Authors: Dejene K. Mengistu, Adam Ahmed Adam, Bashir Ahmed Mohamed, Ahmed Bashir Ahmed, Basazen Fantahun, Majok Ayuen Kok, Beatrice Clarence Misaka Langwa, Liza Nelson Taban, Bogale Nigir, Hailu Terefe, Arnab Gupta, Ronnie Vernooy
Cover photo: Members of the Chefe Donsa Community Seed Bank Management Board welcome the ISSD Africa Action Learning Project 1 team (Credit: Bioversity International/R. Vernooy)
A deep dive into community seed banks
Farmers in fragile settings rarely depend on a single source of seed. They save, exchange, borrow, receive (seed aid), and buy (when they have the resources) seeds to plant. They know which varieties carry a household through a bad year, which crops women prefer, which seeds store well through a difficult weather season, an indigenous knowledge cascading through generations. These farmer-managed practices form the dynamic social seed fabric. Yet, they are exactly the practices that conflict, displacement, drought, and market disruption hit hardest.
Community seed banks are farmer-managed organisations that conserve and sustainably manage land, crop, and tree diversity. Their purpose is precisely to strengthen the farmer-managed social seed fabric. They can support seed and food security for farmers who are often isolated or marginalised and have limited access to resources and modern technologies. Where they take hold, community seed banks can become important local actors in food systems governance and the longer shift towards more sustainable and resilient seed management practices. This is the development dimension.
In some countries, community seed banks have played a role in responding to emergencies and more enduring crises — whether nature-based, such as earthquakes, flooding, or hurricanes, or conflict and war. Ethiopia, Guatemala, Nepal, Somaliland, and Zimbabwe all offer examples. This is the humanitarian relief function.
Emerging evidence points to a third dimension. Community seed banks can also act as a social mechanism for reducing conflict and tension, and for building cooperation and social cohesion. This can be defined as contributing to peace building in seed work. Core elements are inclusive governance that enables equitable and fair collective action, strengthening local institutions, and creating shared spaces for cooperation around seed management and food systems.
Under Action Learning Project 1 (ALP 1), Diverse and Resilient Seed Systems, of the ISSD Africa Community of Practice, we are researching how community seed banks and local seed businesses address all three dimensions together: development, humanitarian relief, and peace building, also known as the HDP nexus. In a recent workshop in Addis Ababa, partners from Ethiopia, Somaliland, South Sudan, and Uganda came together to present the first findings of their analysis. What follows is a synthesis of what they brought to the table: a new, deeper perspective on community seed banking.
On the ground
Ethiopia reported a national landscape of 43 community seed banks, conserving more than 35 species and over 400 varieties, with around 8,000 members involved. Some have moved beyond conservation into commercial seed multiplication. Some have served as immediate seed sources in the aftermath of conflict. Ginir Community Seed Bank is a clear example of what is possible: farmers there carried out participatory variety selection on 80 durum wheat farmer varieties, and four of those varieties are now close to formal registration. In this way, farmer knowledge is entering and strengthening the formal system. Ayba and Melfa Community seed banks in the Tigray region, and Warkaye community seed bank in the Amhara region, are clear examples of seed access points for farmers during war, when the formal seed systems collapse. These three community seed banks also offered physical protection from fighting troops.
In South Sudan, Dr. John Garang Memorial University of Science and Technology conducted 13 community outreach trainings and documented 11 newly established seed producer groups and community seed banks. The university helped set up two farmer organisations — Panda Community Seed Bank in Makuach and Agorbar Community Seed Multiplication in Kolnyang. This work has also fed into policy processes: three state-level policy dialogues and two national seed policy meetings. Yambio Farmers Community Seed Bank, established in December 2024 through the merger of four seed producer groups, stored 38 metric tons of inspected seed in its first months of operation and redistributed it to outgrowers in March 2025 for planting. By November 2025, reported seed saving had reached 46 metric tons. For a newly established community institution in a fragile context, that is a meaningful result. In Yei River County, Central Equatoria, a new community seed bank supported by the University of Juba, collected and stored 23 varieties across five crop groups — six cereal varieties, five pulse varieties, three oilseed varieties, five vegetable varieties, and four traditional landraces reported as lost or at risk. Farmers brought these varieties through a seed fair, supported by training on variety conservation and seed bank management.
