6 million dollars to aid research in fighting rodents threatening food security in East Africa
Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia to received 6 million dollars to fund a research finding ways of eradicating rodents that have become a prevalent threat to food security in the East African countries.
Research will be targeting rodents which include rats, mice and moles; these are the common rodents that are destroying crops in both the fields and in storage facilities. According to statistics from the Integrated Pest Management (SP-IPM), a global partnership, rodents account for at least 10 per cent of post-harvest losses. They also cause immeasurable damage by attacking crops in the fields.
The funding provided by the World Bank will go to research institutes which include Morogoro Sokoine Agriculture University in Tanzania, Busitema University in Uganda as well as Mekele University in Ethiopia.
“Students on the Masters’ Degree and Phd programmes will be sponsored to carry out research in the different ways of controlling the rodents, which are increasingly becoming a menace to farmers,” Mr Ochwo, who is also the head of Graduate Studies at Busitema Univeristy, told The Monitor
