AGRA

Nyandarua County is synonymous with potato farming, but for many farmers in the county, massive losses from problems such as frost and undercutting by middle-men are just some of the problems that drive them to near-desperation.

Sad stories are told about farmers whose property has been auctioned off to pay for loans they could not service due to poor harvests occasioned by inclement weather and exploitation by middle-men.

Unfortunately, such are common tales especially among small-scale farmers.  In a sector that employs close to 7 out of every 10 people in Africa, the occupation can often be a hit-or-miss proposition.  Crops may fail, or prices may fall, meaning disaster for those who may have taken loans to prepare their crops.

According to the World Bank, less than 5% of total bank lending in Africa goes to the agricultural sector.  Some of the challenges associated with lending to small farmers include; high costs of providing small loans such as costs of loan appraisal, monitoring and follow up, lack of credit history information and lack of farm records.

With support from a partnership between the government of Kenya and AGRA known as Programme for Rural Outreach of Financial Innovations and Technologies Program (PROFIT), one financial institution has made significant steps towards changing the narrative, de-risking the agricultural sector and bringing a range of financial services to smallholder farmers in Nyandarua County.

Started 43 years, Tower SACCO (formerly known as Nyandarua Teachers Savings and Credit Cooperative Society) has made great strides in offering financial services not only to the Teaching fraternity but have widened the common bond to allow membership from different occupations and business activities across the country.

“We have come a long way from the days when our main business was just selling and recovering money, without really caring about the needs or challenges of our clients,” says Tower SACCO Chief Executive Gabriel Njihia.

He says that 2017 was the beginning of a turn-around in their relationship with members.

“That year, we were introduced to a programme where our staff from the credit and marketing departments were taken through a course that exposed them to insights on how agriculture value chains work, the different players in the value chain and their roles at different levels of production,” he says.

He says that the major outcomes from engagement with the PROFIT programme by staff, management and Board of TOWER included the development of farmer-friendly financial products.

“One other insight that we are grateful about was the advice we were given about hiring an agronomist who would work with our members to improve their farms.  It seemed like a strange move at the time, but today we see the benefits,” says Gabriel.

Tower SACCO has so far trained over 30 groups, reaching over 600 farmers with information such as good agronomic practices, book keeping and budgeting.  Farmers growing potatoes have been linked with processors such as Sereni Fries and Tropical Heat, ensuring better prices and cutting out middle-men.

The trainings sessions have given TOWER a forum for recruiting new farmers into the SACCO and to give more members the confidence to apply for loans as they build a relationship of trust.

“In the last two years, we have managed to disburse over 2000 short term loans to our small- scale farmers in groups amounting to 200,000,000 in shillings. We also disbursed loans to individual farmers applying for amounts over Ksh.300,000,” says Gabriel.

He says that TOWER currently has a loan book of about Sh 80 million, which is being serviced by borrowers who include small-scale farmer groups and value chain players like the small agrovet shops, while premium customers including SME members and dairy marketing cooperatives are servicing a combined loan book of about Sh. 3 billion.

Mwendi Kurima a Farmers Cooperative Society who are also beneficiaries of the PROFIT program through capacity building of smallholder farmers and linkage to market and financial services (Tower SACCO). Mwendi Kurima started with 13 farmers and has seen sporadic growth to the current registered membership of 350 farmers.

“Some of the problems we had included accessing loans, certified seeds, farming implements and access to organized markets, but working with Tower SACCO is now a preferred partner to our members, as our members start paying back loans after delivery of their produce to the market,” David Mureithi, Chairman Mwendi Kurima says.

“As part of the financial package we have also received an insurance package against drought, frost and heavy rains, and we can get inputs like seeds, fertilizer.  We have an agronomist from the SACCO working closely with us”, he adds.

Capacity building that includes Training in Agricultural Value Chain Financing, Development of tailor-made products suitable to agriculture such as loans with repayments aligned to farmers cashflow, prudent risk management framework and strategies is slowly making SACCOs attractive to big lenders such as the Agricultural Finance Corporation.

Things are looking up for groups associated with Tower SACCO.  The Nyandarua County Government has signed an agreement with the SACCO to help women, youth, and persons living with disability to access affordable loans to help them execute county government tenders.

Legal documents showing such tenders is all that is required as collateral for up to 60 per cent financing from Tower.  The funding comes with training them on fiscal discipline and management skills.

