AGRA and NEPAD: A Partnership for Action
Dr. Namanga A. Ngongi
President, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa
Remarks Delivered at the Signing of the AGRA-NEPAD MOU
9 November 2009, Abuja, Nigeria
Hon. Minister Dr. Sayyad Ruma, Prof. Mkandawire, Ministers, Excellencies, Representatives of Civil Society and Farmers Groups, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today is an important day in Africa’s fight for food security, prosperity and sustainable agricultural development.
The partnership between AGRA and NEPAD lays the basis to greatly accelerate our complementary efforts, and to make a real difference in the lives of millions of farmers and their families, who labor daily with minimal resources and support. Our joint efforts will help transform their subsistence farming into viable farming enterprises that are connected to dynamic local, national, regional and global markets. This is our vision.
Today, our chief concern is ending the poverty and hunger that abounds across Africa, especially in rural areas. The potential exists now to sustainably double or triple farmers’ yields. This would have a huge impact on improving food security and incomes.
It is mainly a matter of getting research results into farmers’ hands, particularly smallholder farmers, most of whom are women. This will require policy and institutional changes, new partnerships and resources and coordinated initiatives across the agricultural value chain.
NEPAD knows this can be done, and they have set up the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) to help achieve it. They have worked with African governments to deepen their commitment to the CAADP goals, and allocate 10 percent of their national budgets to agriculture, in pursuit of 6% annual agricultural growth.
AGRA knows it can be done. AGRA has set up integrated programs in seeds, soils, market access, policy, and innovative financing to help achieve it.
AGRA’s integrated programs will help propel the CAADP vision forward and assist countries in realizing the CAADP goals through achieving sustainable national Green Revolutions, starting from breadbasket areas, which meet each country’s unique circumstances.
Since 2006, AGRA’s work in 14 African countries has led to some tangible results in alleviating food insecurity. We have trained 20 African plant breeders and 80 more are in training. Each is working to improve staple food crops grown by farmers in their countries. With AGRA’s support, 65 new crop varieties have been released, increasing farmer productivity potential and ability to cope with climate change. Thirty-two small African seed enterprises supported by AGRA have helped get these varieties to farmers. The companies have collectively produced about 6,000 MT of certified seed—and sold almost to the last seed. Farmers who bought the new varieties saw the prices they normally pay for seed drop by 20 percent.
AGRA’s integrated programs also provide farmers and agricultural businesses with affordable finance: $160 million worth so far, leveraged from local commercial banks through credit guarantees.
Rural agro-dealers are among those who can use this finance to stock their shelves with affordable seeds and fertilizers. AGRA support has encouraged 5,000 such small rural businesses in 11 countries.
AGRA’s Soil Health Program is based on integrated soil fertility management. It promotes programs as varied as local fertilizer blending and packaging in Tanzania, to the promotion of nitrogen-fixing legume crops to tens of thousands of Mozambican farmers. Our Market Program uses commodity exchanges and training programs to connect farmers to markets. One program has enabled 24,000 banana growers in Uganda and Tanzania to increase the price they get by at least 30 percent.
AGRA’s Policy Program recently launched an initiative to increase the policy-making capacity of African countries, through strengthening African parliamentary committees and think tanks. It is championing policies that support farmers, from the reform of tariff structures to farm support programs implemented by governments to improve the access of poor farmers to improved seeds, fertilizers, and other inputs.
These are the kinds of integrated programs that are beginning to make a difference in African countries. It is not hard to see how this work fits into the four pillars of CAADP. Through working together, AGRA and NEPAD can help scale up successes; and identify other critical programs, from infrastructure development to water management.
Our partnership opens a good opportunity to focus development on the breadbasket areas within African countries. Through the CAADP Roundtable Process, we can identify the areas with the highest agricultural potential and large numbers of smallholder farmers. Targeted investments can then galvanize the whole agricultural value chain, accelerating the production of food surpluses that can help feed Africa.
The value of this Memorandum of Understanding therefore comes from our actions on the ground. Achieving the CAADP goals and an African Green Revolution is ultimately about actions, not words, not paper. With this compact, AGRA rededicates itself to work with and on behalf of Africa’s smallholder farmers, in partnership with NEPAD. The transformation of African agriculture and betterment of farmers is the surest path to food security and prosperity for Africa.
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About the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)
AGRA is a dynamic partnership working across the African continent to help millions of small-scale farmers and their families lift themselves out of poverty and hunger. AGRA programmes develop practical solutions to significantly boost farm productivity and incomes for the poor while safeguarding the environment. AGRA advocates for policies that support its work across all key aspects of the African agricultural value chain from seeds, soil health and water to markets and agricultural education.
AGRA's Board of Directors is chaired by Kofi A Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations. Dr Namanga Ngongi, former Deputy Executive Director of the World Food Programme, is AGRA's president. With support from The Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK's Department for International Development and other donors, AGRA works across sub-Saharan Africa and maintains offices in Nairobi, Kenya, and Accra, Ghana.