On 20 August, fourteen speakers — from ministers to seed company founders — addressed an audience of more than 200 participants from seven West African countries, at the invitation of the Centre of Excellence for Seed Systems in Africa (CESSA) [1], an AGRA [2] initiative and a partner of this Forum [3]. Three days before the Forum opens in Kigali, here is what they concluded and what they are bringing with them.
Two weeks ago, on this platform [4], we wrote that there is no nourished nation, no rural job and no resilience without quality seed, and that West Africa would say so on 20 August. It did.
For almost three hours, in English and French, the session was opened by Evelyn Lusenaka, Director of CESSA, with Dr Amadou Cheick Traoré representing Mali’s Ministry of Agriculture. Breeders, seed company founders, regulators and development banks then worked through a single question: why do national seed successes still stop at national borders?
Sierra Leone set the tone. “There is no rice transformation without a functional seed system,” said Hon. Dr Isata Kamanda, the country’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, opening on behalf of her government. Under Feed Salone, its agricultural flagship, the country has built a chain running from foundation seed multiplication through certification to ten seed entities distributing certified seed, alongside a seed policy, a national seed testing laboratory, and a seed roadmap now being turned into an investment document. The gap she named is the one the rest of the session kept returning to: research institutes release good varieties, but multiplying them into the seed system remains the constraint. What Sierra Leone needs next, she said, is financing for early generation seed, commercial multiplication and public-private partnerships.
The problem does not stop at the border. “A variety that meets good standards in one country — the farmer in another country should be able to access it and use it,” she said, calling for the harmonised ECOWAS and Mano River Union regulations to work in practice, for certified seed to move under transparent procedures without excessive transaction or logistics costs, and for the ECOWAS regional catalogue to become a working instrument of regional trade. “No single country will have enough seed of the important varieties.”
That conversation belongs here. CESSA, which describes itself as a one-stop centre to accelerate the availability of quality seed across the continent, is a partner of this Forum, and the regional dialogue it convened in August was designed to feed directly into the four days that open in Kigali on 1 September [5]. What follows is the substance West Africa is bringing to the table.
“Seeds don’t speak French or English,” said Natasha Kofoworola Quist, AGRA’s Regional Director for West Africa. “We have what we need in the region: the scientists, the institutions, the entrepreneurs, the farmers and the markets. It’s all about making sure it stays connected.”
That sentence is the round table’s finding in twelve words. Here is how the region proposes to act on it, set against the three themes of our 2026 summit — Investing in Africa’s Agri-Food Systems: Nourishing Nations, Growing Jobs, Building Resilience.
Nourishing nations: the variety has to reach the field
Twenty years of investment have built the foundation. More than 650 scientists trained. More than 685 varieties released, of which around 60% commercialised. Around a hundred seed companies supported, nearly all still trading. Adoption of improved varieties up from 6% to more than 30%. CESSA’s record [6], presented by Rufaro Madakadze, its Lead for Capacity and Technical Support, is the base on which the rest now depends.
But a released variety is not yet a harvest. Speakers returned repeatedly to the same constraint: early generation seed, the material produced by public research from which companies multiply everything a farmer eventually buys.
“Its shortage limits the supply of certified seed, and it is sharpest for the varieties most in demand,” said Ousmane Ndoye, representing the Executive Director of the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF) [7]. In Nigeria, more than 90% of that seed still comes from public institutes.
The answers presented were practical. In Mali, Faso Kaba, led by Oumou N’Tji Coulibaly, has secured multi-year contracts with national research, planned up to five years ahead, so it can produce at scale against known demand. For cassava and yam, crops where fewer than one in ten released varieties reached farmers, rapid multiplication technologies built a seed chain that did not exist. “We have moved from scarcity to availability,” said Mercy Diebiru-Ojo of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, a 2025 Africa Food Prize laureate.
Marthe Diallo, AGRA’s Seed Sector Development Specialist for West Africa, offered a rule for avoiding the gap altogether: before a breeding programme begins, know which company will commercialise the variety, how much early generation seed it will require, and through which channel it will reach farmers.
Breeders framed the same point from their end of the chain. “Our job ends when the genetic gain reaches the farmer’s field,” said Priscilla Ribeiro, maize breeder at Ghana’s Crops Research Institute. A variety release is a milestone, not a finish line.
Growing jobs: the companies are already there
The round table’s most concrete evidence came from the businesses in the room.
