present were the African Development Bank, the World Bank,
ECA, and the Organization of African and Malagasy States (OCAM).
The
Ford and Rockefeller Foundations currently establishing an International
Institute for Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria, were also represented
and their institute will be most active in tackling problems examined at the
meeting. From outside Africa, scientists from the US, Canada, France,
Britain, Israel, Taiwan and the Philippines invited for their particular
expertise or interest in specific aspects of tropical agriculture made up the
balance of participation.
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