Funded by the Intra – Africa Mobility Scheme, a mobility program developed by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACAE) of the European Union, MoBreed aims at harmonizing trainings programs among its founding partners on plant breeding and educating high profile breeders who can promote the underutilized crops in Africa to tackle food security issues on the continent. Through this mobility program, students will receive high quality training on the latest technologies of plant breeding. Harmonization of working procedures will allow the recognition of curriculum and credits among the partner universities. Staff of these universities will also have the possibility to take part to this program in order to advance their knowledge on the orphan crops targeted by MoBreed.
Ten priority underutilized crops will be promoted by MoBreed. Discover our priority species list.
Farmers in Africa, though they cultivate well-renowned species such as maize, rice or potato, also produce orphan crops that offer a better adaptability to climate change. However, research programs have for a long time neglected these crops, which have demonstrated their potentials to sustain agriculture resilience against diseases, droughts and other stresses. MoBreed is committed to train breeders who will develop, improve and promote the aforementioned crops, most of them listed among the 101 underutilized food crops in Africa by the African Orphan Crop Consortium (AOCC).
Lecturers and partners of MoBreed are senior researchers and members of the African Plant Breeding Academy (AfPBA). They will deliver MSc and PhD programs to the MoBreed’ scholars, and supervise jointly scholars’ research. These training programs are among the best degree and non-degree programs delivered by the plant breeding and agricultural departments of the partner universities. Profiles of our top scientists are available here.
A quality assurance scheme will be developed over the mobility program to ensure that students and staffs will receive the appropriate trainings to become high profile breeders. Institutional support from the Centre for Pedagogy and Quality Assurance (CPUAQ, University of Abomey-Calavi) or the Quality Promotion and Assurance Department (University of KwaZulu-Natal) will be provided to enhance the quality of the teaching, learning and research functions in MoBreed.
All the members of the MoBreed consortium share long-term experiences in managing international mobility programs. A country representative is nominated by every partner university to take care of the specific needs addressed by the scholars. They will also be responsible for the in-country visibility activities, preparatory academic activities, selection process, recognition of study periods, project quality assurance and academic follow-up, institutional service, necessary services and facilities to students (e.g. welcoming, housing, coaching, assistance before and during mobility, support for visas and residence permits, language courses).