The Chicago Council on Global Affairs: Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security

May 20, 2010 | Washington DC
Remarks by Dr. Namanga Ngongi*

Chairpersons

Dr. Rajiv Shah Administrator of the USAID

Distinguished Guests and participants,

Ladies and Gentlemen

It is an honour and a great pleasure to be here with you, and I would like to thank sincerely the Chicago Council for inviting me to address this illustrious gathering.

This is an extremely important meeting for global agricultural development because it unveils how the US Agency for International Development will implement the US Government’s Food Security Initiative through Feed the Future.

As we have heard Dr. Shah say, there must be significant emphasis on the small holder farmer, to helping the small scale producer move from subsistence agriculture to growing their own farming businesses. This value chain approach is particularly relevant to AGRA’s mission and work.

This gathering, just a couple of weeks after the launch of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) by the United States, Canada and Spain along with Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, shows clearly the commitment of the US administration and its determination to ensure that hunger and malnutrition become things of the past, especially in the poorest nations of the world. 

But this afternoon, as we speak, one-in-three Africans went to sleep tonight hungry. So a day of talking is good, but action is better.

Agriculture is Africa’s lifeline. And agriculture is the roadmap for moving tens of millions of Africans out of poverty. Three-quarters of our people farm and roughly 40 percent of our GDP comes from agriculture. Smallholder farmers, the majority of whom are women, produce most of Africa’s food. Most farm to survive, with minimal resources and little support.
 

Lacking good seed and healthy soils, African agriculture has fallen far behind that of every other continent (except Antarctica). Africa’s farmlands yield one-quarter of the global average. 

The question today is not whether we should invest in Africa’s farms, but how we invest. 

While our continent’s agriculture is in a daunting state of disrepair, progress is being made. The agricultural system can not only be fixed, it can become a model of efficiency, high productivity, and sustainability. 

AGRA is working in partnership with national governments and other stakeholders to transform African agriculture through integrated programs in seeds, soils, market access, policy and innovative financing. Together, these innovations will trigger sustainable change. There is no ‘silver bullet’ or one big solution but rather many small interventions scaled up along the value chain.This will transform smallholder farming. 

Our work is highly focused. AGRA’s efforts are to marshal a critical mass of resources in places where there is the best likelihood of success — the breadbasket regions of Africa. These areas have relatively abundant rains, good soils and infrastructure, markets and many smallholder farmers. 

With smart planning and sound investment, they can change from being areas of chronic food insecurity to breadbaskets of productivity. 

One example is Tanzania. The Minister of Agriculture, Steven Wasira, recently reported that smallholder farmers in the Southern Highlands, one of the country’s breadbaskets, produced a record maize harvest in 2008/2009. This was critical to ensuring food security in a year of serious drought in other regions of the country. The Minister attributed this success in part to Tanzania’s partnership with AGRA, where we worked to increase the availability of fertilizers and good seeds, unlock affordable credit for farming, and expand markets for smallholder farmers.

Another key to breadbasket development is determining which investments across the value chain offer the greatest potential. In northern Ghana, for example, the country’s 400,000 hectares of lowland rice yields only 0.5 tons per hectare. This can be changed – and rapidly, too. Introducing existing and new crop varieties such as NERICA (New Rice for Africa) and improved soil and water management practices could raise yields by six fold to at least 3 tons per hectare. This would enable Ghana to become a net exporter of rice, and free up $500 million now being spent annually on rice imports.
AGRA’s approach rewards innovation and scales up successful initiatives wherever possible. Beyond breadbaskets, we work to boost farm incomes across even wider and more challenging environments. 

Currently, only about one quarter of Africa’s smallholder farmers have access to good seeds, compared to, for instance, 80 percent of farmers in China. AGRA is committed to significantly increasing the number of smallholder farmers able to sow high-yielding, disease-tolerant and climate-ready seed. 

AGRA is rapidly increasing the availability of high-quality, locally-adapted seed, at prices farmers can afford. We are doing this through our investments in farmer-participatory crop breeding, training the next generation of African crop scientists, and providing start-up capital for establishment or expansion of African seed enterprises. 

By doing so, AGRA is rapidly increasing the availability of high-quality, locally adapted seed, at prices farmers can afford. Over the last two years, AGRA’s Program for Africa’s Seed Systems, building on work started by the Rockefeller Foundation has contributed to the release of over 100 locally adapted, high-yielding varieties of staple food crops like cassava, beans, sorghum, maize and riceand more than doubled the production of improved seed by 38 seed companies.
One of the success stories is Mrs. Coulibaly. With AGRA’s support, she created Faso Kaba, a private seed company in Mali. Eighteen months after receiving its first bit of assistance from AGRA, Faso Kaba had already produced and sold more than 300 metric tons of certified seed.

AGRA’s seeds work directly complements its efforts to revitalize Africa’s severely degraded soils. AGRA’s Soil Health Program is working with national and international partners to revitalize millions of hectares of degraded farmland over the next 10 years. Increased use of inorganic and organic fertilizers, combined with improved sustainable land and water management, is critical to raising yields. AGRA is supporting a continent-wide effort to map Africa’s soils to determine the specific elements needed to rebuild soil fertility across a variety of agro-ecologies and cropping systems.

AGRA is supporting the development of cost-effective regional fertilizer procurement facilities and national fertilizer production and distribution, as well as promoting methods of enriching the soil through biological nitrogen fixation (fertilizer trees, grain legume rotations) and organic matter.

