How Genebanks Helped Ahmed Bring Back Cowpea to Somalia

A System Under Strain

Somalia’s food security depends largely on three crops: sorghum, maize and cowpea. Cowpea is the most important legume, supplying affordable protein, improving soils by fixing nitrogen and fitting well into intercropping systems. Yet its diversity has been steadily eroding, due to climate change, conflict, and the absence of conservation efforts for over three decades.

Before the civil war, there were some efforts to improve the crop, including introducing new varieties from abroad. In the 1980s, one new cowpea variety performed well agronomically, but failed because consumers disliked its seed color. When conflict erupted in 1991, farmers were displaced, seed systems collapsed and many local cowpea landraces quietly disappeared. Emergency seed distributions filled urgent needs, but often with foreign varieties that were never properly tested under Somali conditions, and often didn't do well.

The consequences are visible today. Surveys show declining yields, repeated crop failures and a persistent mismatch between what farmers grow and what consumers want. Yet, demand for cowpea remains strong, particularly in cities, where red-seeded varieties are essential for dishes such as Ambuulo. In some years, cowpea is even more expensive than imported rice.

Almost Lost, but not Quite

Warsame’s response has been to rebuild cowpea from its genetic foundations. Somalia is in East Africa, a center of cowpea diversity. If well adapted varieties exist, that is where they will be – or were.

Using information from the global crop diversity database Genesys and decades of research papers, Warsame traced Somali cowpeas held in genebanks worldwide, including at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria, which holds the world’s largest collection of the crop. The Crop Trust’s Endowment Fund is one of the proud supporters of the IITA genebank.

In 1988 and 1989, just before Somalia’s civil war, IITA plant explorer Dr Stefano Padulosi led a months-long collecting mission around the country. “The mission to Somalia was quite challenging but extremely exciting for the landscape, people and culture,” Padulosi recalls. “Cowpea diversity was already eroding due to drought and post-harvest insect damage. Conserving it mattered.”

That foresight now underpins Warsame’s work. In addition to historic Somali diversity he obtained from IITA, the Australian Grain Genebank (AGG) and the US Department of Agriculture’s genebank, his team also carried out new collections in Somalia in 2025, gathering seeds from cities, villages and farmers’ fields.

From Cold Rooms to Test Plots

A wide variety of Somali cowpeas is now being tested alongside varieties from Niger, Mali and other arid regions at the Zamzam University of Science and Technology, with support from Somali universities and the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation of Somalia.

Farmers are closely involved. Surveys across three regions revealed their priorities: resistance to drought, pests and diseases; early and uniform maturity; fast cooking; and grains that are easier to digest. Seed color preference varies by region, with dark red liked near Mogadishu and lighter shades elsewhere.

“Farmers care about how their field looks,” Warsame says. “They literally look at the architecture of the plants, the way the crop stands, spreads and matures, and whether it fits their land and their markets.”

Genebanks to the Rescue

Warsame’s work is possible only because crop diversity was conserved decades ago, far from the fields where it is now needed. Genebanks are useful in emergencies. But they are much more than that. They are a critical part of the long-term infrastructure of agricultural development.

Because that infrastructure was funded and maintained, in places like IITA, Somalia now has the chance to move beyond short-term aid and rebuild its food system from the roots up, literally. Seeds collected before a war, stored thousands of kilometres away, in another country, are the raw material of recovery, and hopefully prosperity.

“Somalis need to bridge a forty-year gap in crop diversity,” Warsame says. “We cannot do that alone. And we don’t have to.”

Building food security needs patience, continuity and institutions built to withstand crises. Genebanks embody all that. Investing in genebanks is not just saving seeds. It is safeguarding choices for farmers, resilience for food systems and the possibility that, even after decades of tears, a country can perhaps smile again. Ahmed Warsame certainly is, as he remembers that fateful meal with his sister.