Gabriel is optimistic about Tower’s expansion trajectory.  Already, the SACCO has spread to other agricultural counties like Laikipia, Nakuru, Nyeri and Narok.  They are now targeting urban farmers in Nairobi and Kiambu.

“Mainly because of our association with PROFIT, we have changed the way we appraise the aagriculture value chain loans as we now understand the specific needs of each player in the value chain, and this will enable us to continue developing more niche products for various value chains,” he says.

PROFIT is supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Government of Kenya and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.  The programme contributes to the reduction of poverty in rural Kenya by helping smallholder farmers, artisanal fishermen, pastoralists, women, landless labourers and youth to access suitable financial services.

By Temina Madon, Director of Business Development at Atlas AI

We at Atlas AI are excited to announce a new partnership with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an organization that brings transformative growth to smallholder agriculture and agribusinesses across Africa.

AGRA operates across 11 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, making pivotal investments in improved seeds and fertilizer supply, inputs distribution, farmer organizations, and policy reforms. The Alliance also plays a key role in shaping African farmers’ response to climate change.

Atlas and AGRA have agreed to work together to fill key gaps in access to data on agricultural productivity, including satellite-based monitoring of crop yields, infrastructure, and markets. The collaboration was formalized with a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed earlier this month at The Rockefeller Foundation in New York.

AGRA is headed by Dr. Agnes Kalibata, former Rwandan Minister of Agriculture and recipient of this year’s Public Welfare Medal, the highest honor awarded by the US National Academy of Science. For this, she will be recognized at a ceremony tomorrow in Washington, DC.

I first met Dr. Kalibata in 2014 in Kigali, when she spoke at a meeting co-sponsored by the World Bank and the Center for Effective Global Action. It was a “matchmaking” event designed to connect scientists with government leaders; our objective was to build data collection and learning into the roll-out of major new investments in Africa’s ag sector.

Dr. Kalibata’s remarks were visionary and inspiring — and at the same time she was grounded and incisive, challenging everyone in the room to make science work for African farmers. Needless to say, she is the rare combination of researcher, public leader, and pragmatic activist. She has built a remarkable team at AGRA, with talent drawn from across the continent and around the world. We are fortunate to have the opportunity to collaborate and learn together.

The new partnership will connect Atlas technology with AGRA’s deep understanding of the complex trade-offs facing African governments and agribusinesses. It creates a framework for integrating our collective data assets and insights, enabling us to co-create new products that serve AGRA’s clients.

We also aim to expand the geo-referencing of information captured in routine farm surveys. As Atlas AI’s co-founder David Lobell has argued, this is a critical step in integrating traditional survey methods with newer, more cost-effective satellite-based approaches.

The relationship between AGRA and Atlas will allow each side to innovate in new ways. We look forward to reporting our progress at the upcoming African Green Revolution Forum in Ghana this September, under the theme of “Grow Digital: Leveraging Digital Transformation to Drive Sustainable Food Systems in Africa.”

Agnes Kalibata has led the African Green Revolution Alliance (AGRA), an African NGO founded in 2006 with the help of Kofi Annan to boost agriculture across the continent, since 2014. Prior to that the native Rwandan served as Kigali’s Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources. In this exclusive extract, Kalibata sits down with Harry Hagan, Senior Economic Adviser, Africa Division at the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) headquarters in London to discuss progress in the agriculture across the continent.

Can you share a little bit about your background, your passion and what led you to take this important position in AGRA?

My background is an agricultural scientist, an entomologist. I went to the University of Massachusetts. I would say that my background was extremely important in forming my career in Rwanda because I went to the Ministry of Agriculture not as a politician but really from a scientific perspective.

When I was in the Ministry I found two things most critical: one how do you drive public spending into agriculture and the other is driving agricultural productivity. There my scientific background came into use because I knew that with a good combination of seeds and fertilisers, farmers take only two seasons to have surplus.

But I was not prepared for two challenges: how quickly the market becomes a problem and how critical policies are in driving whatever it is you want to drive. At AGRA that’s one of the things we are doing: how do you drive policies faster and how do you use evidence to drive the business of agriculture.

When you go around ministries in Africa do you find the mix of technical staff and policymakers is the right mix, or do you think there is an imbalance?

The intention is to get technical people into the ministries, but it nearly always ends up as politics. That said, we’ve seen a lot technical people in Burkina Faso and in Mali where you see an interest to drive knowledge into the sector and we see the same thing in Kenya.

Rwanda has stayed the course in terms of ensuring that the people that man the ministry understand what needs to be done in the sector. It has a direct effect on what happens in the agricultural sector.

