India and US partner to help improve agriculture in Africa

India and the US, as part of their broader global partnership, Tuesday launched the second training programme to improve agricultural productivity and support market institutions in three African countries of Kenya, Liberia, and Malawi.

The three-year India-US-Africa triangular partnership programme will share proven innovations from India's private and public sectors to address food insecurity, malnutrition and poverty in the target countries.

The US Agency for International Development's (USAID) food security office director Bahiru Duguma launched the programme being supported by the US government's global hunger and food security initiative "Feed the Future".

The programme will train 180 agricultural professionals from the three African countries by providing marketing and extension management training at the Chaudhury Charan Singh National Institute of Agricultural Marketing (NIAM) in Jaipur and at the National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management (MANAGE) in Hyderabad. The initiative is led by USAID and NIAM.

The first triangular partnership in agricultural training was inaugurated at MANAGE, Hyderabad, in January 2013 for 30 trainees from Africa.

India has emerged as a hub for low-cost, effective local innovations to deal with challenges arising from factors like climate change, shrinking natural resources, decline in cultivable land and rising demand for food.

During President Barack Obama's visit to India in 2010, both the countries had agreed to use their expertise in agricultural capacity-building to extend food security to interested third countries.

--Indo-Asian news Service

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