AGRA

Governments have a vital role to play in supporting smallholder farmers. But, argues Thierry Ngoga, Head of Support to State Capability at AGRA, they need technical help and partnerships to get the job done.

Awino lives in a small village in the lower Nyando basin, Kisumu County, Kenya. She relies on a four-acre plot, inherited from her late husband, to which she has no title. In 2017, following a donation of improved maize seed and fertilizer, she had high hopes for the harvest. A good harvest would enable her to pay her children’s school fees and keep the family fed.

But it wasn’t to be. In December  of that year, devastating floods destroyed her crops and killed her only dairy cow. Then, two weeks before schools reopened, she lost all her chickens – her only means of generating income – to Newcastle disease. Without access to savings, credit, crop or livestock insurance, Awino had no option but to reduce the family’s number of daily meals.

Unfortunately, Amino’s story is not uncommon. As I have seen through my work with the AGRA, such situations are widespread among the smallholder farmers who constitute roughly 80% of the farmers in Africa. With limited access to improved farm inputs, technologies, information, credit and insurance, Africa’s smallholders struggle to withstand the impact of climatic shocks and extreme weather events, plunging families like Amino’s into food insecurity and crisis.

A government issue

According to the constitutions of many African countries, every citizen has the right to adequate food of acceptable quality. This commitment is consistent with SDG 2, which seeks to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030. Food, nutrition and agriculture are therefore public sector issues. Although other players may contribute to addressing these issues, I believe sustainable solutions can only be achieved by government.

For women like Awino and other disadvantaged groups, the start point to increasing agricultural output and income is gaining secure and equal access to land and other productive resources. Improved seeds and fertilizers, knowledge and information, financial services and market access are also vital to breaking the cycle of low productivity, poverty and hunger.

Furthermore, we must promote resilient agricultural practices among these smallholders to enable them to cope with floods, droughts and climate change in general. For developing countries, this may require increased investment in rural infrastructure, agricultural research and training, technology development, and the enhancement of plant and livestock gene banks. Market systems must also be made to work properly, devoid of distortions.

Only government has the authority and power to implement these measures, either directly or through facilitation. Governments must, therefore, be very deliberate in their efforts to enhance smallholder communities. Because it will not happen by chance.

Four clear steps to improvement

As I see it, there are four clear steps governments need to take to deliver meaningful support to farmers:

1. Prioritise, tailor and sequence agricultural programmes to the challenges farmers face. To do this, governments need to engage with smallholders on the ground and devise plans based on the data these meetings generate.

• Provide a range of services to meet the breadth of smallholder needs. In addition to things like seeds, fertilizers and technologies, smallholder farmers often require additional support in the form of technical and financial help, or guidance on markets and risk management.

• Synchronise and collaborate to provide maximum impact. Governments need to ensure all parties within the agricultural sector are pulling in the same direction. For example, if a programme has been identified as suitable for Awino, the government, development partners, the private sector and even farmer organisations should channel their investments into that programme. The roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder should be clear to avoid duplication and delays in decision making. Sub-national government activities should also be synchronised with those of national government, with mandates clearly specified at each level.

• Give smallholders a voice. Create platforms where farmers can provide feedback on which elements of a programme should be sustained, which should be abandoned, and which should be improved. Such platforms should form part of a clear system to track and report progress. This may involve collecting and analysing data, reporting to stakeholders, discussing progress and capturing learnings.

Supporting and partnering with government

In my experience, governments usually know what needs to be done to improve smallholder productivity and wellbeing. But they often lack the capacity to fully discharge these responsibilities.

For example, they might lack the expertise to collect and analyse data to inform agricultural sector policies and priorities, or the ability to identify high-impact rural programmes. They might lack the human, systems, tools and financial resources required to implement and deliver projects. Or the skills and experience to bring sector stakeholders together and achieve consensus. Many governments also do not have the requisite data systems to support evidence-based planning, progress tracking, reporting, peer review and learning.

In short, while governments are vital to driving progress for smallholder farmers, they are often hamstrung by internal shortcomings. Recognising this situation, at AGRA we have made what we call ‘state capacity enhancement’ a key strategic priority.

To strengthen the ability of governments to support Africa’s farmers, it is critical to invest in the development of agriculture line Ministries, focusing on areas such as prioritisation and performance management, planning, budgeting, procurement, resource mobilisation and leadership, as well as data management and analysis. It is also important to invest in institutional capacity enhancement, looking at organisational structure, staffing, funding, equipment, tools and technologies. Other focus areas include legal and regulatory frameworks to facilitate the implementation of key sector policies. In this regard, AGRA provides support to governments in the form of staff time, technical secondments, grants for government activities, and the procurement of consultants to strengthen the areas mentioned above.

Due to the complexity of the agricultural sector, AGRA often forms strategic alliances with development and technical partners. This approach enables us to concentrate on areas where we have competence and experience, while leveraging the expertise of third-party specialists in other areas. In this way, additional resources can be mobilised, programmes can be better coordinated and partners more aligned, while quality services can be offered for accelerated sector transformation.

Crucially, AGRA also encourages governments to work in collaboration with other partners (national, regional and international) and take a multi-stakeholder approach to tackling food and nutrition security. Because while governments are the primary players in this field, they cannot achieve their goals alone. Only through partnership with external stakeholders, in particular private sector organisations, can governments deliver the programmes, policies and interventions required to transform the agricultural landscape.

I truly believe that through strengthened government support, smallholder farmers like Awino can build the resilience they need to withstand floods, droughts and other extreme events. The primary objective of this work is to help Africa’s smallholders improve their incomes, livelihoods and lives through sustainable agricultural production and productivity. And it is an objective that is fully achievable. Indeed, with multiple sector stakeholders working together, driven by strong national governments and guided by common programmes, Africa can begin to progress towards food and nutrition security. And Awino can begin to look to future harvests with confidence.

By Daniel Njiwa, Head, Regional Food Trade, AGRA 

Friday morning 1st January 2021 held it own significance. In the world I operate in, this was a particularly special day for Africa with the launch of the start of trading on the basis of the newly developed framework of the African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA). The occasion was replete with accompanying fanfare, messages of commitment and reassuring speeches from Africa’s presidents and leaders.

I couldn’t stop smiling. Finally, here we were. The moment when the small business person grasps the opportunity to sell to any market in over 50 countries. However, my excitement was quickly cut short by the harsh reminder that we have been in similar, smaller, nimbler and more homogeneous markets before (East African Community, Southern African Development Community and the Economic Community of West African States among others), from which my friends in the SMEs business are yet to see the benefits. Have we fully addressed their old challenges? These include access to finance, storage infrastructure, inability to meet standards, compliance obligations with heavy red tape, corrupt officials and the list of barriers to trade is endless. The thought of all these obstacles got me depressed, before I realized that I had been dozing on my couch.

It is 12:01am on 2nd January 2021, and I am shaken awake by disjointed noises and a sharp headache. I am drenched in sweat and quite disoriented. What could this be? Something new and terrifying had taken a hold of my system. This, my friends, is how the second wave of the corona pandemic welcomed me into the new year. I was immediately struck by the fact that it had come upon me fast and forcefully, just as the media houses were estimating that new infections would more than double in the next few weeks of this new wave compared to the peaks reached during more than eight months of the previous attack. Africa may be even more unprepared during this time, while the vaccine is at least six months away.

As I worried about my early symptoms, I also turned by attention to the search for herbs and thought about stocking up on fruits and vegetables and I couldn’t help but ponder the source of these ‘power nutritious foods’ and how they ended up in the wet markets and eventually onto my plate. How many small businesses made a living out of it? For most urban centers in Africa, these supplies are sourced from neighboring countries, arriving in markets aboard the night buses and trucks. In Lilongwe, Malawi, urban dwellers enjoy sweet pineapple and melons from Mbeya, Tanzania, while in Nairobi, the mangoes and bananas flow in from Uganda. Nothing unusual there.

As you can imagine by now, my Covid-19 scare had spun me back into work-mode, the very reason our leaders delayed the launch of the ACFTA months earlier. Now I feared that I might be one of the reasons the two-day-old shining launch would face another set of delays going forward. If the pace expected to accompany the new wave is anything to go by, we ought to suppose the re-emergence of drastic containment measures and restrictions to the movement of people imposed by governments, and this, my friends would be the final straw that broke the camel’s back, completely crushing the small businesswoman, youth or SME in Africa. Why do I say this?

My organization, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), with the support of the UK government’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), was at the forefront in creating an understanding of both the primary and secondary effects of the Covid-19 measures on food supply systems across a number of countries and the results were telling. The small perishable food businesses run by women and the youth were the most impacted by almost all the containment measures set for the operation of local wet markets, transportation, the absence of structured and digitized trade platforms, as well as the cross-border facilitation which failed to recognize these small actors. They also suffered massive livelihood losses occasioned by loss of income, non-existent work due to scaled down industrial activity.

With the anticipated second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic threatening an already volatile ecosystem, how we react this time around will either make or break the aspirations of the ACFTA and the woman trader who is only now beginning to pick up the pieces from the ground up to give her business another shot at success in these unprecedented times. African governments should continue in earnest with interventions that will not stifle this SME lifeline, but instead nurture and guard it with everything available for we know that these are the veins that have fed Africa in the most resilient fashion possible. AGRA estimates 60-80% of all food produced and distributed in the continent is by SMEs. More significantly now, since fruits, vegetables and other herbals that are vital for the health of the population amidst a global pandemic and dwindling nutrition are moved and distributed by the same businesses in the hands of women, youth and SMEs, there is a new urgency in ensuring their bulking and storage facilities are open and functional; that they can access soft loans to get them to trade more; that digital solutions are in place to enable them reach wider and distant buyers; that there are deliberate steps to create customs green channels for SMEs; communication lines are open and they have the information on tap to educate them on how best to deal with and pass on Covid-19 information as they ply their businesses. These suggestions are by no means exhaustive, but qualify as a starter pack menu that each government should commit to in order to ensure the women, youth and SMEs involved in the lifeblood of our continent continue to operate and thrive.

Meanwhile, with a positive confirmation for my Covid-19 test results, I have embarked on the journey of a fortnight to manage the symptoms and work towards getting back on my feet again. A major part of this process is a study in how interconnected we all are as it will entail a late-night bus transit from Mbeya, Tanzania delivering my favorite fruits, and a vegetable farmer plucking ‘sukumawiki’ the succulent leafy vegetables along the wetlands from Nakuru to Nairobi. Covid-19 is real! Stay safe and take care!

The race to limit the spread of Covid-19 has, through necessity, accelerated many other transformations that were already under way, including the digital revolution in African agriculture.

What had previously been a growing but limited shift towards the use of digital tools and technologies for food production and business has become a lifeline in the face of market restrictions, food insecurity and lockdowns. And among the biggest winners have been women.

Long since excluded from equal resources, from land rights to training, almost 90 per cent of African women with small and medium agricultural enterprises have taken up digital solutions during the pandemic, according to a recent survey. Figures from before the coronavirus outbreak indicated women previously accounted for just a quarter of registered users of digital solutions.

The challenge – and opportunity – now is to build on these gains, and translate participation in the digital marketplace into prosperity in the real marketplace. Through leveraging the potential of digitalisation to level the playing field, African countries can unleash the potential of women in agriculture, who already represent 50 per cent of the workforce and own a third of the small and medium enterprises that produce, process and trade food.

The first benefit provided by digitalisation is more equal access to markets, which has been the greatest limiting factor of the pandemic for almost three-quarters of women. Even before the emergence of Covid-19, women tended to be limited to labour intensive, low value agricultural production activities rather than high-value activities but with market closures and restrictions related to COVID 19, many women have found themselves cut off from their normal business channels.

Online platforms have provided new opportunities for women to continue and grow their operations, with two-thirds taking to social media to market their products in new ways and reach broader audiences.

Increasing internet connectivity in rural areas, scaling up access to mobile technology and improving digital literacy would help more women in agriculture benefit from the digital revolution and enjoy greater market access.

Secondly, digitalisation offers the possibility of more widespread networking and training, particularly for rural women in remote areas where opportunities to participate in workshops or educational sessions are limited. Platforms like VALUE4HERConnect, Africa’s first online portal for agricultural businesswomen, provide gender-responsive services such as a Women2Women community forum that allows women to learn from one another and access mentoring and support services.

The service also offers a Women2Finance pillar and a capacity-building resource to help equip women with the skills, inputs and knowledge to grow their businesses.

Since launching last year, VALUE4HER has engaged more than 600 women across 27 countries and under the leadership of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), will support more women as part of plans to reach up to 5,000 women-led agribusinesses over the next five years.

Initiatives like this, which are designed specifically with women users in mind, will be vital in ensuring the digital dividend reaches African women.

Finally, growing levels of digitalisation offers women greater access to information and services when conventional channels are closed or off-limits, providing greater resilience to shocks and stresses, including the Covid-19 pandemic.

Digital technologies can help reduce the burden of agricultural labour and processing, which is particularly important for women, who continue to take on a greater share of domestic work. They can also help women increase their yields and build up financial resilience to minimise the impact of sudden disasters.

For example, Hello Tractor, a mobile app that allows farmers to hire a tractor on demand, increases the accessibility of mechanised tools while overcoming the prejudice women face by allowing them to interact directly with service providers through a mobile device.

Meanwhile, e-verification tool eHakiki received a grant from AGRA last year for four pilots to help reach 100,000 farmers in Tanzania with a service to identify counterfeit products, helping to build the resilience of women farmers by ensuring the quality of their seeds, pesticides and fertilizers.

Women are a key pillar in Africa’s food and agricultural systems, from taking charge of household nutrition to providing much of the labour on small-scale farms.

It is crucial, not only to the viability of these women’s businesses but to local and regional food security, that the benefits of the digital revolution are extended to women as well. This needs investment in infrastructure and resources from both public and private sector, but it also needs dynamic partnerships to ensure the design of these services feature the unique needs of female farmers and entrepreneurs and that they are affordable and easy to use. Covid-19 may have ruptured business as normal but it has also disrupted longstanding inequalities, creating a chance to build back better.

Source: https://allafrica.com/stories/202012140319.html

NAIROBI, Dec 7 2020 (IPS) – ’A hungry man is not a free man. He cannot focus on anything else but securing his next meal.’ So proclaimed the late Kofi Annan.

In 2003, Kofi Annan and a like-minded group of African leaders recognized hunger as a complex crisis on the continent.

They saw the eradication of hunger as not just an end in itself – but the first step towards sustainable development and progress, requiring the transformation of African agriculture.

In order to address this, three momentous events occurred at that time. In 2003, the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) was launched to provide a policy framework for the transformation of African agriculture.

We need African solutions to African problems. When an African farmer has access to better technology and finance, they see improved productivity, food security and income. Most of the big mistakes in development have happened when external actors have foisted their ideas and ideologies on the continent

In 2006, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the organization I lead, was established to turn these ideas into reality. We are founded on the belief that the only way to do this is at scale – and yet with a focus on the farmer.
And the Africa Fertilizer conference was held, to increase access to crop nourishment – identified as the weakest link in the farming chain.

These measures have reaped rewards.

Across Africa, we have directly reached millions of farmers with increased access to technology, investment in research, financial support or training.

Significant investment was put into access to inputs – especially improved seeds, and soil health management technologies.

For instance, we have helped establish over 110 African seed companies, with some 700,000 tonnes of seed now available to 20 million farmers. Countries like Ghana and Mali had no seed suppliers, and now have an average of six each.

Across our programme countries, a network of 30,000 agri-preneurs now serve farmers.

Healthy soil is fundamental to a productive global food system. However, many smallholder farmers do not have means to prevent or address soil degradation problems. As the world commemorates the World Soil Day, we are encouraged that our soil fertility management techniques are helping reverse decades of soil depletion wherever we work.

We have taken the lead in providing evidence to governments on the value and challenges of subsidies being used in agriculture. We advocate for national policies that benefit smallholder farmers. We support upgraded storage facilities, better market information systems, stronger farmers’ associations, and more credit for farmers and suppliers.

There is still much to do, however. There are approximately 45 million farmers on the continent – African governments and investors must reach all of them if we are to see an end to poverty and hunger.

There are also new challenges. Climate change has the potential to reverse the continent’s hard won gains.

Desertification threatens productive lands. Locusts, armyworm and diseases like the Maize Lethal Necrosis wipe out the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands. Currently, COVID-19 is pushing tens of millions more into malnutrition, while farmers see their choices diminished.

As a proud African, I share Kofi Annan’s optimism and conviction. Africa will prevail, it can eliminate poverty.

I know that a major way of making this happen is through smallholder farmers. I have personally seen smallholders change at scale in Rwanda when government puts its weight behind transformative programs.

As a catalyst for change, AGRA is on track. The eleven countries we support have all advanced in the last ten years through hard work and investment. With ten years to go to meet the Sustainable Development Goals, it is important now to reflect on progress, and positioning for future gains.

Inclusive agriculture transformation is not a quick fix. It requires a long-term focus. We estimate US $25-35 billion a year of investment is needed to transform the continent’s agriculture, while an unparalleled coalition for change is required.

Ultimately, we need African solutions to African problems. When an African farmer has access to better technology and finance, they see improved productivity, food security and income.

Most of the big mistakes in development have happened when external actors have foisted their ideas and ideologies on the continent. This is why AGRA focuses on its unique position as an African institution.

African farmers deserve the same opportunities enjoyed by farmers in Europe and North America. They do not want to be stuck with 40-year-old seed varieties. When given the chance, we have seen adoption rates of 90% of new seeds in countries like Nigeria and Burkina Faso.

On a recent visit to Kiambu in Kenya, women farmers explained to me how they are happy to spend more on seeds that mature in half the time, increasing yields.

In these difficult times, there has never been a greater need for agricultural transformation. Through COVID-19, our farmers have shown great resilience, and AGRA has been on hand to support this.

To achieve Kofi Annan’s vision, we certainly need further support and investment for farmers. We must also learn as we go forward and be humble.

Our focus must always be on the needs, capabilities and choices of smallholder farmers themselves – this must be our ‘North Star’ objective, for agriculture is nothing without the farmer.

Dr. Agnes Kalibata is the President of The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), and UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Food System’s Summit

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/2020/12/choice-opportunity-african-farmers-will-transform-africa/

Dr. Agnes Kalibata is the President of AGRA and a Member of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. In 2019, she was also appointed as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the 2021 Food Systems Summit.

Communities across the world are facing a food securitycrisis. Over 690 million people worldwide experiencehunger on a daily basis. This has only been exacerbated by the impacts of COVID-19: The number of people facing acute food insecurity could double to 265 million by the end of 2020.

It doesn’t end there. For billions of people living in the global South, this is a crisis on top of a crisis on top of a crisis. In southern Africa, record-breaking droughts and floods destroyed crops on a large scale earlier this year. Massive outbreaks of desert locusts continue to threaten crops in East Africa. In fact, in 2019 weather extremes and conflict led to 33 million and 77 million starving people, respectively.

The pandemic is pushing already vulnerable people further to the brink and it cannot go on. Moving forward, COVID-19 recovery efforts need to build resilience in our food systems to withstand future shocks. More than that, we must ensure a fair and just recovery, as the impacts of crises are not felt equally.

Women are at the frontlines of economic and extreme weather impacts, including impacts driven by both climate change and the spread of COVID-19. Women often lack decision-making power in and are de-prioritised during emergencies. The food insecurity crisis is no different. While women comprise 40-60% of the agricultural workforce, existing institutional biases often prevent them from having access to land rights, financing tools andtraining opportunities, and hold them back from employment and leadership.

But women are a vital part of the solution to these challenges. If women had access to the same resources as men, they could close the gender yield gap and increase production on their farms by 20-30% on average, and help reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12-17%.

Addressing gender inequity must be central to the response to food insecurity. In the short-term, we need immediate financial and policy support to manage the impacts of COVID-19 on current food production and distribution systems.

Ensuring equitable access to agricultural inputs and resources in the near-term can decrease the long-term effects of the food crisis. Targeted food programmes and shock-responsive safety nets can enhance and expand social protection measures, but must reach women in places where they are needed the most. Response efforts can collect sex and age disaggregated data and use this to monitor who is being most impacted. Such data can helpdesign evidence-based interventions that support the most vulnerable, such as women and women-run businesseswho bear the burden of the pandemic so disproportionately.

In the long-term, we must make the food system more resilient to potential future shocks. Practices such as regenerative agriculture that enhance soil health, promote agrobiodiversity, and efficiently manage water have shown to increase yields and must be available to people that need them the most. But sustainable food systems are only possible with gender equality, as was found in a programme carried out by the UN across seven countries, including Liberia and Niger. Results showed that when rural women have better access to resources and opportunities, their communities have improved nutrition, increased incomes, and more efficient and sustainable food systems.

