PM Dion Ngute reiterates gov’t’s support to AfricaRice investment products.

The official was accompanied by a delegation from the institution.

Dion Ngute expressed delight receiving the delegation from AfricaRice. He described them as “fiends”, for making “efforts to ensure that we have enough rice”.

The Prime Minister said AfricaRice’s efforts are in line with President Paul Biya’s import-substitution policy. He said government is happy with AfricaRice projects in Cameroon and will give support for the projects to move forward. 

He lauded AfricaRice’s efforts in ensuring that rice production is vulgarised not only in Cameroon, but throughout Africa.

The Prime Minister said the government is prepared to do everything for AfricaRice to work freely in the country in ensuring that rice production is boosted. He said when prominence is given to promote food security, then citizens are secured.

He regretted the fact that African countries are depending on rice importation from Asia, but noted that with the potential of rice production in Cameroon, the tables can be turned around for good. 

Chief Dr Joseph Dion Ngute also noted that multiplied efforts across the country will ensure that rice production is sustainable. He thus declared that the government is ready to support all efforts in ensuring increased production of rice.

He said he was happy that some elite and senior civil servants are getting into agriculture and rice cultivation. The PM noted that the government is looking towards increasing financing on agricultural research. “Food sufficiency and sovereignty is a must,” he stated.

Enter AfricaRice DG

Briefing the PM about AfricaRice activities and achievements in Cameroon, Dr Baboucarr Manneh talked of the impressive irrigation work that has already been established in the North Region, especially in the Logone dam in the VIVA Benue area.

He also talked about new rice varieties supplied by AfricaRice. Dr Baboucarr said technicians identified “three varieties under irrigated conditions that yield up to 10 tonnes per hectare, and then under rainfed conditions, they yield up to 5 tonnes per hectare”. 

“This shows that definitely there is a capacity for Cameroon to really increase its rice production very significantly through the deployment of high-yielding and climate-resilient varieties,” he noted.

He told the PM that AfricaRice and other partners are mobilising more resources so that good technologies can be scaled up to make sure that they are available by farmers for them “to increase their yields from the present average yield of 2.3 to go all the way to the high yield that we have seen”. 

“If we find the technicians in the VIVA Benue project are able to get up to 10 tonnes, that means it is very possible to get to those average yields in Senegal and also beyond,” he said.

He also mentioned the need for mechanisation and for farmers to be able to cultivate huge expanse of land. He emphasised that “when you want to go large scale, 7,000 hectares is very ambitious. So, for something like that, you have to also think about mechanisation to make sure the operations are done very efficiently and timely, because with hand manual labour, it is not possible to cultivate 7,000 hectares”.

Rice transformation, processing

Dr Baboucarr also mentioned the area of transformation and processing. 

“With the VIVA Benue project, they have already started training technicians to start fabricating what we call the parboiling equipment here in Cameroon. We have a system called the GEM parboiling system, which is very efficient and helps the women parboilers to eliminate the use of firewood and also smoke in the parboiling system,” he disclosed. 

“We participated in the award of certificates to 12 artisan trainees who now are trained to build improved parboiling systems. It is impressive because that training was led by one technician who was trained by AfricaRice since 2013…right now he's able to develop these improved parboiling systems all across Cameroon… these 12 new technicians can now make more parboiling systems to provide high-quality parboiled rice on the Cameroonian market, which will also improve nutrition,” he noted.

Appeals for policy support

Meanwhile, Dr Baboucarr also appealed for policy support to make local rice more competitive. This, he said, will help make Cameroon and Africa independent of rice importation.

The Africa Rice Centre (AfricaRice), is a pan-African Centre of Excellence for rice research, development and capacity building. It contributes to reducing poverty, achieving food and nutrition security and improving livelihoods of farmers and other rice value-chain actors in Africa by increasing the productivity and profitability of rice-based agri-food systems, while ensuring the sustainability of natural resources.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3905 of Thursday September 10, 2026