MBABANE – Minister of Agriculture Jabulani Mabuza has today launched the Taiwan Africa Vegetable Initiative (TAVI), a 3 year project to safeguard vegetable biodiversity for food & nutrition in Africa.
The project is also being rolled out in Benin, Madagascar and Tanzania. In fact, it is done in collaboration with the World Vegetable Center.
TAVI aims to improve child and household nutrition through field-tested school and home garden interventions, upgrade the gene banks of Eswatini’s National Plant Genetics Centre in Malkerns as well as rescue and conserve the genetic resources of traditional African vegetables.
“It gives us an opportunity to explore conservation, production & utilisation of indigenous vegetables. We appreciate the financial and technical investment that goes into such initiatives,” Minister of Agriculture Jabulani Mabuza said.
Mabuza stated that TAVI came at a time when government of Eswatini and other partners (the World Food Programme & FAO) are collaboratively piloting and implementing the Home Grown School Feeding Programme to support the National School Feeding Programme.
“I am hopeful that by the end of the project, Eswatini will have a state-of-the-art gene bank facility that will ably conserve and safeguard all the traditional vegetable landraces from the four African biodiversity hotspots,” Mabuza said.
Meanwhile, Oliver Han, Taiwan Minister-Counselor said: “Traditional African vegetables such as amaranth and eggplant are of particular interest for diversification of horticultural production in Eswatini and other African countries. Yet, African farmers have difficulty accessing quality seeds,”
