Africa Harvest’s work on banana is a continuation of its founder’s work at ISAAA. Upon inception in 2003, Africa Harvest sought to redress several bottlenecks that surfaced as a result of the successful promotion and uptake of tissue culture banana.

Initial tissue culture banana work stirred up great interest in the disease-free banana planting materials pushing demand way beyond existing supply. At that time, research institutes were the only source of tissue culture banana. There was no real sustainable supply system in place. The limited supply rendered tissue culture banana plantlets far too expensive for the ordinary low-input farmer. Prior to tissue culture banana, farmers used suckers from the mother-plant to propagate their crop.

Other challenges for farmers who had taken up the new banana were to do with marketing. The farmers had increased their banana production substantially but lacked market information and mechanisms of getting their produce to urban markets, where demand for the fruit was highest with the best returns.

Africa Harvest has three projects addressing these farmer challenges.

1. Developing a Pro-Poor Banana Industry in Kenya
With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, Africa Harvest developed and implemented a three-year (2003 – 2006) project aimed at ensuring sustainable development of tissue culture banana in Kenya.
The project developed a supply system of tissue culture banana plantlets and linked farmers to markets. It was undertaken in partnership with Technoserve, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture among others.

2. Chura Community Tissue Culture Banana project
On request from one of Nairobi’s Rotary Clubs, Africa Harvest developed another tissue culture banana promotion project for the impoverished Chura community, living in Nairobi’s outskirts. Despite close proximity to the Nairobi market, these peri-urban farmers frequently lacked food surviving on food handouts provided by Rotary.
Africa Harvest in partnership with the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), the Ministry of Agriculture and other partners secured funding from Dupont for a three-year (2003-2006) project to improve the livelihood prospects of this community.
3. Banana Virus Indexing
While the tissue culture technology produces planting materials that are free from pests and pathogens like bacteria and fungi, it does not eliminate viruses. Therefore, despite having largely germ-free planting materials, viral diseases continue to undermine Africa’s banana production causing substantial losses.

Africa Harvest, working with national agricultural research institutes in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, is implementing a system of identifying and indexing the key viruses that cause disease in bananas in a bid to improve viral disease management.