Securing women’s land rights is a critical step towards any solution to the current hunger crisis. Doing so createsincentives for long-term investments, such as soil conservation, by female farmers. This can result in increased productivity and makes the land more resilient to climate change, in turn improving livelihoods.

Many regions and countries are already advancing equal land rights for women. The African Union has declared a goal of 30% of all registered land being in a woman’s name by 2025. There is still a ways to go but progress can be noted: My home country of Rwanda, which has the highest percentage of female parliamentary members globally, is also one of only two countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with over 20% of land rights registered in women’s names. Even when land is shared, such as in marriage, the woman’s share is protected by law in Rwanda, a very critical yet often forgotten step.

Bolstering women’s role in the food system can have broad and lasting benefits for our communities and environment. We know that women can lead recovery todeliver a sustainable food system. What we need now is global solidarity to address and overcome the gender barriers.

Next year’s UN Food Systems Summit, for which I am the Special Envoy, calls on all of us to collectively act and change the way we produce, process, and consume food. Leveraging international processes, by ensuring that regional and national consultations are inclusive and participatory, can provide platforms that listen to and support women as change agents.

Now is a unique moment to collectively aim for economic, social and environmental transformation on a previously unthinkable scale. Women can lay the foundation and lead the effort to build back better – we just have to give them the chance.

By Frank N. J. Braeken, Formerly Unilever’s Regional Director for Africa and Member of the Board of AGRA

As we look forward to celebrating World Soil Day, we have an opportunity to consider the extraordinary challenge which Africa faces, namely the urgent need to increase food production. The African population is growing by 2.7% every year. This is twice the population of the Netherlands, which means another 1.2 billion people to be fed by 2050.

In a continent where the majority of the population depend on agriculture and where the average farm is less than half a hectare in size, any solution must start with small farmers. This was why AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, was founded. Essentially, AGRA aims to offer solutions reflecting the small-scale reality which affects so many potential farmers. The organisation is looking for solutions which do not merely pull small farmers out of poverty but also ensure they produce enough to contribute to solving the ever-greater food issue, which is an enormous challenge.

Some think introducing large-scale agriculture could offer the answer, as with the Common Agricultural Policy in Europe; but the social, ecological and economic reality in Africa compels us to find alternative, more suitable solutions. Large-scale agribusinesses may be more productive, but they offer no solution to the poverty or economic isolation of the African rural population.

An important part of the solution lies in using better technology. Take seed technology, for example. It is regrettable how far Africa has lagged behind in developing hybrid seeds. This has had an enormous impact. Not only is the yield per hectare low, the crops are highly vulnerable to a variety of shocks, for example pests, and the increasingly unpredictable climate is a major problem. This is the reason why AGRA has put great efforts into developing new seeds – not through big multinationals, but via local businesses involved directly in production and distribution. The organisation’s work has resulted in more than 110 African seed companies being set up and growing, benefiting 20 million farmers. Countries such as Ghana and Mali that in the past did not have any seed companies, now have six on average. These efforts have also led to a network of 30,000 agricultural entrepreneurs serving farmers where no such entrepreneurs existed before.

The solution is not just about promoting technology. Farmers also need information and direct advice and assistance, and there is no simple solution here. AGRA’s approach is to train advisers at the village level. Some 30,000 village based advisers have been trained in the last two years, supporting around 6.2 small farmers directly. This program has been so successful that some advisers have set up their own businesses selling seed and providing advice, giving small farmers lasting access to better agricultural technology.

Other needs the organisation is working on are improving soil fertility, accessing markets and credit facilities, strong reliable farmers’ organisations and supporting the development of agricultural policies that support small holder farmers, agribusinesses and the development and use of technologies at the farm level AGRA is now devoting more and more attention and resources to stimulating an active agricultural policy and mobilising political support for governments to make the budgetary efforts required. So far, only seven African countries have achieved their own aim of investing 10% of their national budget in agriculture.

As an organization, AGRA has ambitious aims. We hoped to have reached 30 million farmers by 2021, but we are not there yet. Finding and adapting solutions that work in a local context across our 11 countries, and creating a strong political support base, is taking more time and energy than we expected. Climate change has destabilised local markets faster than anyone could have foreseen and is destroying the means of existence for those who are least responsible for these changes; and COVID-19 is having far-reaching and unexpected effects on economies in Africa and around the world.

Putting an end to hunger in Africa is not simple and there are no simple or perfect solutions. Being small-scale, with the poverty that accompanies it, is neither romantic nor a philosophical issue: it is a harsh, daily reality for millions of farmers who are entitled to the same opportunities as European and North American farmers had many years ago. African farmers deserve the same opportunities enjoyed by farmers in Europe and North America. They do not want to be stuck with 40-year-old seed varieties. When given the chance, we have seen adoption rates of 90% of new seeds in countries like Nigeria and Burkina Faso. But we must also recognize that major investment is required – we estimate it will take US D 40 billion to reform agriculture in Africa.

AGRA is now entering our next, strategic phase. Much has been learned in recent years, from both our own and other programs, and we must keep on building on that. My greatest hope is that the perfect does not become the enemy of the good and that AGRA gets the broad political and collective support it deserves and needs. We have no time to lose.

Keeping the world informed on global financial matters for over a century, the Financial Times (FT) is a household name in many regions. Read by Heads of State, blue chip company CEOs, industry captains and policy makers, the FT is one of the world’s leading news organisations, recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy.

