Farmer participatory approaches are at the core of the NERICA success story. But in 1996, when the Africa Rice Center (WARDA) introduced such approaches, it was considered revolutionary in the region. Some even saw it as a threat to NARS prerogatives to work with farmers.

Today, thanks to NERICA, participatory approaches are the most commonly used practices adopted by every rice scientist within and beyond the sub-region. WARDA has found that such approaches are not only ideal, but also vital for SSA, especially when research is targeted to marginal environments. In the conventional method, the time from an initial cross to the dissemination of a line can be as long as 14 years in SSA. So if we had relied on the conventional approach, the first NERICAs would have been still locked up in research stations.

After examining the suitability of different participatory approaches such as Participatory Plant Breeding, Plant Technology Development, WARDA first adopted the Plant Varietal Selection (PVS) approach to identify NERICA varieties best suited to farmers. PVS was complemented by a community-based seed system (CBSS) to overcome the seed bottleneck. This combined approach was first used as a case study for NERICA dissemination in Guinea. The program in Guinea started with just 116 farmers in 1997 and expanded to 20 000 farmers within 3 years. The approach was so attractive that for every farmer participating in PVS, about 5 non-PVS farmers were involved in informal variety testing.

WARDA’s impact studies have shown that largely thanks to these approaches, the area under NERICA in Guinea increased by nearly 50% from 2002 to 2003. In Côte d’Ivoire within 2 years of exposure to NERICA, 38% of farmers in the study area had adopted them by 2000. The adoption rate is projected to reach 68% by 2006.

The NERICA farmer participatory program has now spread to about 20 African countries, involving thousands of farmers across Africa. Even in our recent breakthrough of NERICAs for lowlands, it has played a major role.

West Africa’s success with NERICA participatory program has quickly spilled over to Central and Eastern Africa, especially in Uganda, where rice cultivation was practically unknown, NERICAs have taken off in there in just 3-4 years after their introduction and occupy more than 10 000 ha.

The farmer participatory approaches adopted by WARDA are gender sensitive, since rice farming in SSA is dominated by women. WARDA’s legendary Bintou has become an icon symbolizing the success of gender-sensitive participatory research. Starting in 1998, she spearheaded the NERICA dissemination process by motivating her women farmer colleagues in the adoption and exchange of NERICA varieties and became one of the first farmer-to-farmer trainer in Gagnoa, Cote d’Ivoire.

WARDA has been involved in Participatory Adaptive Research and Dissemination of Rice Technologies (PADS) project in several West African countries to make rice research and development more client-responsive. In the first phase, a collection of process-based approaches was used, which involved cycles of participatory diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation. It focused on a number of complementary technologies, such as options for low-cost soil fertility management, mechanical weed management and post-harvest issues.

To disseminate knowledge about complex issues relating to integrated crop and natural resource management in rice-based cropping systems, WARDA has introduced a novel farmer learning approach called Participatory Learning and Action Research (PLAR), which has now expanded to eight West African countries in the context of integrated crop management (ICM). In Côte d’Ivoire, PLAR-trained farmers were able to increase their rice production by over half a tonne per ha in the first year of their use of this approach.

Recently WARDA has begun using community-based video production to scale out technology transfer. Thus, the Center is exploring a broad range of participatory approaches depending on the type of technology and the degree of complexity involved. Results show that WARDA’s ‘farmers first’ approach is workable for different agrocecological niches and audiences.