Breeding Environments: WARDA and the Pursuit of Rice Productivity in West Africa

Rice in West Africa is cultivated in different ecological, social, and agricultural settings. This chapter takes these diverse environments as the entry point for revisiting the history of the West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA) and of rice research and breeding in the region. Irrigated rice emerged as a major environment of focus in the colonial period, primarily serving rice schemes in the dry zone of former French colonies Mali, Senegal, and northern Ivory Coast. Colonial projects excluded the humid uplands, a prominent rice environment across the forested zones of West Africa. Decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s initially implied a focus on national environments, followed by a regrouping into three main environments when WARDA was established in 1970. WARDA’s strategy excluded the humid uplands until the 1990s, although experts, including CGIAR advisors, argued early on for the importance of the humid uplands as a major environment for research and improvement. The chapter contrasts these findings with standard historical accounts of WARDA that highlight technical breeding capacity, a perspective fitting its radical policy change and rebranding in the 2000s.