As an organisation, AGRA is going through expansion and transformation and DfID is very encouraged by the direction. Could you briefly explain what you see as the role of AGRA to support the transformation of agriculture in Africa?

AGRA was created as an institution which recognised that Africa lacked the kind of technologies it needs to advance the agriculture sector forward. Let me give you an example. In Rwanda, seeds in one district may not work in two different localities in the same district because one is at 1600m above sea level and another 2000m.

So AGRA was put in place to find those locally adopted varieties which would work in the right environments. When I became Permanent Secretary here in Rwanda in 2007, I could not find a variety that was locally adopted for me to drive agricultural transformation in Rwanda. They told me they I had to wait two years for locally adopted varieties.

AGRA came into that space to ensure that that doesn’t happen. In 18 countries now we have businesses which are driving locally adopted varieties and taking them to the farmers. So local seed dealerships and agro-seed dealerships are now able to take the business to the farmer.

As a result the distance the farmer must travel has reduced from 60km in 2006 to 11km now – and even in Kenya, where the private sector is much more aggressive, it’s 4km.

The disappointment in the last three to four years is that we have sufficient technologies across 18 commodities which can double or triple farmer yields, but they are not reaching every farmer.

So what we decided to do differently was three things. First how to strengthen state capacity to better deliver to farmers. The next is the policy part; we focus on moving policies forward in the countries where we work. The third part is the private sector – recognising that the only way to boost agriculture is to involve the private sector.

How do you think governments view working with an organisation like AGRA, which is Africa based but is still an NGO?

The development of the African continent is as important to me as it is to you the minister so what I’m trying to say is that we can offer help. We have experts in AGRA from about 30 different nationalities. In each country we make sure we hire an expert from that particular country and we give them to the minister and say you can trust them, work with them and let’s move forward. In a nutshell, we help ministers understand that AGRA is a safe space to operate.

We also work with our donor partners in a way that helps them understand some of the complexities on the ground. When we went into Ghana for example, the ministry and the development community were on two completely separate sides of the coin. The minister was new and he didn’t understand where the development community was coming from. We helped them come together and understand each other and actually helped the whole programme take off.

Are views changing within African governments about the role of the private sector?

I think there’s the general perception now that it’s okay to involve the private sector in what you do. Many countries are beginning to understand now that the ‘ease of doing business’ is critical for helping the private sector.

As for subsidies that’s a different conversation. In 2008 in Rwanda, they were critical to driving the agricultural sector because there wasn’t even a private sector to talk about. We had to buy fertiliser and auction them to the private sector because they had no capacity to purchase from the international markets.

The private sector has developed in most of these areas; now you are seeing 40% of farmers are willing to buy seeds and 50% are willing to buy fertiliser. What we are trying to do is help governments rethink the subsidy sector because I think from where we sit it undermines investment in the agricultural sector.

It’s about smart subsidies which means they are targeting communities in the sector which is struggling. Even then there has to be a timeline and when that finishes governments should get out and find other places which need help. Public sector development will need to keep shifting according to the need to move resources from one place to another.

What is really holding back the agricultural sector in Africa in your view – given the market demand and the natural resources?

I believe in prioritisation because there are a number of challenges. Number one is the policy landscape because to have anything function you need functional institutions. Most of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa don’t have functional input markets because the policy and regulatory environment isn’t there.

The second is markets. Markets are critical for the movement of technology and inputs. For us to be able to scale and achieve a green revolution farmers need to be able to buy seeds and fertilisers.

Why would farmers who don’t have access to market produce more than they need. It’s a burden. So as long as our markets don’t allow produce to leave the markets our farmers will not do that. In Kenya for example, when a farmer has one acre he is able to produce five metric tonnes of maize. The immediate thing the farmer will do is to cut the plot in half and use the new plot for horticulture because Kenya has a huge export market to Europe for horticulture. So the market defines the farmer behaviour.

We sometimes talk about financing but when we look at the amount of financing which comes to the African continent it’s not little but it’s fragmented. It’s not made to be productive. We need to think about how to implement productive funding for the agri-sector. The question is how does donor presence adapt.

Finally, there must be mechanisms which allow us to hold countries accountable. We want people to understand that when they receive resources they actually need to be accountable for these resources.

As a former minister, what do you think development partners can do better to support and influence policy development?

There are many ways to add value to a country. In terms of advice, I think that the voice which accompanies development resources could be a little bit more delicate. ‘Either you do this or we don’t fund’: I think that language needs to be toned down.

