Promoting good seed in East Africa

African Indigenous Vegetables (AIVs) are rich in vitamins and minerals. They are also improving food security and generating income for rural and urban communities in Africa. The increasing demand for AIVs is being limited by a lack of available quality seed. The majority of farmers use either seed saved from their crops over many years or from open-air markets, with problems of both purity and germination. Farmer-led seed enterprises can, and do, contribute towards food and nutrition security as they promote crop diversity, as well as improving livelihoods through income earned from the seed. Making them sustainable requires a holistic approach looking at the whole value chain and this includes ensuring effective production and marketing of the vegetables, which can, in turn, provide and sustain demand for the seed. CABI’s Good Seed Initiative (GSI) ran between 2013 and 2016 and the project aimed to promote the consumption of AIVs, improve access to them and develop new varieties.