Once good seed and fertilizers are available, they must get into farmer’s hands. Therefore, AGRA is expanding national networks of rural farm input retailers. At the village level, rural traders in farm inputs, or agro-dealers, are uniquely situated to reach millions of farmers with seed, fertilizers, and other farm inputs and knowledge of how to use them effectively thus supplementing the work of public extension services. In just four countries--Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, and Zambia—AGRA has funded the training and certification of 9200 agro-dealers. In 2008 alone, these agro-dealers sold more than $45 million in inputs to farmers. 

Once farmers increase their yield and produce a surplus, they need access to regional and global markets. AGRA is improving farmers’ access to market information and training them in how markets function. 
For example, through our support to a non-profit business and economic development organization, 12,000 banana growers in Uganda – more than one-third of them women – have increased their farm gate prices by 300 percent simply by being empowered with market knowledge.

Infrastructure and technological innovation are critical to improving market access and reducing transaction costs. Many of Africa’s staple crops, such as cassava and bananas, are bulky, perishable and cannot be traded without significant processing. Uganda, for example, is the second largest producer of bananas in the world, but 75th in terms of exports.

Many of these agro-dealers, as well as smallholder farmers, are benefiting from AGRA’s work in innovative financing. AGRA has thus far partnered with several donors and African commercial banks to increase agricultural lending by commercial banks. AGRA and Partners have used “loan guarantee funds” totaling $17 million to leverage $160 million in more affordable loans from banks. Interest rate of 18 percent charged by Equity Bank in Kenya was reduced to 12 percent under the AGRA supported scheme. These loans go to agro-dealers, farmers, processors, and other operators along the agriculture value chain. AGRA aims to leverage at least $4 billion in financing for smallholder farmers and investments along the agricultural value chain over the next five to seven years. At present, only 3 percent of commercial bank lending in Africa goes to agriculture.

Agricultural policies across Africa must support women farmers, who are the backbone of Africa’s rural economies. Policies must ensure land security for women, and enhance their access to financing, extension services and education. In addition, policy support means strengthening farmers’ associations and civil society organizations that benefit smallholder farmers. 

We must also help farmers adapt to and mitigate climate change, which many climatologists predict will impact African farmers more harshly than those of any other region in the world.

AGRA’s Policy Program is in the process of working with African Governments to establish policy nodes and hubs that will facilitate data collection the discussion of key policy constraints that hinder agricultural development. In this way, home grown evidence based policies adapted to the particular conditions of each country will be formulated and implemented. This should also facilitate the attainment of the CAADP budgetary target. 

The Policy Program is also involved in the large-scale training of Agricultural Economists who will increasingly play important roles in policy formulation in their countries.

How AGRA is achieving success rests with a couple of key elements of our approach – two of which I want to mention because they align with what we have been discussing today.

These are: the power of partnerships and building private sector capacity. 

AGRA begins by working with country leaders and their national plans. We partner with both the public and private sectors, with African governments, the G-8 and other governments, and with farmers, farmers’ organizations and regional and international development partners such as NEPAD/CAADP, the FAO, the World Food Programme, IFAD, the Millennium Challenge Corporation and others to unlock the continent’s agricultural potential.
We are becoming the partner of choice for these organizations because of what we bring to their own work in African agriculture:

· a comprehensive strategic approach across the food value chain

· a wealth of technical expertise and knowledge

· important grassroots relationships across several markets

· a deep commitment to the single goal of revitalizing African smallholder farmers.

In the years ahead, building our private sector capacity will ensure sustainable systems so that our investments today will thrive tomorrow. 

Our challenge now is how to expand our efforts. We will need partners working together to do this. Partnerships are critical to the attainment of an African Green Revolution and the financial sector is probably where the need for partnerships is greatest. AGRA must raise funds for its own operation if it is to successfully implement its new strategy.

Implementing the type of comprehensive changes necessary will require massive investments in infrastructure in Africa. Our continent today has a lower density of critical agricultural support infrastructures than Asia had in the 1960s. The negative consequences are staggering. For example, it costs $3,000 to transport a container from Mombasa to Kigali, located next door; about twice the cost of shipping the same container from Mombasa to Singapore or Malaysia.
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) estimates that Africa will need $32 to $39 billion annually to achieve the full economic potential of its farm sector, not including the cost of climate adaptation. 

These funds must come from a combination of sources: African governments, overseas development assistance, foreign direct investment, philanthropic contributions from within and outside Africa, and Africa’s domestic private sector. Africa needs support on a par with that which was invested in agriculture in Asia and South America in the 1960s and 1970s, which averted famine and spurred high, sustainable rates of economic growth.

But, while this investment may seem massive, it is achievable. If African governments meet their commitment to invest 10% of their national budgets to agriculture under the CAADP, at least $20 billion will become available from domestic budgets. Already, many governments have begun to do so. At the same time, increased investments by the global community, including bilateral and multilateral partners, foundations, and especially the private sector, can make up much of the remaining shortfall. 

I am encouraged by a renewed commitment I hear from President Obama and the all of government approach and the NGO community to increase the U.S. investment in African agriculture. AGRA has experience and expertise in each of the areas where the U.S. government is looking to invest through the Feed the Future Initiative. 
AGRA is uniquely positioned to help ensure these initiatives take root in smallholder farms across Africa. This will ensure success. 

AGRA very much wants to partner with the US government to transform small holder farms and thus ensure Africans live in a food secure world.

Thank you.

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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.