Somaliland contributed several university-linked cases. Sanaag University formally opened the first community seed bank in Sanaag region on 7 May 2024. Beer Community Seed Bank in Togdheer, established in 2017, has conserved around 70 varieties — cowpea, pigeon pea, lentil, mung bean, wheat, sorghum, maize, tomato, watermelon, Sudan grass, and alfalfa — with quality control supported through the University of Burao’s seed lab. Nugaal University presented a model designed to serve as a conservation repository, farmer training facility, research hub, and humanitarian support centre all at once.
The South Sudan and Uganda Benefit Sharing Fund project is working on South-South seed and knowledge exchange, with sorghum, cowpea, and common bean at its centre, building towards two new community seed banks supported by NARO-Plant Genetic Resource Center, the University of Juba, Wageningen University and Research, and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT.
The peacebuilding question
The most careful discussion at the Addis Ababa ALP 1 workshop was about peacebuilding. It deserves to be reported carefully here too. What was learned from the cases? Yambio Farmers Community Seed Bank runs with a minimum 60 percent female representation requirement across all its governance structures, and its bylaws set out conflict resolution guidelines alongside seed distribution procedures. In a fragile setting, being clear about who decides, who receives seed, who repays, and what happens when repayment fails can take the heat out of mistrust before it escalates. And Yambio’s presentation reported that the seed bank committee has helped settle local land disputes. This is a strong claim and deserves more research to understand how that was achieved. However, it resonates with what has been observed in other countries: when a local seed institution is trusted, people may start bringing other farming-related disputes to it.
Sanaag University’s seed bank is developing bylaws to register seed deposits by crop, variety, farmer name, community, and date, with defined loan repayment terms, default conditions, and sanctions. Chefe Donsa Community Seed bank in Ethiopia has also develop strong participatory bylaws in seed governance to reduce disputes and ensure trust. Transparent rules give communities a way to negotiate seed access before a dispute turns personal or political. Farmers in the Somaliland community seed bank sites expressed satisfaction about the new opportunity offered by the community seed bank to meet and talk in freedom about local life beyond seeds.
The BSF South Sudan and Uganda project team frames community seed banks as a route to trust between communities through shared benefits, such as between host communities and refugee groups.
Obviously, community seed banks do not resolve national conflicts. They are no substitute for political dialogue, security arrangements, or justice processes. The ALP 1 group acknowledges this. More research into the peace building function is warranted and the ALP 1 group plans to do so.
Images: ALP1 Learning Workshops bringing together researchers, practitioners, and community representatives to share experiences on participatory crop improvement, community seed banks, seed system innovations, and sustainable agrobiodiversity management. Credits: Mayok Ayuen Kok (Photo 3), Bioversity International/Ronnie Vernooy (other photos)
Multi-functional institutions
A broader lesson from the Addis Ababa workshop is about how community seed banks and local seed businesses, core parts of farmer-managed seed systems, are understood and supported. Although often fragile at the start and dependent on external support, they can grow into local institutions with governance structures, bylaws, quality systems, policy recognition, and partnerships. They can outlast the project that helped establish them and support communities through cycles of stress that no one anticipated at the start.
For humanitarian agencies, the question is whether seed aid can strengthen local systems rather than bypass them. For development partners, it is whether community seed banks can be treated as institutions worthy of long-term investment, not just project deliverables. For peace and governance actors, it is whether seed systems offer practical local entry points for trust, inclusion, and cooperation.
Seed work in fragile contexts is never only about seed. It is about timing, diversity, quality, access, knowledge, rules, trust, and the rights of communities to manage their seed fabric themselves. ALP 1 will continue building the evidence base to show how this works, case by case.
Keep reading
Community Seed Banks and Seed Producer Groups in Fragile States: Operationalizing the Three Pillars of the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus