Abstract

The sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region is on a very low pace of the achievements the nutrition and sustainable development goals. The alarming food and nutritional security situation in the region caused by the growing population in SSA and worsen by the negative effects of climate change on agri-food systems calls for innovative approaches. Yet, SSA is endowed with a huge diversity of species known as orphan crops that have the potential to address food scarcity caused by climate change due to their adaptability and nutritional value in low-input agricultural systems. Despite this potential, modern agricultural systems in SSA depends only on 1% of the crop diversity available to feed 60% of the population. Orphan crops have benefited from very limited modern scientific and technological advances. ORPHAN (Mobility for high skilled scientists and entrepreneurs on orphan crops in higher education for accelerated) Scholarship Project is an initiative of five highly qualified public universities from three African regions and one university in Europe to advance knowledge on orphan crops through digital agriculture.