It needs to be if you do all of this we don’t have a problem funding you but all these things need to be in place. On the other hand, donors can put their feet down with regards to pushing the right behavior and countries will listen.

A key dimension is how we work together differently to address unreliability and short-termism of government policies affecting cross-border food trade. What do you think we can achieve in that cross-border space?

One of the things is to take advantage of some of the protocols which have already been put in place. Like for example right now the continent has just confirmed the 22^nd signature for the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA).

The private sector has huge interest in getting the markets to function together. Countries like South Africa and Nigeria find the CFTA a little uncomfortable because they are trying to get to grips with the small markets in their own country but what about the 1.2bn population market out there.

Do you see more progress in East Africa?

Politics aside East Africa has made a lot of progress in terms of getting the trade environment going. When I was in Rwanda DfID funded Trademark which helped get the ball rolling. At least in the region there is significant movement, hopefully the political challenges will go away.

We know you’re very involved in several groups who work in resilience. This is a top priority for the UK government, it informs how we are working in many sectors and regions. What do you see as the priorities for African leaders and global communities on resilience.

In term of climate change it’s very devasting for communities as it completely undermines their base. And it’s not just happening in East Africa, you saw what happened in southern Africa. So we have a huge responsibility to ensure that the farmers who are emerging from poverty thanks to technology don’t go backwards.

Also from a community and business perspective we need to secure the environment and ensure that the markets are larger and more resilient. Since 2015, 24m people have fallen out of the food security bracket meaning that 24m people that were feeding themselves are no longer able to do so. Zimbabwe lost 10% of their livestock, 25,000 households, not to mention their need for food. Malawi is in the same situation and Mozambique even worse. From an agricultural perspective climate change is the biggest threat we see.

Originally published on NewAfrican Magazine

Proponents of co-operative societies have been asked to promote them as business entities to boost growth. They could supply farmers with inputs at subsidised costs, deliver real-time guidance (extension) to supplement public extension systems, said Godfrey Mayambala, who heads the Zirobwe Agali Awamu Agribusiness Training Association. (ZAABTA). They could also negotiate on behalf of farmers for reliable forward markets, provide quality assurance mechanisms to help farmers meet standards and provide produce handling/bulking facilities. “Currently, most co-operatives are still run like social enterprises, with low levels of commercialization. For example, there are co-operatives with well-established storage facilities whose utilization capacity is below 50%,” he said. He blamed it on weak governance and management structures, as well as laws. However, some flexibility is required to allow for innovations that enhance growth. He pointed out that ZAABTA has transformed from a small farmers in 2004 into a formidable company located in Zirobwe town. It is and is now a one stop centre for farmer services, reaching out to 4,321 farmers, on Tuesday. He was briefing a team of officials from the agriculture ministry, National Planning Authority, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and Kilimo Trust.

The team was in Luwero to assess the impact of the financial support extended to the association, progress and lessons that can be replicated in different parts of the country, under the Regional East Africa Community Trade in Staples (REACTS) project. REACTS is a three-year flagship regional project, supporting small-holder farming households and other value chain actors across the three East African countries Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda, to exploit structured national, regional and opportunistic international markets for agricultural products, according to Dr Birungi Korutaro, the Kilimo Trust country team leader. REACTS-II commenced on April 1, last year and will end on March 3, 2021. The project is funded by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and is implemented by Kilimo Trust.

ZAABTA embraces business model

Four years ago, ZAABTA, with support from Sasakawa Global2000 set up one-stop centres and drafted an implementation manual for farmers. However, when the support from the project ended, the farmers did not have business approaches to sustain the initiative. ZAABTA then identified financial and technical partners for support to help establish a grain marketing project as an income generating activity for the association. Under this initiative, grain is collected with the help of village agents spread across the districts of Luwero, Nakaseke, Nakasongola, Kayunga and Mukono. The grain is dried to the required standards, cleaned and stored in the 500 metric tonne facility owned by the association, as they scout competitive prices. Currently, farmers have the option of selling their grain at the produce stores close to their locations or travel to the ZAABTA storage facility in Zirobwe town to sell their produce at a competitive price. A system of sales commissions has been designed to enable those participating in the transactions (mostly youth) to earn decently.

