Closing Remarks for the 2010 African Green Reovolution-Dr. Judith Rodin
Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:
Good evening. I’m very glad to have the opportunity to conclude this extremely productive day with a few closing thoughts.
This African Green Revolution Forum has already proven to be a wonderful venue for discussing the challenges and opportunities for…achieving a Green Revolution in Africa.
But at this moment of what is already a highly successful conference, perhaps we can pause to consider the word that is at the heart of our efforts: revolution.
“Revolution,” in our modern use of the word, means wholesale change.
It means throwing out the old, and shepherding in the new.
In other words, revolution implies renewal.
But long ago, revolution meant something very different.
It meant restoration.
It meant turning back the clock, reversing damage done.
The word itself comes from the Latin revolvere, which literally means to “roll back.”
As we work together to create a vibrant economic future for the people and nations of Africa –
with agriculture as an engine of growth and prosperity –
which revolution do we seek?
Do we seek a restoration
Do we seek a renewal
Or must we seek an entirely different kind of revolution for the 21st Century.
Because we face a multitude new and complex challenges:
Climate change and environmental degradation;
the immense pressures of global food demand on local African communities;
Population growth and expanding urbanization.
Skepticism based on past failures.
In the face of these challenges, we know that Africa must increase the productivity of its farms.
It makes no sense for Africa to continue importing 40 percent of its rice, at a cost of $3.6 billion each year, when rice production in Africa could readily be doubled using the new NERICA rices and just modest levels of fertilizer.
But today we have agreed that increases in productivity alone will not be sufficient.
Farmers need access to markets where they can convert increased production into higher incomes.
And Africa’s scientists and breeders must build resilience into the seeds and agronomic practices that farmers employ so they can withstand better and rebound from the shocks and stresses that will result from climate change.
These intersecting, interconnected challenges of the 21st century demand three distinct revolutions that together will achieve a holistic Green Revolution in Africa.
First, we need revolutionary ideas.
Progress always springs from the seeds of daring ideas.
In the 20th century, my Rockefeller Foundation forbearers marshaled the energy and ingenuity of scientists, governments and farmers and ignited the first Green Revolution in the developing world.
More than half the people on earth today eat rice and wheat varieties containing genes introduced by these scientists in the 1960s.
When they began, however, the skeptics said such an achievement was far from reach.
Take India, for example.
In the 1960s, the US Food for Aid Program shipped 5 million tons of wheat to India every year.
One 1967 bestseller called India’s food situation “hopeless.”
Another leading scholar characterized the notion of Indian self-sufficiency as “fantasy.”
We know – now – thanks to Norman Borlaug and countless others, that India’s wheat crop increased from 11 million tons to 60 million tons.
Imagine the world without this historic accomplishment, which sprung from a revolutionary idea.
This would be a world with more poverty and disease, a world with more frequent refugee crises and forced migrations, a world with more regular conflicts over scarcer resources.
A revolutionary idea half a century ago changed the course of history and saved a billion lives.
A generation later, we face challenges equal in size and significance.
So we must continue to innovate, and continue to invest in innovation.
We must continue to improve availability and access to quality seeds, soil health and water management strategies,
To finance mechanisms, market access, and policy innovations that are integrated and mutually reinforcing, such as the breadbasket strategy that AGRA is driving today, and that will take root here in Ghana and elsewhere.
But we must also focus on pioneering the next generation of innovations to increase agricultural productivity, profitability and sustainability.
Let me give a few examples of how we are approaching this at the Rockefeller Foundation.
One of our strategies is to help strengthen the capacity of African agricultural research institutions to work more closely with climate scientists.
to fine-tune the complex models that project likely changes in climate to specific countries and regions of Africa.
And then, to use the resulting projections to develop and undertake programs designed to help farmers prepare for the anticipated shifts in weather patterns before they occur.
Another strategy is focused on developing new weather indexed micro- insurance products to help Africa’s smallholder farmers and African governments reduce the risks associated with shocks and stresses caused by climate change, and to speed their recovery from such shocks.
When the weather indicators, such as government rain gauges, designate that a drought has occurred across a region, all farmers in that region who have insurance will receive the benefits.
Pilots are underway - as public/private partnerships in Kenya, Ethiopia and Malawi.
The insurance is often linked to provision of microcredit, thereby removing some of the risks farmers face when using credit to purchase inputs.
As another example of revolutionary innovation,
We've helped the World Food Program developed software platform, Africa RiskView, which translates satellite-based rainfall data into near real-time needs and cost estimates for every first-level administrative district for every country in sub-Saharan Africa.
