AGRA

Tanzania’s readiness and preparations to participate in the forthcoming United Nations Food Systems Summit are in full gear.

So far, about 11 broad-based and inclusive food systems dialogues have been convened to rally stakeholders to develop a comprehensive summary of recommendations and commitments for Tanzania that will be presented at the UN 2021 Food System Summit.

“Tanzania must be on the front seat in the food systems transformation, which requires public and private sector coordination, participation and investments.

We want to ensure safe, nourishing, sustainable, equitable and resilient food systems to drive the growth of the local and export market,” noted the Director of the National Food Security Unit, Dr Honest Kessy.

Dr Kessy is also the convenor of dialogues in Tanzania in preparations for the UN 2021 Food System Summit.

The summit seeks innovative solutions to transform food systems and drive the progression towards the attainment of UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), implemented in Tanzania through national medium-term plans.

The second-largest economy in East Africa serves as the regions grains breadbasket but exports most of its grains and other agro produce unprocessed.

However, the country is implementing a flagship project to drive agro industrialization and turn the situation around. At a national dialogue on food systems in Dar es Salaam recently, there was a consensus that improved food systems are a must.

It emerged that the country needs heavy investments to improve food systems to cement its place as the region’s agriculture powerhouse, building on its strong point in the grains market while addressing its weak issues.

The national dialogue in Dar es Salaam followed ten other conferences in the regions in Tanzania mainland and Zanzibar.

The food systems dialogues involved public, private, and civil society sectors examining emerging issues to collate information to create a common position for the country to be presented at United Nations Food Systems Summit in September.

Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in Tanzania is a keen supporter of the food systems dialogues, and it has provided some financial support for some dialogues.

AGRA Tanzania County Manager Mr Vianey Rweyendela noted that Tanzania’s agriculture sector was at a turning point.

“With food self-sufficiency having been surpassed for several years, it is time to direct the excess production into agro-industrialisation and commerce in general in ways that benefit the smallholder farmer in Tanzania,” he noted.

Mr Rweyendela noted the dialogues would help synthesize consolidated country position paper identifying opportunities that include practices, policies, actions, partnerships, and commitments for presentation to the UN 2021 Food System Summit.

Read the original article on Daily News.

Covid-19 has exposed the vulnerabilities of agricultural and food systems in the world but particularly in low and middle-income countries. 

Declining incomes and disruptions to the food supply chain are exacerbating extreme poverty and are challenging food security, forcing farmers to make tough choices. 

According to the World Bank’s Covid-19 Household Monitoring Dashboard, in Ghana as of April 2021, 76 per cent of households with farm income saw their income decline in the last 12 months and Up to 70 to 80 per cent of smallholders have reported in various surveys that they are worse off now than prior to the pandemic

Measures to combat the spread of Covid-19 are having a detrimental impact on farmers’ lives in most low and middle-income countries.

The challenges female smallholders face, from access to technology to informal participation in value chains, have been exacerbated by Covid, risking a widening of the gender gap.

In agricultural value chains, agribusinesses and cooperatives have seen their businesses disrupted by measures to contain the spread of the virus.

Agritech companies are also facing tough operational challenges and a more complicated environment to raise financing.

Digital agriculture tools have, however, enabled smallholder farmers to continue receiving advisory, acquire much-needed financing, receive inputs and identify new markets for their products.

Digital agriculture tools are transforming how food systems operate to become more agile and resilient to unforeseen events.

Digital advisory, agricultural digital financial services and Agri e-commerce solutions have emerged as the three most sought after digital tools by farmers during the pandemic.

Mkulima Young, an online marketplace for agricultural inputs, equipment and crops experienced fourfold increase on their platform between March and May 2020. 

Value chain actors that had already digitised their processes and operations and invested in critical infrastructure have found it easier to pivot and support smallholder farmers during the pandemic.

Lockdowns and limits on in-person gatherings shifted advisory from in-person to online.

Agritech companies, mobile network operators and agribusinesses added Covid-19 advisory to their existing tools to help farmers navigate challenging times.

Governments have played a key role in accelerating the adoption of digital financial services, for example by digitising agricultural subsidy schemes for inputs.

Mobile network operators and governments are also helping to boost mobile money usage by waiving fees and raising transaction limits.

Donors and agribusinesses are leveraging digital tools to distribute cash payments, input vouchers and extend loans.

When farmers in Kenya were asked what they needed most during the pandemic, they consistently and overwhelmingly cited financial support. 

Governments have responded with a range of measures to help low-income populations and small businesses weather the pandemic, including easing mobile money regulations, issuing moratoriums on existing loans and issuing low-interest loans.

Many African governments use measures such as subsidies, grants and income support payments to stimulate the use of inputs that enhance agricultural productivity, support smallholder livelihoods and provide a safety net for farmers.

These measures have become even more relevant in the context of the pandemic. 

Written by Nixon Gecheo – AGRA’s Senior Program Officer, Digital Systems & Solutions for Agriculture

Farmers in Kenya’s Rift Valley are currently in a standoff with a local seed manufacturer over what the farmers believe were substandard or fraudulent seeds that cost them their harvest. Earlier this year the farmers reported that they had incurred millions in losses due to crop failures.

Though high-quality agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertilizer, and pesticides can boost agricultural productivity, research shows that access to such inputs remains low in rural African markets. In Kenya, only 77% of hybrid maize seeds sold to farmers germinate — far below the 90% germination rate set by the government for the seeds it has certified. 

In a bid to improve access to these much-needed inputs, trusted village startups in Kenya, have started to supply smallholder farmers with quality seeds and fertilizers while regional partners are improving surveillance to weed out fake inputs.

“When I started growing the improved seed varieties, I usually get at least five bags of maize harvests even when the rains are inadequate.” — Jacinta Wairimu, a smallholder farmer who buys authentic seeds from a village-based adviser

Authenticating seeds

At a recent webinar, Philip Boahen, the chief agriculture policy economist at the African Development Bank, said a lack of access to quality seeds and fertilizers is one of the leading contributors to low crop yields among smallholder farmers in Africa — after erratic rains.

One of the reasons smallholder farmers are not accessing these inputs is because certified agrochemical companies are finding it difficult to export and import quality seeds and fertilizers due to trade barriers, he said.

Another is that unscrupulous businesses capitalize on these trade restrictions to smuggle fake seeds and fertilizers — mostly packed as grains — which lead to worsening soil degradation and environmental pollution.

Working with the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, however, AfDB is establishing information technology platforms at border points aimed at tracing the trafficking of fake seeds and agrochemicals, Boahen said. The platforms use barcodes to scan products and confirm authenticity with the manufacturer.

“The bank is providing financial and technical support for this project so that we can be able to verify the authenticity of seeds and agrochemicals moving across borders before they reach the destination markets and farmers,” he said.

Village startups intervening

In rural Kenya, suspicious agro-dealers have thrived selling fake seeds and fertilizers, due to the lack of a traceability system and field extension services aimed at educating smallholder farmers on proper seeds and chemical application.

According to a report by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, smallholder farmers in Africa hardly receive agriculture extension services from their governments, and in most countries, a single extension officer is assigned to serve about 5,000 farmers.

Some village startups are however changing this, by supplying smallholder farmers with quality seeds and fertilizers, as well as providing field extension services to the majority who lack formal education.

Elizabeth Ng’endo, a farmer and village-based adviser in central Kenya, has been supplying seeds and fertilizer to more than 400 farmers from her home.Get development’s most important headlines in your inbox every day.

“Rains have been failing in the past few years leaving us with no harvests. But when I started growing the improved seed varieties, I usually get at least five bags of maize harvests even when the rains are inadequate,” says Jacinta Wairimu, one of Ng’endo’s customers.

Ng’endo sources her inputs from leading agro-dealers in Kenya, where she buys the products at wholesale price.

She then retails to farmers at 85 Kenyan shillings (about $0.85) for a kilogram of fertilizer and 530 Kenyan shillings (about $ 5.30) for a two-kilogram bag of maize seeds.

“People trust me because I live with them. When I sell to them, I usually accompany them at their farms to show them how to plant and apply fertilizer,” says Ng’endo.

The Village-Based Advisor innovation was introduced to her by the Local Development Research Institute and AGRA, working in partnership with the county government of Kiambu in central Kenya.

According to Qureish Noordin, the program officer at AGRA, like Ng’endo, there are 1,464 VBAs in Kiambu and Embu counties where the project is being rolled out and whose training has seen about 255,500 farmers increase crop productivity by 100%.

“It is extension work but not the usual way that it used to be delivered because it is a farmer in the community who works with fellow farmers and teaches them,” says Thule Lenneiye, the coordinator of the agriculture transformation office at the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Co-operatives.

The VBA model is transforming the traditional way of farming to modern ways through innovations that give the farmer a place in the agribusiness space, she added.

Though village startups like Ng’endo’s have an edge in the agribusiness space through the VBA model, Ng’endo warned that serving the ever-growing number of farmers who now rely on her for inputs and agricultural information has become a challenge.

In some instances, she is forced to travel long distances to serve farmers who reach out to her through phone calls, adding a transportation overhead to her daily planner.

In response to this need, Noordin said the VBA program is being scaled up to 14 other counties in Kenya. Ng’endo has also made plans to open an Agrovet shop to ensure that she can meet the demands of farmers in her county.

“I am planning to open an agro vet shop at a convenient location where all farmers can reach me and where my family will have less risk of making contact with the chemicals,” she said.

Originally published

Despite technological advancement in the production and distribution of food, hunger and malnutrition still stalk many households around Africa.  Increased pressures to produce more sustainably on already constrained land and water resources, extreme climate events and unstructured market dynamics and broken value chains remain systemic bottlenecks that inclusive agricultural transformation must address.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, Sustainable Development Goal 2 on Zero Hunger seems more likely to extend beyond reach, with availability, access, utilization and stability of the global food systems having taken a downturn. Currently, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that about 821 million people are undernourished globally, with one in five located in Africa. Factors such as conflict, natural hazards, climate change and pests are set to increase the number of people going hungry in the continent.

With a rising population, ACFTA in the making in Africa, the opportunities to find sustainable ways in which Africa can increase production, profitably and sustainably were the premise for the series of webinars for experts to discuss evidence-based and eco-friendly technologies and approaches for enhancing the production, productivity, profitability and resilience small scale farming in Africa.

The first of three planned series – titled Sustainable Farming: Transforming Africa’s Landscapes and Livelihoods – was held on 13 July 2021, bringing together distinguished scientists from around the globe who deliberated on the various interpretations of agro-ecology, regenerative agriculture and sustainable farming concepts, as well as scientific evidences to date available for Africa to build resilient systems.

Aggie Konde, the webinar moderator and Vice-President for Program Innovation and Delivery at AGRA, said that the intent of the web-series is to create a common understanding about the differing narratives and co-develop an Africa led approach with multiple stakeholders and find unique and applicable solutions that speaks to the different farming systems in African while learning and un-learning from others and find solutions that are scalable, profitable, sustainable and resilient.

Dr. Tilahun Amede, Head of Resilience, Climate and Soil Fertility at AGRA presented the keynote paper and stated that we need home grown, comprehensive and integrated approach for achieving multiple goals of improving productivity and profitability of small-scale farmers, managing climate and market risks while enhancing soil health, and ecological services of landscapes. He singled out restoring soil fertility, increasing biomass and enhancing soil carbon sequestration as an entry point and a major pathway for profitability and resilience in food systems.

“We now have digital tools, farming system maps and climate services, all which can help us improve landscape management, re-greening and increase return on investments that our farmers are putting into fertilizer and improved seeds,” said Dr. Amede.

He said that Africa can use its ‘late comer advantage’ to leapfrog technologies and practices that solve for the production needs while harnessing and safeguarding the socio-environmental needs.

Dr. Sieg Snapp of Michigan State University said that scientists should not put too much emphasis on competing approaches such as organic agriculture, agro-ecology and regenerative agriculture, but focus more on the principles and the outcomes at farmer-level. She said that crop diversity with legumes is one of the approaches that had proved beneficial regardless of the chosen sustainability principle.

Prof. Ken Giller from Wageningen University emphasized the need to give farmers a range of options of agricultural technologies from which they may select the ones that are best suited to their site-specific needs and socio-economic conditions. To achieve this Africa needs a public-private sector extension system that works which gives credence to Africa’s innovative approach of farmer-centric extension models or VBA /CBA’s as a complimentary role to under-funded public sector extension systems.

“We need to articulate the principles and practices which are adaptable to the different farming and food systems across Africa, but also to internalize the strategic differences in investments between countries,” said Prof. John Dixon from the University of Queensland.

Prof. Dixon also stated that the potential to achieve food security and resilience across these farming systems is mainly dictated by access to productive agricultural resources and agricultural services, particularly input and output markets.  “To make African agriculture more productive, profitable and more resilient, we need to mainstream innovation, integration, impact-orientation, information, investment and infrastructure,” he said.

Dr. Ramadjita Tabo, Regional Director for ICRISAT in West and Central Africa, discussed the need to use critical external inputs to replenish highly mined African soils and minimize the impact of soil degradation on the environment.  He said that due to extremely low nutrient pool in African soils, limited biomass to recycle and land degradation, technologies for judicious use, such as micro-dosing of fertilizer, along with organic resources should be promoted.

Dr Kwesi Atta Krah of the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) program, said that Africa still lags far behind in use of inputs such as fertilizer, with the average African farmer using less than 20 kilograms per hectare of fertilizer compared to up to 200 kilograms in developed countries, Africa must remain environmentally conscious when promoting increased input use. He advocated for a healthy middle ground in simultaneously addressing food insecurity and the environment.

Prof. Chrisogonus Daudu of Nigeria’s National Agricultural Extension and Research Liaison Services blamed the collapse of public advisory services for low adoption of technology.  He said that in some African countries, an extension agent could be allocated up to 10,000 farmers, a challenge that has consigned smallholder farmers to low productivity, low incomes and low resilience.  He suggested a digitally enabled, private-sector supported extension model for more efficient advisory services.

Dr. Susan Chomba, Director of Vital Landscapes for Africa at the World Resources Institute said that in addition to a focus on productivity, stakeholders must also address two issues of post-harvest losses and equitable food access.  She said that positive outcomes for a transformed agricultural systems should include prosperity for smallholder farmers, resilience, environmental integrity and positive social impact especially for women and youth.

It was announced that the next webinar will focus on how the concepts of sustainable farming could be translated to action at a scale and the roles of the policy-makers and practitioners such as development partners and the private sector in institutionalizing the approaches.   to be held in a fortnight, would focus on private sector policies and issues of financing, with feedback from the first webinar being discussed.  She encouraged participants to continue sending in their input through the dedicated email sustainablefarming@agra.org

In his wrap-up comments, Dr. Tilahun said that AGRA, working with partners, would be keen to co-invest and capitalize on its past and current investments in extension services to ensure last-mile delivery of best-bet, context specific technologies at farm and landscape scales. The webinar created a forum for debate and joint learning among the different actors and promised to continue organizing and facilitating series of forums to reach to an African common position leading to sustainable, resilient, profitable, and productive farming in the continent.

The panelists concurred on the need to approach the continent using the different farming systems lense and concurred that it is not a one size fits all approach.  The five take home messages coming out of the webinar are:

• We cannot compromise food security, resilience and sustainability over long time when it comes to Africa. Our principles should alien with these fundamental goals, while we address concerns on the environment.
• African farming systems are diverse, prone to multiple risks, have low response capacity and require unique trajectories. Major adaptation and adjustment is required, embracing the diversity and local knowledge, to transform African food systems
• From the context of Africa, where resource degradation is severed, food insecurity is a big issue, there is no scientific evidence suggesting reject judicious use of external inputs. Investment should priorate on building on lessons learned in Asia, local success stories and following sustainable farming principles.
• We should avoid drawing to ideological clustering rather focus on the outcomes, healthy middle ground, leading to better and brighter future to African small-holder farmers.
• Promoting and institutionalizing ‘Sustainable farming’ would require extensive engagement in capacity building at all levels, including research, extension, policy and farmer organizations. This should be augmented by digital extension, and designing local implementation practices for diverse local realities.

FORMER Ethiopian Prime Minister and Board Chair of AGRA, H.E. Hailemariam Dessalegn and former President, H.E. Jakaya Kikwete were in a familiarisation tour of AGRA’s activities in Tanzania in July, ahead of the AGRF summit in Nairobi, Kenya scheduled for mid-September and a UN Food System Summit (UNFSS) two weeks thereafter. He explains about the importance of the two summits in this Q&A interview with Daily News Staff Writer, Henry Lyimo.

Q: Why are AGRF and UN Food system summits important?

ANS: AGRF summits have been held every year for more than 10 years now. They date back to 2006, when the first summit was held in Norway to foster public-private partnerships and mobilising investments into agriculture in Africa.

The summits moved to Africa in 2010 with the championing of the late Kofi Annan to take an African identity as the African Green Revolution Forum and ensure leadership and broader engagement of African stakeholders in agricultural transformation agenda from a subsistenceoriented agriculture to one that is more commercialised, profitably productive, and smallholder and entrepreneur led.

AGRF summits now consist of an annual event combined with thematic platforms and year round engagement to track progress over time. They have been the platforms to bring together different actors in the agricultural value chain, governments, the private sector, youths, women, NGOs and all who are involved in agricultural production system.

These are premier gatherings and I can confidently say they are the only global summits that bring together all stakeholders in agriculture value chain.

“They are very important because; one, there is no matching to it. So if you see value chain in agriculture we need to increase production. To increase production we need to increase productivity and that refers to small holders farmers to increase capacity to produce, proper extension services to be delivered and also they should get markets for their produce.”

“This also means governments need to come up with proper policies that will boost production and productivity in agriculture and promote participation of all stakeholders in the whole value chain.” Again farmers need support not only from the government but also from non-government organisations and the private sector in general.

Similarly we need development partners to align to development policies of the government and ambition for farmers to produce. In addition to small holders farmers to produce, the private sector, large capitalized firms as well as millions of micro-entrepreneurs, need to produce and provide support to farmers to provide seed and fertilizers, chemicals and sometimes also educate in public about good agricultural practices in public private partnerships.

In these forums you will also find scientists because they have a very important role to play in the agriculture transformation agenda. Similarly you find traders because they are also very important in the agriculture value chain in terms of processing, packaging, and distribution of food to consumers and inputs to farmers.

This forum convenes all these stakeholders We will have presidential summit; we have ministers round table and we have diferent stakeholders and sections for example the youth section, women agri- dealers and farmers SMEs, farmers, governments, all getting together to make a deal for investment in agriculture Therefore, I think, in a nutshell, AGRF summits are very important platform forum bringing together all the necessary stakeholders to achieve food self-sufficiency and marketable surplus in the production system and also bring about nutrition security.

Q: What can we expect from this year’s summit?

A: This year summit is unique because of the Covid – 19 pandemic that has drastically affected lives and livelihoods and disrupted economic activities throughout the world through tight restrictions imposed by countries to halt the spread of the virus. So recovery and bouncing back from the magnitude of damages and far-reaching impacts of pandemic is very important.

The summit has been designed in such a way that our food system transformation should respond to the recovery. This is especially as we have never seen in the history of agriculture development in the last century where the pandemic adversely affected food and nutrition security and rural livelihoods in Africa.

I think our forum this year will take care of this and that explains the chosen title of the summit, “Pathways to recovery and resilient food systems.” The second uniqueness of the summit is that it is a platform where African nations will speak with one voice when they go to the UN Food System Summit (UNFSS) which will take place two weeks after the AGRF 2021 summit.

This forum will be conducted from 6th – 10th September and the UN Food System summit will follow from 20th September.

So, it means we will have two weeks only for African countries to prepare so that they can come up with a single coordinated African voice to the UNFSS and identify immediate actions and steps that need to be taken to accelerate progress and recovery towards inclusive agricultural transformation.

Q: Agriculture is by far the single most important economic activity in Africa. About 54 percent of Africa’s working force relies on the agricultural sector for livelihoods, income and employment, especially in family farming, according to Food and Agriculture Organisation. However, they produce less than its domestic supply and therefore are becoming more dependent on food imports. What can African countries do to attain food security?

ANS: Let me call food and nutrition security which is the most important goal for African nations and it require a number of actions and actors in order to achieve food and nutrition security.

Governments are very much required to discharge their responsibility and policy making and formulation that is suitable for all stakeholders to engage in production and as well and quality achievement of produce so that we attain security both at household and the country level.

Secondly, small holders farmers in Africa have a great role to play to achieve food and nutrition security and reduce poverty.They are the main food producers in developing countries and in a fact; they are the backbone of the sector.

One of the agricultural pathways towards sustainable food and nutrition security is through local production of nutritious food, activity in which smallholder farmers play a crucial role.

As major production comes from rural areas, we need those small and medium farming communities as well as highly sector engagement in large scale and modern technology based production; we need the private sector and financial institutions making loans and finances available for smallholders farmers and agro dealers of different kinds are necessary for value chain; and also we need professionals – scientists and extension workers, agents and public and private partnership.

So, all these are necessary to attain food and nutrition security in Africa. We have to address system bottlenecks in this regard and make available necessary inputs that will finances as well as.

Q: Agriculture is often associated with negative perceptions and therefore remains uninteresting among the youth in many African countries. How can African countries make agriculture a profitable and rewarding enterprise? How can they make it a viable business?

ANS: The demographic structure in Africa shows 70 per cent of the population is dependent on agriculture for livelihoods. So if you don’t consider the 70 per cent of your people in development policies so it means you have failed. You need to engage our young people to engage in agriculture but not the old traditional agricultural methods. We have to modernize agriculture.

We have to digitalize the agricultural sector. The youth need training, agribusiness development, exposure to new agricultural technologies and access to finance. We have to make it conducive and attractive to the young people.

Then, I think agriculture will be the mainstay for young people to engage in. I’m pretty sure that if we make these policies conducive to the young people they can produce, they can process and can be part of the market system in the process and also be very much engaged in advanced technology because these young people are very much friendly to new technologies.

As the saying goes it is very difficult to teach an old dog new tricks, new technology can be easily adopted by the young people so we can leap forward in this regard and agriculture can be attractive to the youth.

Similarly we see African agricultural structure women make up a larger proportion of smallholder farmers. But life for rural women isn’t easy.

Women farmers are held back by some socio-economic barriers. They don’t have the same rights as men, and often have to juggle domestic duties and agricultural work – sowing, weeding and harvesting crops, but also making food for their families and collecting firewood and water.

They also have more limited access to land, agricultural extension services and technologies. Therefore a production system which does not involve women is a failure again. Women must be at the center of any effort to promote sustainable agriculture, reduce hunger and improve rural livelihoods. We have to make sure that women get access to modern, labor-saving technologies and newer agricultural innovations that are being rolled out every day.

They must have access to these game-changing innovations if we want to transform our agriculture and ensure sustainable food and nutrition security. When it comes to loans and finances to agriculture, women smallholder farmers are at a disadvantage because they often don’t have the resources to satisfy the stringent banking requirements.

They need better access to suitable financial services, including credit, savings and insurance. Financial institutions should be encouraged to venture into supporting women farmers by coming up with special financing programmes to existing female farmers and target potential female farmers to invest in the agriculture sector.

So these are some of measures that can be considered to make agriculture profitable and rewarding enterprise, support women smallholder farmers and attract more youth in farming.

Originally published

Food is the most basic of needs. It decides not just the health of individuals but also the health of communities which affects the health of our economies. Underpinning the food we eat, is agriculture which accounts for at least 23% of sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP with about 40% of the workforce engaged in the sector.

At the heart of Africa’s agriculture are the smallholder farmers. These are millions of hardworking men and women typically farming on less than a hectare of land. They grow staple crops such as maize, wheat, rice, cassava and sorghum.

However, notwithstanding their significant contribution to economies across the continent, farmers in Africa continue to face significant challenges on many fronts. From climate change to shocks including droughts, floods, pests and diseases, these farmers are disproportionately affected and further, have a low capacity to adapt and mitigate. This is exacerbated by the fact that they work in a sector that gets a disproportionately low level of financing, with only 4 out of 49 African countries reaching the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) recommended target of 10% public expenditure on agriculture.

Consequently, Africa’s full agricultural potential remains untapped. As a dynamic, forward looking Africa marches alongside the rest of the world in the Decade of Action to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agriculture remains a key lever to propel African economies into a prosperous future. Growth generated by agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa is estimated to be 11 times more effective in reducing poverty than GDP growth in other sectors. The world over, major economies have used agriculture to push their economies forward. And history has shown us that no society makes the transition to a modern economy without first modernizing its agriculture.

The pathway to the bright socio-economic future that we all desire for Africa is through an inclusive agriculture transformation agenda. As such, my conviction is that driving Africa’s economic transformation through the lens of agriculture, should be a top priority that must take precedence over all other policy considerations at the continental level.

When I took over the leadership of Ghana, my country needed solutions for hunger, malnutrition, poverty and a host of other problems. Understanding the potential of agriculture to address these challenges, my administration worked to deliver a more efficient and productive agricultural base that would become the engine of the economy by providing food security, ushering in industrialization, creating jobs, and increasing export revenues.

The results speak for themselves, between 2002 and 2005, cocoa production in Ghana, the world’s second largest producer, doubled from 350,000 tons a year to 734,000 tons a year, a record in more than a century of cocoa farming in the country.

From thereon, my government successfully used many of the same techniques to improve production for food crops such as maize, yams, and plantains, as well as livestock and fish. As a core strategy, my administration also strengthened and tasked Ghana’s Grains and Legumes Development Board with the mandate to supply quality seeds and planting materials to farmers in order to improve the quantity and quality of Ghana’s agriculture produce. Altogether, my administration worked tirelessly to support irrigation, improve seeds and crop diversification, infrastructure, storage for harvest and created an enabling environment for farmers to access mechanization like tractors.

In 2007, during my second term in office, the late Mr. Kofi Annan, launched the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an African institution that sought to support governments to catalyse transformation of smallholder agriculture by advancing uniquely African solutions to sustainably raise farmers’ productivity and connect them to a growing marketplace. AGRA has evolved into a powerful force and tool for the transformation of our continent.

AGRA’s approach to fostering an inclusive agricultural transformation approach has been to convene, catalyse and broker local partnerships to support African governments to prioritize agriculture, allocate adequate resources to support smallholder farmers to access information, appropriate technology, and sustainable market and at the same time; creating enabling business environment to leverage private sector investment.

Over the last decade, including Mali, Rwanda, Ghana and Tanzania, I have seen countries where AGRA has been supporting governments, come through on their AUC CAADP Malabo targets by committing 10% of national expenditure to agriculture. A select number of these countries have each successfully achieved an annual growth rate of 6% with their respective agricultural sectors. A couple more are striving to achieve SDG 2 (zero hunger) by end of 2021.

With various ongoing efforts thus far at national levels in strengthening Africa’s agricultural sector, I have no doubt we could achieve a food secure Africa by 2030 if African institutions like AGRA and its partners continue to proactively double-down on their efforts to make that happen.

Given the urgency of ensuring the food security for Africa and its people, we cannot afford any delays in implementing the right policies to ensure success. Africa cannot wait. Now is the time for an African agriculture transformation. This requires an efficient eco-system that unlocks the right policies, public investments and private sector engagement; spurs rural-sector economic growth and; which can deliver broad and accelerated impacts for all.

At the level of the smallholder farmer, there is a need to develop a digitized extension system, across which the continent’s smallholder based agro-industry, can in turn, enable a seamless transition from subsistence farming to profitable agriculture.

At an infrastructure and management service level, there is an urgent need to retool the capacity of the entire sector’s value chain proposition in order to ensure fundamental, paradigm-shifting change; beginning with the provision of continuing access to development generating knowledge, which the smallholder farmer can immediately benefit from; and extending to input and output markets with the goal to ultimately ensure efficient interaction across Africa’s entire economic value chain.