The REACTS II project is providing maize shellers and moisture metres to ensure all grain is kept at the store is properly handled. Other income-generating projects in the association have been started. They include maize milling, rice milling, extension services, loans for both inputs through the association’s SACCOS. They are now growing the export market according to Mayambala. At the moment, the association exports grain to Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania, but the long-term plan is to export finished products, such as flour and graded rice, he said. “We have already started the process of getting the standard and necessary requirements from the Uganda National Bureau of Standards so that we can package our products in the recommended way for export,” Mayambala added.

What others say about the model

The AGRA country manager, Dr. John Jagwe, commended the model for creating decent employment for the youth through a commission reward system and ensuring strict observance of quality standards for the grain traded. He said this is positively contributing to the profile of grain sourced from Uganda. According to National Planning Authority (NPA), co-operatives can deliver social and economic growth like they did in the 1960s. He pointed out that they only got into problems when they were mismanaged by non-co-operators and political interference. “Co-operatives can, therefore, be run as businesses for profitability and, in return, the profits are equitability shared among members. As long as co-operatives are able to control the entire value chain, it makes more sense for them to operate as a business,” a statement from NPA said.

By Prossy Nandudu

Dr Eliud Kongola graduated with a PhD through the African Centre for Crop Improvement (ACCI) at UKZN after doing research on breeding for durable resistance to Cercospora leaf spot diseases in groundnuts (Arachis hypogeae L) in Tanzania.

Kongola, who completed his undergraduate and master’s degrees in Agronomy and Crop Science at the Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania, is an Agricultural Research Officer at the Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute’s (TARI) Hombolo Agricultural Research Centre.

He enrolled with the ACCI to add plant breeding to his knowledge of agronomy and plant protection, referring to them as the three pillars of crop science.

Using various breeding techniques, Kongola identified constraints faced and traits preferred by farmers and other stakeholders in the groundnut value chain, and evaluated groundnut genotypes from different sources, including the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), the National Plant genetic resource centre of Tanzania, local markets and smallholder farmers for yield, yield-related traits and reaction to Cercospora leaf spot diseases.

Kongola got inspiration to do the research after seeing the increasing incidence of the disease over time, and the resultant reduction in groundnut cultivation. He was interested in whether there was a lack of improved groundnut varieties resistant to biotic and abiotic stresses, or if those growing the crop did not adopt available varieties because their preferences were not taken into account when these were developed.

‘The use of resistant or tolerant cultivars with stakeholders’ preferred traits is the more effective, economical and environmentally friendly control measure when compared to chemical control,’ said Kongola.

He identified possible sources of genes with desirable agronomic performance and disease resistance for further improvement, and isolated the gene action controlling Cercospora leaf spot disease resistance, grain yield and yield related traits.

He hopes that through incorporating his discoveries, additional programmes working to improve this crop will enhance groundnut production towards improved food and nutritional security, income and livelihood of farmers and other stakeholders in the groundnut value chain.

Kongola believes that consideration of these stakeholders’ constraints and preferences will help breeders improve production while keeping in mind farmers’ needs. He also wants to see sources of genes and gene action governing inheritance of yield and disease resistance being applied to breeding programmes for improving either yield and/or Cercospora leaf spot disease resistance.

Kongola indicated that his identification of the trait association could assist in shortening the breeding period.

During his research, Kongola was surprised to find that more than 90% of the farmers in his study area had seen the disease in their fields but took no action in controlling it, mistakenly thinking that the signs of disease pointed to crop maturity. Kongola recommended that those growing these crops consult agricultural experts when encountering unfamiliar symptoms in their crops, and said agricultural research departments should supply their results to extension officers to link new technologies to the end users.

Applying innovation and hard work, Kongola overcame the challenges of low rainfall and a lack of irrigation systems to complete his research, and recalls travelling long distances on a motorcycle to visit his trials.

Following completion of his PhD, Kongola now leads a project on seed production and delivery systems on the Harnessing Opportunities for Productivity Enhancement (HOPE) of Sorghum and Millet under ICRISAT. He also now heads a department of Research and Innovation at his research station.

He hopes to start a seed business focusing on climate-resilient dryland cereals and legumes, since these are not readily available and because the growing effects of climate change are already affecting food security in many countries.

‘Growing these crops is the way to go in climate change mitigation,’ he said.

Kongola thanked his parents, Francis and Mary Kongola, for providing him with an education; his wife for taking care of the family during his studies; his supervisors, Professor Rob Melis and Dr Julia Sibiya for their guidance; and classmates for their support.

He also acknowledged the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa for funding his studies through the ACCI.

Words: Christine Cuénod

Photograph: Gugu Mqadi