In Ghana, Antika Company has taken its annual output from fewer than 27 tonnes of seed to 3,000. In Nigeria, Premier Seeds, represented by Samson Afolabi, its Director of Research and Production, occupies a scarce link in the chain, producing 320 tonnes of foundation seed sold on to other seed companies. In Burkina Faso, NAFASO, founded by Abdoulaye Sawadogo in 2008 with a production of 100 tonnes, now reports a capacity of 6,000 tonnes and supplies several countries in the sub-region.
Demand has moved with them. Abukari Abdulai has run Heritage Seeds in northern Ghana since 2004. “Back then, you would talk to a farmer about certified seed and he would say: what is that?” Today he estimates that around half of Ghana’s farming population knows improved seed and buys it.
Price remains the test. Abdalla Dao, senior seed systems researcher at Burkina Faso’s INERA, argued that seed must be considered within the whole production system, failing which its cost deters the farmer it is meant to serve, a concern Aboubacar Touré, plant breeder and former research director in Mali, traced through two decades of national seed system planning.
What these companies now need is not proof of concept but the conditions to grow: predictable supply of early generation seed, borders that let their product move, and finance that matches the length of a seed production cycle.
Building resilience: the rules exist, and one instrument is waiting
The legal architecture has been in place for eighteen years. A 2008 ECOWAS [8] regulation provides for the mutual recognition of certified seed across the region and establishes a regional catalogue comprising varieties registered in member states’ national catalogues. A 2018 agreement between ECOWAS, UEMOA and CILSS extended that cooperation to seventeen countries, with CORAF as permanent secretariat.
Implementation is what varies. “In our space, there are three categories of countries,” Ousmane Ndoye said: the advanced, the less advanced, and those moving more slowly. His priorities for the next five years are training in seed technology, more early generation seed, and laboratories accredited to international standards.
The regional discussion is also opening to farmer-managed seed systems. Faridat Achabi-Aboudou, of the ECOWAS Directorate of Agriculture and Rural Development, set out the objective as an environment in which farmer-managed seed systems can integrate into a thriving, unified regional market.
On finance, the panel converged on the private sector. “If I had an additional dollar to invest, I would put it in the private sector, lending to them at affordable rates and good tenures,” said Martin Fregene, Director of Agriculture and Agro-Industry at the African Development Bank. Hermann Messan, IFAD Country Director for Côte d’Ivoire, set out the division of roles: “Government regulates and research supports, but entrepreneurs build the industry. Lasting transformation comes when African governments, banks and investors treat seed as a strategic asset.”
From the companies, the request was specific. Abukari Abdulai asked for intervention to persuade banks that agribusinesses can borrow and repay; Oumou N’Tji Coulibaly argued for guarantee funds and for financing networks of companies rather than individual firms.
One instrument is already written into regional law and awaits activation. Article 10 of the 2008 regulation requires each member state to establish a national seed committee and a seed sector support fund. Where such financing has been established, it works: Burkina Faso’s Dumu Ka Fa Fund, created by decree in February 2024, signed an agreement in January 2025 with the national union of seed producers’ cooperatives for at least one billion CFA francs a year, at 5% interest.
What West Africa brings to Kigali
Not a request, but a position. The region has the science, the companies and the legal framework; what it is working on is the connection between them.
“The examples of national success are there, in Burkina Faso, in Mali, in Nigeria,” Natasha Quist said in closing. “It’s now about taking it regional, harmonising, particularly around the critical varieties, and making sure things are standardised so that we can trade.” Markets, corridors and borders, she added, are all part of getting food to move around the region.
Folarin Okelola, of Nigeria’s National Agricultural Seeds Council, put it more briskly. “Twenty years, we’ve worked hard. Now we need to work smart. Africa should support Africa.”
We open at the Kigali Convention Centre on 1 September, with a pre-summit day on 31 August. From 5 to 7 October, the African Union holds its first summit devoted to seeds, in Mbabane. Between the two, West Africa has a position to put on the table and the evidence to support it — and in CESSA, a Forum partner to carry it into the room.
Seed was never a technical footnote. On 20 August, West Africa showed what it has built, named what is missing, and said who should pay for it. Kigali is where that conversation continues.
Read more
The round table was reported by Africanews in both languages:
English: “Agriculture: West Africa seeks to speed up the movement of seeds” [9]
French: « Agriculture : l’Afrique de l’Ouest veut accélérer la circulation des semences » [10]
Our curtain-raiser of 20 August: Seed is part of the continental conversation: from West African fields to Kigali [4]
More on CESSA’s work across the continent: cessa.agra.org [1] · Register for the Forum [11]
