Africa’s drylands cover approximately 43 per cent of the continent and are severely impacted by climate change and diminishing rainfall.

Indigenous communities that live in the drylands face severe food and nutritional insecurity, harsh and unpredictable weather swings and conflict as a result of insurgencies in some arid and semi-arid areas.

To address the severity of the climate change, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi- Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has unveiled a Strategic Plan 2025-2030, a roadmap to transforming dryland agriculture, leveraging on innovative research and technology to address smallholder farmers’ evolving challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and beyond.

Themed Microbial Solutions for Advancing Nature-Positive and Regenerative Agriculture in Drylands the collection based on ICRISAT’s decades of research offers research and practical innovations using beneficial microorganisms to restore soil health and boost crop yields.

Launched during the CGIAR Science Week 2025 at the United Nations, Gigiri, the strategy unveiled a new ally in the quest for sustainable agriculture: microbes.

Speaking during the launch, ICRISAT Director General Himanshu Pathak said the strategy will see Africa’s drylands transformed into thriving hubs of sustainable agriculture, where innovative farming techniques and community empowerment drive economic growth, environmental resilience and food and nutrition security for all.

“The problems of drylands are becoming more and more severe. Drylands are not only thirsty, not only do they need more water, but they are also hungry. They need more nutrients; they need more organic carbon,” said Pathak.

He said in order to reduce reliance on chemical inputs, the strategy emphasises novel approaches that use microbial consortia for carbon sequestration, pest control and nutrient cycling.

“The importance of microbial solutions in revolutionising agriculture has never been greater in light of the growing environmental problems and the pressing need for sustainable food systems” he said. 

The director said the Strategy will deliver science-based solutions that address the challenges of agricultural growth, hunger, poverty, gender inequality, and climate resilience in vulnerable communities.

“To address the problems of the drylands, we need new science and new technology,” he said adding that they have developed climate resilient seed varieties, which can be grown with less amount of water, with limited amount of nutrients, but can give very high yield.

“Farmers who have the seeds, we will make sure that the seed that they plant, they have good agronomic practices,” he added.

He said the strategy lays emphasis on leveraging on digital technology because at present, almost every youth has a mobile phone, noting that Africa has a penetration of over 80 per cent when it comes to mobile phones.

“We need to find a place in the dry lands where youths can have jobs coming from delivery of seed, coming from value addition, coming from aggregation of these crops” he said, adding that mobile phones are able to receive information on varieties, climate information and markets.

In his opinion, h said, the strategy is moving the whole value chain to a point where we start seeing even products coming from these crops thus creating job opportunities.

“When we talk about markets, as we can show in digital agriculture, we need a lot of the private sector partners. But even more importantly, our farmers will be transformed from subsistence to agribusiness,” he said.

He said ICRISAT, along with partners in all the countries of Africa and also in one CGIAR are providing solutions to some of these problems of drylands because of climate change, global warming, degradation of soil, water and air, drylands are becoming more and more degraded.

“ICRISAT is working very closely with all of these stakeholders so that whatever knowledge and whatever new science we have now can be taken quickly to the farmers” he said.

ICRISAT Deputy Director General for Research and Innovation Stanford Blade observed that the drylands problems are intensifying, becoming fiercer and more frequent, hence the need to strengthen the research and science base.

Blade said ICRISAT has a germplasm bank of different types of crops in a number of areas, including the cereals like sorghum and millet and legumes like chickpea, pigeon pea and groundnut.

“We work on developing these new crops. They might have more nutrition, they might be resistant to insects” he said, adding that the crops do well especially in the dry lands where soils are degraded and have to manage water more effectively.

He said that scientists think about the overall economic system as well and how they create new nutritional options for school feeding programmes or high-density nutrient crops by supporting entrepreneurs who want to add value to other crops that we work with.

“We see this very much as an innovation agenda, but it’s one that really will have an impact on the lives of people, not only on farms, but people that are involved in food processing and other aspects of food and agriculture in Africa” he said.

• A Tell Media / KNA report / By Anita Omwenga