Food production in West Africa is not keeping pace with the population growth because bulk of the agriculture in this region is still based on traditional inter-cropping systems with little or no application of fertilizers and chemicals. The average use of fertilizers in West Africa is less than 10kg/ha/year. This leads to a negative balance of nutrients in the soil and continuous decline in crop yields which perpetuates malnutrition, hunger and poverty. How to reverse this trend is a major challenge of agricultural research in this region. The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in collaboration with other IARCs and NARS partners, has developed a model which holds great promise for increasing food production in West Africa without degrading the soils. This model involves a holistic combination of improved and resilient crop varieties, improved planting pattern with minimum and selective application of fertilizers and pesticides, feeding of crop residues to small ruminants in permanent enclosures on the home compound and returning of the manure to the field. Based on this model, two 'best-bet' options are becoming popular with farmers in northern Nigeria. These are, 1) an improved strip-cropping system involving 2 rows of densely planted improved sorghum variety : 4 rows of densely planted improved medium maturing cowpea variety in the Sudan savanna where the rainfall is about 600mm and 2) an improved strip-cropping system involving 2 rows of densely planted improved maize variety : 4 rows of densely planted double cropping of an improved 60-day cowpea in the northern Guinea savanna where the rainfall is about 1000mm. On-farm evaluation of these systems covering several states and over 2000 farmers in northern Nigeria with the financial support from USAID, Gatsby Foundation and DFID has shown over 300% increase in productivity, enhanced income generation and improved livelihoods of the farm families.