Cassava is an important crop in sub-Saharan Africa for food security, income generation, and industrial development. Business-oriented production systems require reliable supplies of high-quality seed. Major initiatives in Nigeria and Tanzania have sought to establish sustainable cassava seed systems. These include the deployment of new technologies for early generation seed (EGS) production; the promotion of new high-yielding and disease-resistant varieties; the updating of government seed policy to facilitate enabling certification guidelines; the application of ICT tools, Seed Tracker and Nuru AI, to simplify seed system management; and the establishment of networks of cassava seed entrepreneurs (CSEs). CSEs have been able to make profits in both Nigeria (US$ 551–988/ha) and Tanzania (US$ 1,000 1,500/ha). In Nigeria, the critical demand driver for cassava seed businesses is the provision of new varieties. Contrastingly, in Tanzania, high incidences of cassava brown streak disease mean that there is a strong demand for the provision of healthy seed that has been certified by regulators. These models for sustainable cassava seed system development offer great promise for scaling to other cassava-producing countries in Africa where there is strong government support for the commercialization of the cassava sector.

Zoonotic diseases occur as a result of human interactions with animals with the inadvertent transmission of pathogens from one to another. Zoonoses remain a major cause of morbidity and mortality among human populations, as they have been a source of pandemics in human history. Viral zoonoses account for a significant percentage of pathogens of zoonotic sources, posing a huge risk to men’s general health and fertility. This review identifies the existing knowledge on the effects of viral zoonotic diseases on male fertility. Evidence from reviewed articles showed that viral zoonotic diseases elicit an immune reaction that induces inflammatory mediators and impairs testicular functions such as spermatogenesis and steroidogenesis, leading to abnormal semen parameters that lead to subfertility/infertility. Although most zoonotic viruses linger in semen long after recovery, their presence in semen does not directly translate to sexual transmission. There is a need to further delineate the possible risk of the sexual transmission of these diseases. While a few of the viral zoonotic diseases discussed have been well-studied, there is a need to place attention on others so as to fully understand their effects on male reproduction and therefore take the right steps towards preserving male fertility.

Bacterial zoonotic diseases hold significant public health importance due to their substantial contribution to human morbidity and mortality. These infections have been implicated in reducing the fertility rate among couples of reproductive age. Despite the increasing prevalence of infertility and sub-fertility in men, there has been limited investigation into the possible effects of bacterial zoonotic infections on the male reproductive system. The purpose of this review is to describe common bacterial zoonotic diseases and their effects on human reproduction in order to unveil the hidden roles these infections could play in male factor infertility. While there is a dearth of information on this subject from human studies, available evidence from experimental animals suggests that bacterial zoonotic diseases impair male reproductive functions and structures primarily through the activation of the inflammatory response and distortion of the antioxidant system, resulting in the generation of oxidative species. In light of the limited research on bacterial zoonotic diseases and their role in male reproduction, efforts must be directed towards the subject to unravel the underlying pathological mechanisms and reduce the incidence among the human populace, either through preventive or curative measures.