David Pilling is  FT’s Africa Editor. He is the man that decides what stories on and from Africa get published on the paper. And he has earned his stripes; he has interviewed almost everyone you can think of from Presidents and Prime Ministers to farmers, activists, innovators, economists and ordinary people with a story.

Waiganjo Njoroge, our Interim Head of Communications spoke with him to get his views on the continent, its social economic outlook and, more importantly, the place of agriculture – Africa’s economic mainstay, in growing inclusive economic development.

You are now about 3 years as the Africa Editor at the Financial Times? Having held the same position in Asia for nearly a decade what’s your impression of Africa?

We often make the mistake of forgetting that Africa is made up of 54 distinct countries. That said, sometimes you’re obliged to look at the continent as a whole. To get a clear sense of where the continent is, I advise looking at trends over 20-30 years which look a lot better than we imagine from looking at headlines. For example, life expectancy, infant mortality, vaccination rates, and access to education for both boys and girls have all improved. Politically, most African countries are less susceptible to civil war and they are more amenable to peaceful transfer of power through the electoral process.

However, and there is a big however, it is possible to be quite pessimistic about much of Africa. If you look at the participation in global trade, if you look at the capability of manufacturing, if you look at the infrastructure, the continent still has a lot to do.

A mixed bag of goodies?

The economy and quality of life are improving in many countries, partly thanks to China’s big engagement in the continent, which personally I see as a net positive besides many shortfalls. Challenges still abound including an exploding population because the fertility rates are yet to come down compared to other parts of the world. For example, in Bangladesh, the fertility rate is two, in Africa as a whole, it’s more than five. That means that populations are going to double and triple and quadruple. This will either be an opportunity or a challenge depending on how governments respond today and in the future.

What is Africa’s immediate and distant future outlook?

There will be a mix of success and failures. I guess the question is, will there be 40 success stories and 10 failures or will there be 10 success stories and 40 failures? For the continent to grow as a whole you’re going to need economies of scale and for that, the intercontinental free trade area could play a role. It’s going to be difficult for smaller individual countries to really go alone.

I will switch to agriculture now, which I believe is the surest path to our prosperity. When we last spoke, you described the topic as deeply frustrating and exciting at the same time. Why that description and is it starting to change?

I am still looking at agriculture. Not too long ago, I was in Madagascar where people are farming vanilla which is worth more than silver. Yet half the children in Madagascar are stunted which means that they run the risk of growing up with mental and physical disabilities.

You’ve got farmers who don’t know the full value of their produce and have no access to the global market. This creates an unequal relationship between buyers in the west and the producers in places like Madagascar which is made worse by exploitative middlemen with the farmers as the greatest losers.

Are there places where this is changing?

Generally, across most of Africa, yields of many crops are very low. The good news is that it’s easy to double or triple yields with the right seeds and fertilizer, a little bit of extension services, a little bit of help from government and the right policy environment. I believe that any government that has agriculture in the top three priorities will inevitably witness economic growth.

Does agriculture really hold the potential to transform the continent?

I believe it does, or at least it is a part of what’s required. Once you start increasing yields by planting the right seeds coupled with mechanization, use of fertilizer and digitalization of farming, you increase efficiency and productivity in farms. While this can sometimes be a challenge as some people will lose employment, if well managed, it can create opportunities in the cities and not necessarily the biggest capitals but also in the second and third tier cities.

The population that transitions out of agriculture finds employment in other sectors of the economy. We have seen this in other countries including India, China, Vietnam and South Korea that have become manufacturing powerhouses.

Is this the path for Africa?

It’s going to be difficult for many African countries to replicate the Asian manufacturing model. I could be wrong but to me it looks as though that might be difficult to replicate.

Why is this so?

I guess what I worry a lot about in many African countries is that you have governments that don’t have development plans, their raison d’etre is not sufficient to develop the country and to provide the framework through which as many people as possible can escape poverty and have the lives that they would like to live. There’s too much corruption and too many elites looking after their own interests and [3 not really worrying about the nation as a whole.

There are historical reasons for that. These are very young countries that were created under colonial dictates. The more I look at it, I realize it’s hard to create a nation state after 60 or 70 years of independence.

That said, the more I look at parts of Africa, the more impressed I am that despite the awful beginnings with many African countries starting their journeys as modern states with lines drawn on the map by imperialists sitting in Berlin or other European capitals, they are emerging as true states. Still, Kenya or DRC or Nigeria or any other Africa country for that matter have a long way to go before they can look back with the same sense of history as china, with its supposedly five thousand years of continued history, continued civil service and therefore a sense of national purpose.

Why is this sense of a nation important?

While this may sound intangible, I think it’s actually extraordinarily important that if a country is to move forward it needs to have that sense of really being a nation. Some of the countries that we’ve seen in Asia that have been extraordinarily successful like Japan or China or Korea or even Vietnam all have very strong sense of national identity dating back 100s of years. Therefore, even if you have corruption and even if you have dictatorships, there’s a sense that they want to raise the nation up.

Are there African countries that are starting to build this national purpose?

This is starting to emerge in some countries most driven by a sense of national pride. While I cannot give an exhaustive list, I think Ghana might be one example. Even in a place like Nigeria, you sense a Nigerian pride. You sense that if you could have a government that could begin to put in place a true national project that there is a nation there that might respond despite the challenges.

