Development aid being phased out in Tajikistan

A successful Swedish seed project financed by Sida has been carried out in Central Asia since the year 2000. According to Rutger Persson, supporting Tajikistan in the development of its seed industry is a good form of aid in the fight to reduce poverty. Rutger Persson has worked with development aid in Africa for 20 years. He bought Svalöf Weibull’s Consultancy Department 3 years ago and now runs it as a private company.

During the Soviet era, countries like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan were successful in plant breeding and seed production. The post-Soviet era has meant the halt of centralised supplies of material and technical resources from Moscow, the collapse of state plant breeding and the drastic decline in the quality of seed.

Sweden has a long tradition and knowledge of reforming a subsidized agriculture and seed industry to a commercialised seed industry and prosperous farming. Our goal is to ‘transfer’ the Swedish experience to Central Asia. Our concept is based on strengthening all the links in the seed industry.

In the year 2000, Svalöf (in consortium with NIRAS) was awarded a contract by the EU to develop the seed industry in Kyrgyzstan. The success achieved during the first three years encouraged Sida to take over the financial responsibility for this project when EU funding ended. A similar project was initiated in Tajikistan in 2004.The main objectives of the project are to build a commercial seed industry where profit is closely connected to sustainability. This includes strengthening institutional and regulatory structures to international standards; improving plant breeding, variety testing, seed processing and marketing services so as to create a competitive marketing, seed farms’ management practices and techniques in order to improve output and quality. However, it is a race against time as the Swedish Government has adopted a phase-out strategy for development cooperation with Central Asia, to take place during 2008–2010.

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