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Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa

About the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa

AGRA Photo

AGRA is a dynamic, African-led partnership working across the African continent to help millions of small-scale farmers and their families lift themselves out of poverty and hunger. AGRA programs 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 is chaired by Kofi A. Annan, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations. AGRA, with initial support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, maintains offices in Nairobi, Kenya and Accra, Ghana.

 

The Challenges & Opportunities

Africa has the singular and tragic distinction of being the only place in the world where overall food security and livelihoods are deteriorating. Over the last 15 years, the number of Africans living below the poverty line ($1/day) has increased by 50 percent, and it is estimated that one-third of the continent’s population suffers from hunger. In the past five years alone, the number of underweight children in Africa has risen by about 12 percent.

A root cause of this entrenched and deepening poverty is the fact that millions of small-scale farmers—the majority of them women working farms smaller than one hectare—cannot grow enough food to sustain their families, their communities, or their countries.

The challenges confronting Africa’s small-scale farmers—most of whom are women—start in the field and extend across the entire agricultural value chain. Most African farmers can neither access nor afford basic farm inputs. High quality seeds, organic and mineral fertilisers needed to replenish depleted soils, and simple water management systems that allow farmers to deal with erratic rains are largely beyond reach. Good roads are scarce. Strong market, extension, and finance systems are lacking. Small-scale farmers also need the support of government policies that promote sustainable and productive African agriculture and that ensure access to markets.

Since the early 1960s, Africa has gone from being a net food exporter to a net importer. Per capita food production has declined as the population growth rate of 3 percent a year has outstripped the 2 percent annual increase in food production. But, until recently, government and international support for agricultural development has declined.

Due to these challenges, African leaders are calling for a revolution in agriculture that will enable the continent’s small-scale farmers to prosper. AGRA is responding to this call by building African-led partnerships that draw upon the knowledge of Africa’s farmers, apply the lessons of modern agriculture, and work across the agricultural value chain while rigorously monitoring the impact in terms of equity and environmental sustainability.

Revitalising Small-Scale Farming Across Africa

We know that through dramatic improvements to agriculture, prosperity can replace poverty. In most modern economies, no lasting success has been achieved without first building a strong agricultural foundation.

In India, much of Asia, and Latin America, a Green Revolution that began more then a generation ago relied upon hearty, high-yielding crop varieties and other tools of modern agriculture. It more than doubled agricultural production, saved hundreds of millions of lives, and laid the foundation for the economic progress seen there today. But this massive undertaking also had shortcomings: at times programmes temporarily exacerbated underlying inequity or the misuse of fertiliser and irrigation resulted in environmental damage.

Today, ending the poverty and hunger of hundreds of millions of Africans requires a clear focus on improving the lives of small-scale farmers. This agricultural revolution must rely on uniquely African solutions to uniquely African problems: solutions that improve the productivity, biodiversity, and nutritional quality of food crops; that practise sound agro-ecosystem management across dramatically different environments; that support mixed crop-livestock farming systems; and that consistently promote equity. It must be pro-poor and pro-environment.

Heeding the Call to Chart a Path to Prosperity

Many global and national leaders have recognised the critical importance of agriculture to Africa’s development, and they are ready to act. In his tenure as Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan called for a new “uniquely African Green Revolution—a revolution that is long overdue, a revolution that will help the continent in its quest for dignity and peace.”

AGRA is a direct response to African leaders’ calls to chart a path for prosperity through spurring agricultural development. In particular, AGRA responds to and strongly endorses the African Union’s (AU’s) Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). Developed in 2002 by the AU’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development, CAADP presents a powerful vision for change and commits to seeking a 6 percent annual growth in food production by 2015. The CAADP vision specifically calls for “agricultural knowledge systems delivering profitable and sustainable technologies that are widely adopted by farmers resulting in sustained agricultural growth.”

The AU’s commitment to supporting its farmers was further strengthened through the 2006 African Fertiliser Summit, where African Heads of State promised concrete steps to provide farmers not just with soil nutrients but also with better transport, credit, seeds, irrigation facilities, extension services, and market information.

Our Approach

To break the cycles of hunger and poverty in Africa, our approach is African-led, participatory, and comprehensive. It is pro-poor and pro-environment.

Our work begins in the fields alongside small-scale farmers, to learn from them and to understand their most pressing problems and the potential solutions. Individual farmers, women’s associations, and farmer unions are key partners. In addition, we are building partnerships with African governments; prominent national and regional African institutions; leaders of finance, business and science; and innovators and entrepreneurs involved across the agricultural value chain.

Our work is comprehensive in that it seeks to address critical challenges both on-farm and off-farm. These challenges involve access to farmer inputs: high quality seeds, organic and mineral fertiliser, and systems of reliable water management. They also involve access to “output” markets—to the crop storage, processing, transport, and finance that ultimately allow small-scale farmers to sell their harvests and make a profit.

Our approach is both pro-poor and pro-environment. Increased productivity on small-scale farms can simultaneously support agricultural growth and enhance the environment: rebuilding depleted, erosion-prone soil; conserving crop biodiversity; making wise use of limited water; and sparing vast expanses of forest and savannah from cultivation. Indeed, to be sustainable, agricultural development must protect the natural resource base that farmers—and all of society—depend upon.

Our work is shaped by the urgent need to act now to alleviate the dire poverty oppressing millions, as well as a commitment to change things for the long term.

A Plan for Change

AGRA provides locally developed and adapted solutions that can be rapidly scaled up to reach all small-scale farmers who would benefit from them.

  • Our first collaborations, launched in 2006, focus on developing more productive and resilient varieties of Africa’s major food crops, adapted to thrive in a variety of conditions. These will enable Africa’s small-scale farmers to produce larger, more diverse and reliable harvests.
  • In 2006, AGRA also initiated programmes that support agricultural education in Africa and programmes to monitor and evaluate all of our work. The latter will ensure that we learn as we go forward, correcting course as necessary, and providing all of our partners with informative barometers of progress.
  • Over the next five years, we will systematically build on these programmes, as we add initiatives that address other key aspects of the agricultural value chain.
  • In 2007, we will launch a programme to improve the health of Africa’s soils, now the most depleted in the world. Depleted soils depress yields and reduce the nutritional value of crops.
  • By 2008, we will launch a water management initiative to help Africa’s small-scale farmers get the most “crop for each drop.” It will provide low-cost and efficient water management systems, from human-powered treadle pumps to solar-powered drip irrigation.
  • By 2009, we will address major challenges in off-farm systems and markets, including improvements of crop storage, finance systems, market information and transport systems. Concurrent with all of this work, AGRA will advocate for policies that support small-scale farmers, including policies that promote rural development and environmental sustainability, and that address trade and tariffs. Only with advocacy and policy change at national, regional, and global levels will small-scale farmers succeed in increasing yield, ending poverty and hunger, and lifting up the economies of Africa.

AGRA will work to attract a large and diverse group of donors and other partners. AGRA seeks to develop a donor pool sufficient to provide the significant resources needed to revitalise African agriculture for small-scale farmers over the long-term.

Pursued comprehensively, these multiple efforts have the potential to dramatically improve life for Africa’s small-scale farmers, and thus benefit all of African society. It is undoubtedly a massive undertaking, but, as President Guebuza of Mozambique has said, “Africa is up to the challenge. I am sure that we will be able to end hunger and eliminate poverty…If we remain united, as we were united when we fought against colonialism and in the war against destabilisation, we will also be victorious in today’s fight against hunger and poverty.”

The time is ripe for a new, sustainable, and uniquely African Green Revolution.