We once drove up together for a field visit and you called your mum to tell her what you were seeing. Do you do that often? What does she think about the job you do?

Yeah, my Mom’s really interested in the world and because I’m her only son and my father died 20 years ago. She is extremely interested. She’s always reading all of my stuff. Much more than that, she is very interested in the world and she’ll read lots about it anyway. I guess the time in Japan, she read a bit more on Japan than she normally would and now that I’m covering Africa she reads a lot more about Africa. It’s not unusual for her to tell me about stories that I haven’t noticed and to say, “Hey, why don’t you look at that?” So yeah, that’s quite normal. I think it’s something that any son or daughter should do so I take no credit, it’s just a normal thing.

As we conclude, it would be remiss of me not to ask about your recent book ‘The Growth Delusion’. Why are you frustrated with GDP as the main measure of social-economic wellbeing?

GDP is something we take for granted. I mean we write a lot about it in the Financial Times, we compare things to GDP, tax to GDP, debt to GDP. What is GDP? Why is GDP a good measure of progress? What does it mean? That was the starting point really. I lived in Japan where GDP has been flat for 20 years and because of what I think is the over reliance on GDP as a measure, we assume that Japan was a total failure.

I wanted to find out what this measure is and critique it. GDP is good at measuring manufactured goods but very bad at measuring services. It measures all production resulting in good, bad or indifferent outcomes. So pollution, crime and arms all contribute to GDP, while volunteer work does not.

We tend to equate GDP growth to mean an improvement in all of those things that it has no ability to measure including mental health. It is an overrated measure especially for nation states that are already reasonably wealthy.

Finally, the Africa man who lives in London! How come?

There would definitely be a case for living on the continent and I probably should especially because of the way I do journalism which is a kind of sensory approach. I like to feel stories around me much rather than read about them or discover them down a telephone.

My current choice of location is mainly informed by ease to travel between African countries, which can sometimes be challenging and more expensive than travelling from London. There’s also a different way that newspapers work. If I’m in London, I can advocate for Africa and easily go into meetings, whereas if I’m on the continent, I would do less of that. On balance, I actually agree with you, I think I would like to move the job to somewhere on the continent. Then of course the question becomes where? I could live in Johannesburg, Lagos, or Nairobi, but equally you could choose to live in Addis Ababa or even Dakar or Kampala. There’s a lot of great options.

TurnTables is an interview-based feature that tells the story through the eyes of journalists who bring stories of the world to us. They have interviewed farmers, teachers, scientists, Heads of State, business captains and many people in-between. It’s time to hear what they think.

By Foster Boateng-AGRA Country Manager, Ghana

In sub-Saharan Africa, grains, tubers, nuts and oilseeds are key food items, representing the dietary basis for most of the population.

In Ghana, for instance, a country that predominantly depends on smallholder farming to feed its 29.89 million people population, the per capita consumption of maize alone is estimated at about 45 kg per year (Provisional 2018-2019 Food Balance Sheet).

Yet even as starches and oils represent the nutritional foundation for the country located in the West Coast of Africa, the propensity of aflatoxin contamination on crop products has erected a huge bump along the path to healthy food consumption and trade.

Aflatoxins are naturally occurring harmful toxins produced by the fungi Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. Unfortunately, most of the foods susceptible to aflatoxin contamination are staples such as maize and groundnuts, which are largely consumed by both humans and animals. The mould is ferocious in attack, occurring at any stage of the supply chain, from pre-production to post-harvesting, marketing and distribution thus posing a significant threat to both human and animal health

Post-harvest losses, including aflatoxin contamination, account for about 319,000 tonnes or 18% of the country’s annual maize production, according to a recent study by Dr Bruno Tran, an expert in post-harvest losses management.

The damage is exacerbated by inadequate number of silos and dry warehousing facilities, leaving most farmers to store their produce in poorly shielded and ventilated barns and cribs. In addition, processing as a means of conserving output is underdeveloped in the country, with the preferred traditional methods being grossly inefficient in managing the large quantities of harvests.

And while the above factors mainly lean on infrastructure, the role of food regulatory bodies cannot be understated. Inadequate awareness, testing and certification processes have crippled the ability of the country’s farming population to maintain a quality of produce that is acceptable to both local processors and international buyers.

As a result, it is not uncommon for cash strapped farmers to sell the best items from their harvests, leaving the low quality and contaminated produce for their own consumption.

But prospects for the country’s farmers appear great with the government stepping up to develop systems that will address the storage and processing concerns plaguing the agricultural sector.

In 2010, Ghana established the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO) with the aim of reducing post-harvest losses, ensuring price stability and establishing emergency grain reserves.

The agency has been instrumental in the administration of food production and usage chains, substantially reducing the overreliance on food imports for products such as rice, in favour of local production.

But for more impact, especially in post-harvest loss management, the GoG recently inaugurated a National Steering Committee for Aflatoxin Control drawing the indulgence of experts in the sector led by the Alliance for Green Revolution.

The Committee, which is being coordinated by the Science and Technology Policy Research Institute (CSIR-STEPRI) and funded by AGRA, will, among other duties, assist in the development of the National Policy and Technical Regulation for Aflatoxin Control.

The Committee is further tasked with the development of the national policy and technical regulation for aflatoxin, spearheading awareness creation on aflatoxins among policy makers and relevant stakeholders as well as ensuring the implementation of the national policy and technical regulation for aflatoxin control.

