Africa Rice Center

Africa Rice Center
Abbreviation	AfricaRice
Formation	1971
Type	Non-profit research and training center
Purpose	Research
Headquarters	Abidjan,
Location	Côte d'Ivoire;
Region served	Africa
Official language	English / French
Director General	Dr Harold Roy-Macauley
Main organ	Board of Trustees
Affiliations	CGIAR
Staff	250
Website	www.africarice.org

The Africa Rice Center (AfricaRice), formerly known as the West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA), is a pan-African intergovernmental association and a CGIAR Research organization, currently headquartered in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire.^[1] AfricaRice is an agricultural research center that was constituted in 1971 by 11 West African countries. Presently the Center counts 26 African member states.^[2] Since 1986, AfricaRice has been one of the 15 specialized research centers of CGIAR.

The center runs regional research stations in Saint-Louis, Senegal, in Ibadan, Nigeria and country offices in Cotonou, Benin and in Antananarivo, Madagascar.

AfricaRice aims to contribute to poverty alleviation and food security in Africa through research for development. The center has therefore close links to agricultural research organizations in the African member states, to agricultural universities and research institutes in Europe, Japan and the United States, and to the development sector, which include Non Governmental Organizations, farmers organizations and donors. AfricaRice, being part of the CGIAR system, shares resources with several of the other CGIAR organizations, including the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, Philippines, and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria. In the course of reforms at the CGIAR, AfricaRice developed together with IRRI and International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP), which sets a global strategic research agenda for rice.^[3]

One of the major tasks of AfricaRice is the development and introduction of new rice seed varieties that are suitable for African conditions. NERICA, which stands for "New Rice for Africa", is two families of interspecific cultivars of African (Oryza glaberrima) and Asian (Oryza sativa) rice species, that was developed to improve the yields of African farmers. For his work on NERICA, Dr Monty Jones from Sierra Leone was awarded the World Food Prize in 2004^[4] becoming the first African to win this award.