back

AGRA

Backgrounder: African Agriculture
May 28, 2008; The New York Times
By Stephanie Hanson
Excerpt

Learning from Asia's 'Green Revolution'

Agronomists agree that sub-Saharan Africa would benefit from the techniques that spurred agricultural reform in South Asia in the 1970s. The Rockefeller Foundation, which partnered with governments in Asia and Latin America to precipitate the original "Green Revolution," suggests that a similar system of reforms in Africa will be more challenging (PDF), but the components are similar:

• developing high-yield crops;
• training experts in agriculture science;
• increasing government commitment to agriculture;
• building agriculture markets.

"Our emphasis is on raising productivity of smaller farmers," says Joe DeVries, director of the Rockefeller Foundation's program on Africa’s Seed Systems. "It isn't anything that fancy about our program. We are really just trying to do the basics: breed new varieties of crops that are higher yielding and locally adapted." Through the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a partnership between Rockefeller and the Gates Foundation that is chaired by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, DeVries is funding local plant-breeding teams to come up with new crop varieties based on feedback from local farmers. AGRA works in thirteen countries in sub-Saharan Africa, with plans to scale up to twenty.

Pedro A. Sanchez, director of the tropical agriculture program at Columbia University's Earth Institute, says "AGRA is well-respected by African governments and they are just getting started. They certainly have the ear of the governments and they are hiring top-notch African scientists." But some experts say the alliance may lack the resources for large-scale implementation. It began in 2006 with a $150 million grant, and the Gates Foundation pledged an additional $164 million in January 2008. Policymakers and economists suggest, however, that the continent requires billions of dollars per year in agriculture investment. The 2002 Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program, drafted by a group of African government officials and international experts, calls for $251 billion in irrigation, infrastructure, education, and markets investment between 2002 and 2015. The program says half of this funding should come from African governments, with the rest from international donors.

In July 2003, members of the African Union agreed to devote at least 10 percent of their government budgets to agriculture programs over the next five years. So far only Rwanda and Zambia have actually executed the plan. Top-level leadership is "absolutely essential" to the development and funding of effective agriculture policies, says the University of London's Harrigan. For instance, individual countries need robust research programs for the development of new seed varieties. "Agriculture is not like medicine. You can't have a breakthrough in New Jersey and make it available to people all over Africa," says Paarlberg. The private sector will not fund such programs because they take at least five years to yield results, DeVries says.

Complete article

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

top of the page