BY SIMON NDIVE KALLA
The partnership agreement was signed on Wednesday, February 16, 2022 by the General Manager of CDC, Frankline Njie Ngoni and the representative of the DG of the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, IITA, Guemuh Geoffrey in the presence of the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Hope Sone Ebai and some CDC top management staff. The signing took place at the Board room of CDC after the delegation from IITA paid a courtesy visit to the GM of the CDC.
The partnership includes the conduction of research for and on behalf of CDC by IITA staff both on IITA research stations and fields provided by CDC, and research in areas beneficial to both parties. Both parties equally undertook to pursue regular exchange of their respective practices and methods in fields of common interest as well as deploy all necessary efforts to ensure funding of all activities resulting from the agreement including joint-proposal development.
According to the Chairman, CDC wants to tap into IITA global network of research so that they can make use of the technology that has been developed for different speculations of crops, training and rural development in general.
He explained that they have facilities that can help CDC such as research centers that are specialised in different aspects, crops amongst others, “It is a whole range of network with the state of the act technology that individual countries cannot invest in, so there is need for a world system that collects all expertise for everybody to benefit from especially conservation of natural resources”.
To the general manager, the partnership is an opportunity for the corporation to show it is coming back into potency better than what it was before the advent of the Anglophone Crisis that has severely hit the company “It is a partnership that opens a new chapter for CDC and it promises to go beyond the traditional in terms of the crops CDC produces” Frankline Njie emphasised.
The representative of IITA Cameroon, Guemuh Geoffrey Nsofon stated that they are pleased to partner with CDC for better impacts in the Agro sector, co-create knowledge and help CDC to achieve its activities. He explained that it is a wonderful partnership since it centers around research on productivity, and IITA has as objective to carryout research for food security, research for better nutrition & more.
The International Institute for Tropical Agriculture is part of a CGAIR center which is a global research partnership towards food security, poverty reduction, natural resource conservation and development.