Development of an integrated rice seed sector in sub-Saharan Africa: meeting the needs of farmers.

(eds M.C.S. Wopereis et al.) 179 The ‘informal’ or ‘farmer seed’ system includes farmers managing their own seed, but also informal seed trade among farmers and purchase from the paddy grain market. Establishing commercially viable seed systems for rice is particularly challenging in subSaharan Africa, because of the predominance of farm-saved seed for rice crops, the easy production of rice seed as it is self-pollinating, the complexity of African rice cropping systems and the great diversity of rice varieties. In most of West and Central Africa, formal rice seed systems have been more developmentthan market-oriented. Such seed initiatives have the development goal of assisting farmers in accessing seed of new varieties, rather than a commercial goal of creating profitable seed enterprises. They are often characterized by heavy and inefficient bureaucratic structures within classic seed regulatory frameworks. These constraints are exacerbated by slow processes of variety development and evaluation (addressed in Kumashiro et al., Chapter 5, this volume), and slow variety release and registration (addressed in Sanni et al., Chapter 6, this volume). In East and Southern Africa, examples exist of well-functioning commercially viable seed Introduction