RiskView will enable African governments and the WFP to begin preparing for food shortages well before they occur and prevent them from developing into a famine situation.
They will be able to manage the risks to food security ahead of time rather than trying to manage a food crisis after it occurs.
Another idea that takes advantage of the spread of mobile technology throughout Africa is building a network of experts to assist farmers with answers to key questions they have across the value chain, climate, fertilizers, agro-dealer locations, Credit, disease, market, transport and so on.
We have partnered with KenCall, Kenya’s largest and most successful call center, to implement a national helpline for farmers in Kenya.
Today, farmers in Kenya can call a single number that connects them with agricultural experts, currently at KenCall but soon from many African universities and agricultural research institutions.
The information on the questions asked and the answers given are then logged into a database that over time will become a valuable repository of expert information for smallholder farmers.
Many others are testing fantastic ideas throughout the continent that will have a revolutionary impact.
Such ideas were the focus of the valuable discussions at this Forum and must be the subject of our continuing efforts in the months and years to come.
The second revolution we must pursue is one of revolutionary partnerships.
This is an area in which we have achieved much success here in Accra.
AGRF has brought together leaders from the public and private sectors – and it has brought about innovative partnerships that promise to boost Africa’s agricultural productivity and profitability.
Some of these partnerships will increase access to finance across the agricultural value chain in Africa.
Others will increase agricultural productivity by more effectively delivering yield-enhancing inputs and market services to farmers.
And many will help create a better and more enabling policy environment for agricultural development to ensure that smallholder farmers – and particularly women farmers and entrepreneurs – are an integral part of the development process and receive a fair share of profits and benefits.
All of these partnerships and many more are needed to implement our revolutionary ideas.
Today we have stated clearly that for agriculture to become the engine of economic development in Africa, governments, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations must join forces in unprecedented ways
to enable small scale commercial farming and small African-owned businesses serving farmers to thrive.
I’m pleased to report a number of positive developments that have resulted already from this Forum. Everyone has agreed today that it's Africa's turn and the time has come.
· Together, we have committed to address the challenge of access to capital for smallholder farmers and agrobusiness across the value chain.
· Together we've committed to creating the right policy frameworks.
· Together, we've committed to focusing on the role and needs of women.
Our new partnerships will have a real world impact on the lives of famers and their families, and on the vibrancy of local economies.
But they also speak to the broader need for the continued and collective leadership of governments, private partners, and the NGO community across a range of issue areas to ensure these partnership deliver real results.
This is the third kind of revolution we need: revolutionary leadership.
Many years after his Nobel Prize-winning work, at age 93, Norman Borlaug spoke to assembled African leaders at the Africa Fertilizer Summit in 2006, in Abija.
He said to his audience, “Don’t just sit and talk – Do it. Lead! Lead! Lead!”
It is now four years later and Norman is gone, but he would be pleased that good progress has been made in some African countries.
However, across Africa, the need is still great; the cause is still urgent; and the requirement for African leadership remains paramount.
In other words…Norman’s words…we must lead, lead, lead.
Imagine the possibilities if we do.
Imagine family farms in Africa that produce with abundance.
Imagine more women sowing the seeds of their communities’ renewal.
Imagine champions for every African country.
And then stop imagining – and listen to one of her stories.
Annet Namayanja grew up in Kiboga, a small farming town in Uganda’s rural, impoverished, central region.
As a Rockefeller fellow, she studied agriculture, and earned her advanced degrees at Makere University.
Several years ago, she began researching the common field bean, so nutrient-rich that it’s called “the poor man’s meat.”
These beans grow rapidly.
Farmers can cultivate two, sometimes three crops a year.
They provide essential income for women and families like Annet’s.
In her dissertation work, Annet identified a genetic trait in bean seeds that strengthens their resistance to root rot.
Through cross-pollination, she then bred that trait into two new varieties of beans that are hardier and better adapted to the central Ugandan soil and climate.
Not long thereafter, we received an email from Annet. She was thrilled that the farmers in her village had devised names, in their local dialect, for her two new bean varieties. They call the first “mulwanisa” or “endurance.”
They call the second “musahura,” or “replenishment.”
These are precisely the qualities that communities like Kiboga, throughout Africa, need today more than ever: the endurance to anticipate, prepare for, and recover from the terrible local impacts of global climate change; the restoration of economic opportunity and self-sufficiency; and the replenishment of faith in the promise of a better tomorrow.
This is a wonderful vision, and one within reach.
With revolutionary ideas, partnership, and leadership, we can and will achieve a Green Revolution in 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.