Rice research institute returns to rebel territory

The West African Rice Development Agency (WARDA), an international organisation which develops high-yield varieties of rice for distribution to farmers throughout West Africa, has returned to its headquarters in the rebel-held city of Bouake in Cote d'Ivoire because of improved security. WARDA officials told IRIN on Friday that over 60 staff members returned to Bouake last week, after abandoning the organisation's plantations and research laboratories in the city 380 km north of Abidjan a year ago when Cote d'Ivoire plunged into civil war. "We have invested somewhere between US $30 million and $50 million in our installations and now that security is improving bit by bit we must get back there to continue our research," Pierre Justin Kouka, a research scientist with WARDA told IRIN in Abidjan. He said Prime Minister Seydou Diarra had endorsed the move and pledged that the government would pay for the repair of damaged equipment and the replacement of WARDA vehicles looted by rebel forces. Ironically the WARDA move comes at a time of rising tension between the rebel movement which occupies the north of the country and President Laurent Gbagbo. The rebels suspended their participation in government on Tuesday in protest at Gbagbo's refusal to devolve greater powers to Diarra's broad-based government of national reconciliation. They also froze plans to disarm and allow government administrators to return to the north. WARDA, which has 700 hectares of experimental rice plantations at Bouake, is best known for developing the Nerica strain of high-yielding rice which is helping many West African countries reduce their dependence on food imports. It started distributing Nerica rice to farmers in the organisation's 17 member countries in 1998. "Continuing research into the development of Nerica will help seven pilot countries in Africa to reduce their rice imports by 15 percent within five years," WARDA's director-general, Nwanzee Kanayo, told reporters on Thursday. About three quarters of the organisation's activities are concentrated in the north and west of Cote d'Ivoire. Kouka told IRIN that the civil war had slowed down its development of the new high-yield strain of rice. However, Guie Gouantoueu, another research scientist in Bouake, said WARDA had managed to continue distributing seed grain to farmers throughout West Africa thanks to plantations at its out-stations in Senegal, Mali and Nigeria. "Fortunately, some seed rice had been transferred to several other countries before the crisis, but the countries which need the new seed rice have not been able to obtain it in the necessary quantities," he told IRIN. Kouka, who is about to return to Bouake said that over the past year, WARDA's staff in Bouake had been redeployed at the organisation's other research centres in West Africa, mainly at Bamako in Mali. He said that despite the looting of most vehicles, the offices and research laboratories were in reasonable condition. Some equipment had been damaged however as a result of electricity supplies being cut off for the past year, he added.