The Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Ogun State has received an $18.8m grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to implement the Cassava: Adding Value for Africa Phase II.

According to the Project Director of CAVA II and university’s Director of Grants Management, Dr. Kolawole Adebayo, the grant will support at least 200,000 small-scale farmers and community processors in profitable and sustainable value-added cassava chains in five African countries.

The countries are Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi. The project is to cover a period of five years.

CAVA II is a product of several months of intensive research by academics, whose outcome would help immensely in the socio-economic transformation of the affected nations by stimulating employment and producing favourable balance of payments through a remarkable reduction in the importation of goods into the country.

It will also improve rural incomes and productivity of small-scale farmers, especially women.

To achieve the objectives of CAVA II, Adebayo said a number of partners such as the Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, United Kingdom; International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research-Food and Research Institute, Ghana would help provide the technical support for the initiative.

Other institutions, he named include the Tanzania Food and Nutrition Centre; African Innovation Institute, Uganda and the Chancellor College, University of Malawi.

Meanwhile, the FUNAAB Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Olusola Oyewole, has congratulated the CAVA family on the award.

Oyewole said, “Let me assure you of the readiness of the university to make great success of this feat.

It is time to get to work. The work has started.”