P4D Week focuses on transforming African agriculture

This year’s Partnerships for Delivery (P4D) week, held 21-25 November, focused on unleashing the power of IITA’s research and delivery in transforming African agriculture. Speaking at the opening ceremony, the Deputy Director General, Partnerships for Delivery, Kenton Dashiell, said, “This year, P4D Week is about delivering IITA’s results and research to the end users…delivery in terms of how IITA has had an impact on the lives of people in Africa and improved income and well-being of farmers”.

In his talk titled IITA innovations to transform African agriculture, IITA Director General, Nteranya Sanginga, laid out the Institute’s priorities for his second term. He said IITA’s operations need to be reorganized and to be managed and operated efficiently for delivery and impact for the next five years. According to him, this will be achieved by addressing operational inefficiencies for better delivery both in support services and Research for Development (R4D), and positioning IITA’s support system to manage mega projects. “One of the major objectives in the reorganization of IITA is to strengthen the corporate services and finance functions to be able to improve operational efficiencies in support of improved delivery of IITA’s technologies,” Sanginga highlighted.

Awards and recognition

As is the yearly practice at IITA, the scientist, staff, and unit with the best performance in 2015 were honored during P4D Week. The annual Board Excellence Awards were presented to Lava Kumar, Head of Germplasm and Health Unit, outstanding scientist; Idowu Ifaturoti of the Telecommunication Office, outstanding support staff; and the Project Administration Office, outstanding team. The paper by Atehnkeng et al. was named Outstanding Publication.

Awards were also presented to the best posters shown during the poster sessions. The following posters won first prize in the various categories: Genome-wide association mapping of correlated traits in cassava: dry matter and total carotenoid content by Ismail Rabbi, Molecular Geneticist, et al. for R4D; Design and fabrication of machines, establishment of cottage, small and/or medium-scale commercial outfits to process agricultural crops by Thierno Diallo, an FMS consultant, under the corporate services category; and finally, the African Cassava Agronomy Initiative (ACAI) project model, under the P4D section by Pieter Pypers, a senior Agronomist on the ACAI project.