Program for Seed System Innovation for Vegetatively Propagated Crops in Africa (PROSSIVA)

The Program for Seed System Innovation for Vegetatively propagated Crops in Africa (PROSSIVA) is a five-year project launched in October 2022. PROSSIVA takes a research and innovation focus to tackle bottlenecks and improve efficiency, productivity, and profitability across seed systems for vegetatively propagated crops in Africa.

It consolidates all ongoing single-crop vegetatively propagated crops (VPCs) investments of the BMGF. PROSSIVA focuses on 4 crops (yam, banana, sweet potato, and cassava) across 5 countries (Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda).

COMPONENTS

Banana

Cassava

Sweet Potato

Yam

Cross-cutting

Capitalizing on the diverse set of cross-cutting opportunities that exist for common research and knowledge sharing across crops, resulting in benefits both for single crop systems as well as overall VPC seed system development.

OUR ROLE

We are leading the marketing innovations by developing streamlined marketing strategies aimed at driving stakeholder engagement in the commercialization of registered and released improved VPC seed varieties. This involves creating effective demand-generation techniques and assessing the impact of integrating seed entrepreneurs on the growth of the formal seed markets for yam in Africa.
We are also leading the development of innovative packaging and transportation methods for VPC seeds in Africa across all seed classes.