Rice field (credit: Jeff Haskins)

About an hour drive from Kampala, in a place called Namulonge, you’ll find Hadji Wanonda, a Ugandan farmer, who grows locally adapted and resilient varieties of rice on his one-acre plot of land.

For years, Hadji planted cassava, maize and a few other crops for his family to eat. Now with improved rice varieties provided to him by local agricultural research institute, Hadji can make up to US$800 in a three month period selling his harvest in the local markets. This represents a massive increase in income for him and, more recently, Hadji has been able to employ men and women in his community to help out with farm work.

Hadji’s story is part of a larger effort to boost African rice production and ensure self-sufficiency for the sake of Africa’s food security. The demand for rice in sub-Saharan Africa is double the rate of population growth; consumption is growing faster than that of any other major food staple. But instead of finding ways to substantially increase local production, countries have depended on more costly imports.

Hadji uses rice varieties called “Nerica,” a resilient, high-yielding cross of African and Asian rice. Breeders of Nerica rice won the World Food Prize in 2004. Nerica is not restricted to growing in paddies, thus enabling African farmers to grow rice in places that no one before thought possible with no irrigation. If this kind of public research and development could be applied more widely, Africa could be more self-sufficient and depend a little less on others for its food supply.