At an infrastructure and management service level, there is an urgent need to retool the capacity of the entire sector’s value chain proposition in order to ensure fundamental, paradigm-shifting change; beginning with the provision of continuing access to development generating knowledge, which the smallholder farmer can immediately benefit from; and extending to input and output markets with the goal to ultimately ensure efficient interaction across Africa’s entire economic value chain.

At each national level this would mean sustained progress, so that both the agricultural and non-agricultural economies reach and maintain higher income, faster growth, secure access to affordable and nutritious food, and greater inclusiveness in the growth process.

Now is our moment to invest in agriculture to deliver a new era of food security and economic growth in a digital ag-eco-system that works for Africa.

By H.E. John Kufuor, former President of Ghana (2001-2009) and former Chairperson of the African Union (2007–2008). In 2011, he was named joint winner of the World Food Prize for Food and Agriculture.

What it will take to build a food system that is not only healthy and sustainable for the planet, but also recognises the critical role of smallholder producers in feeding our world?

By Dr. Agnes Kalibata, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy to the upcoming United Nations Food Systems Summit and Michael Taylor, Director of the International Land Coalition Secretariat.

Our food systems are in urgent need of transformation, as humanity faces one of our biggest challenges yet; feeding a future population of 10 billion people with safe and nutritious food while keeping a healthy planet. Our food system has the power to tip the scales and transform the future of our planet and humankind.

This year, the United Nations Food System Summit, called by Secretary-General António Guterres is looking to propose innovations and solutions that will transform our food systems and change our current course; in 2020, as many as 811 million men, women and children went without enough to eat, according to the recent UN State of Food Security and Nutrition report.

One of the biggest questions is what it will take to build a food system that is not only healthy and sustainable for the planet, but also recognises the critical role of smallholder producers in feeding our world. The good news is, they already hold the key to tipping the scale for true transformation.

Smallholder producers, including Indigenous Peoples and local communities are responsible for producing 60-80% of the food worldwide. Most often, in a way that is healthier for people, more sustainable for our planet and based on centuries of traditional knowledge that ensures food production needs are met and available resources are used in the most optimal way. These are the women, men and communities who must be the centre of the healthy, sustainable and inclusive food systems of the future. Better supporting their role in food systems also allows a move away from models of intensive large-scale production predicated on cheap food, but at great cost to local societies and ecosystems.

So what is the most pressing challenge that smallholders across the world are facing?

It is impossible to speak about building and supporting sustainable food systems without talking about the land and territories on which the food is grown, and more importantly, who is in control of that land. While farmers and communities may have lost the ability to determine what is grown on their land through market and strong consumer preferences,  a step in the right direction towards building confidence, transparency and trust among stakeholders on what is grown and how it is grown can be the turning point for families, communities and countries’ development.

Farmers have demonstrated time and again that given the rights to the land they farm, they are good custodians of our production ecosystems. Indigenous Peoples, who occupy over a quarter of the world’s land, help to preserve global biodiversity by using their traditional knowledge and food systems. But today, they are also challenged by climate change and all forms of degradation, including lack of alternative livelihoods that leads to over-exploitation of the very resources they treasure the most.

It is also about respecting the rights of women. Women make up more than 60% of the agricultural labour force, yet despite being the majority food producers, less than 15% of landholders are women, with men controlling the family’s income generation and resource allocation. But it does not have to be the case. For example, female farmers in Rwanda co-own family land with their husbands. We need policies that advance land rights and gender equity.

New research by the International Land Coalition shows that land inequality directly threatens the livelihoods of an estimated 2.5 billion people involved in smallholder farming, as well the world’s poorest 1.4 billion people, most of whom depend largely on agriculture for their livelihoods. Access to agricultural land has become highly unequal – with the largest 1% of farms operating more than 70% of the world’s farmland. Giving an equal chance to smallholder farmers to play their full role in feeding our world means ensuring they have access to sufficient land – which may require redistributing land from large landholders. In some cases, land inequality is not only worse than we thought but is on the rise as smallholder producers are being squeezed off their land, their human rights violated, and their production systems undermined.

The UN Food Systems Summit is an opportunity to find solutions we can work towards together.

Originally published