Organization and Performance of Cotton Sectors in Africa ... - infoDev

With regard to human and financial resources, cotton research programs inWCA case study countries range from 9 to 25 research staff members withannual budgets varying from US$300,000 to US$500,000 per year. Similar topublicly funded agricultural research in general, researchers often complainthat high fixed costs, in part related to high support staff levels, often do notleave sufficient operational resources for field research activities. 64 Researchprograms in ESA case study countries are smaller than in WCA in absoluteterms (ranging from 3 to 11 research staff members). Although these resourcesmay not be smaller in proportion to the production of the national cotton sector,critical mass can be important in sustaining a dynamic research program.As in WCA, there is great variability among countries in the ESA region, withZimbabwe having the most and Mozambique having the fewest researchers.Internal and external links are important to the effectiveness and impact ofagricultural research. Internal links refer to relationships among nationalstakeholders, particularly institutional links between research and extension, aswell as direct contact between researchers and company and farmer clients(considered in more detail later in this chapter). Virtually all countries havebeen trending toward lower extension worker–farmer ratios, with a high shareof extension workers’ time devoted to input delivery and credit management(chapter 6). External links, such as regional research networks, are importantfor leveraging the impact of country-level research resources. These links werestrong in Francophone countries in previous decades, but they have sinceweakened, while they are nonexistent or weak in ESA. The Association forStrengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa has no cottonresearch network, while the West and Central African Council for AgriculturalResearch and Development has recognized the need to rejuvenate cottonin its strategic plan. Reports of the International Cotton Advisory Council triannualinternational research meetings indicate that participation by Africanresearchers is very limited.As one indicator of research performance, table 9.1 shows the cumulativenumber of new seed varieties released by the research systems in this book’sfocus countries over the period of 1985–2005. 65 WCA countries made manyvarietal introductions in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, the rate of introductionof new cultivars has slowed since 1995 in all three WCA countries forwhich data are shown. This evidence is consistent with the general loss of efficiencyobserved within WCA cotton sectors over the same period as the CommunautéFrançaise d’Afrique (French community of Africa) franc devaluationfirst eased financial pressure on the sectors and as the expanding size of the sectorsmade them increasingly susceptible to political pressures. Meanwhile,within ESA, Uganda and Zimbabwe have produced a steady stream of varietalreleases, although no new varieties have been released in Uganda in the past fiveyears. By contrast, cotton research in Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia has apoor record over the past 20 years, as measured by varieties officially released,although there is some evidence of renewed vitality since the early 2000s.COTTON RESEARCH 107