In addition, The National Aflatoxin Sensitization and Management (NASAM) project which is currently being implemented by the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) and IITA (Aflasafe) is moving to implement targeted interventions to inform, educate, and engage the private and the public sector on the health and economic risks posed by aflatoxin contamination. The overall goal of the project is to contribute to food safety and security by improving knowledge about aflatoxins, its impacts and management solutions.

Already, the project is training and linking farmers to the Agrodealer distribution networks and promoting the use of AFLASAFE (all-natural and environmentally safe products) among farmers in Ghana. In the north, 200 agro-input dealers have gone through the training, arguably the biggest partners group that has benefitted from the training so far. The results have been encouraging. The trained agro-input dealers are evidently now able to offer better services to farmers not only in the provision of the Aflasafe and information on aflatoxin management, but they are now instrumental in the dissemination of information on crop production and improved business management skills. Under this project, approximately 33,000 farmers have been armed with information on aflatoxin control and management.

With just 4 kilos of Aflasafe, a farmer can effectively protect an entire acre of maize, groundnuts or soybean, and thereby meet the stringent international and domestic aflatoxin standards. Aflasafe is now available in Ghana, retailing at GH¢ 7 per kilo. The Environmental Protection Agency of Ghana has approved the use of Aflasafe GH02, which was officially launched in June 2018, to protect the country’s maize, groundnuts, and sorghum from aflatoxin.

The ultimate goal is to minimize aflatoxin contamination from Ghana’s food production processes. On this basis, combined efforts are now geared towards high quality produce from the Ghanaian fields. Further, the stakeholders are working on the harmonisation of local and regional policies, aligning them with those set by international trading partners such as the European Union allowing for better market penetration for Ghana’s agricultural products, while boosting the chances for economic expansion through food trade.

For smallholder farmers in Kaduna State, Nigeria the new currency is knowledge, and it is changing the business of local agriculture.  The 270,000 farmers enrolled in the AGRA-supported project to upscale the maize, rice and soybean value chains can now peg their livelihoods to markets rather than subsistence.

The Kaduna Maize-Rice-Soybean Consortium is amongst the best expressions of the Partnership for Inclusive Agricultural Transformation (PIATA) that is stimulating agricultural development in at least 11 African countries. Priority nations include Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

The focus of the US $280 million initiative led by AGRA, USAID, Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is an integrated delivery system within agro-economic zones and across value chains that enhances in-country coordination to leverage wider investments and deliberate engagements with private sector to build sustainable systems capable of transitioning agriculture from subsistence into profitable businesses.

Under PIATA, the partners commit to delivering impact against a shared results framework aligned to each country’s overall vision and national agriculture plan. It is an important collaboration between development partners in both the public and private sectors that support countries in delivering on the Malabo Declaration and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed to by African heads of state and governments at scale.

According to Prof. Rufaro Madakadze, AGRA Program Officer for Capacity Building, providing farmers with new high-yielding seed varieties is an important part of the solution for Africa’s agricultural development and transformation.

A combination of public and private interventions is one of the approaches undertaken by AGRA to address crop challenges, support breeding programs to develop new crop varieties and establish an effective system that guarantees farmers quality seed for staple food.  These partnerships extend to private companies to meet the demand for seed and networks of agro-dealers to make the seeds available as close to the farmers as possible.

Brown Field days are normally organized when the crop is fully dried in the field and ready for harvest. The aim is to showcase the matured crop and demonstrate to farmers ideal harvest and postharvest procedures and technologies with a view to encouraging them to employ mechanization in their farming activities.

The farmers, many of them women and youths, attending the Brown Field Day last November were appreciative of the efficiency of both rice and maize threshers on display and other technologies showcased to improve on-farm efficiency and profits.  This generated a conversation on the opportunities available to farmer groups to source mechanized solutions for the benefit members. This approach could also be extended to making quality inputs and extension support available and accessible to meet a growing demand.

Abdullahi Musa, a farmer said that while he appreciated the performance and yield of Farro 44, an improved rice variety on the demo plot, he was keen to know from the seed company representatives if he could access the seed closer home, prompting a deeper discussion about linking farmers to agro-dealer networks in Kaduna State. Another farmer, Sule Makadi, was concerned about the risk of crop failure and if there were avenues for compensation given the requisite farmer investment in certified seed and fertilizers against the uncertainties posed by climate change.  This conversation led to the issue of linking farmers to credit facilities as well as provisions for crop insurance – an area that many farmers felt was still too complex for them.

Dr Esther Ibrahim, the AGRA Associate Program Officer called on the farmers attending the event to make use of the knowledge acquired for the betterment of their businesses and communities. She also observed that the impact of adopting improved farming and post-harvest practices ought to be visible across the entire value chain.

Aminu Muazu and Engineer Moshood Suleiman from Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA/SG2000 Nigeria Country Program), a member organization of the Consortium, were on hand to moderate the discussions and questions generated by farmers attending the event.  One of them, Mrs Faiza Dahiru, who belongs to a group of local food processors asked Engineer Suleiman the cost of the two threshing machines, and if there were preferential terms available within the Consortium.  To which the engineer explained that while the cost of the rice and maize threshing machines was N150,000 (US $416) and N75,000 (US $208)  respectively they could be fabricated from artisans trained to construct them.

SAA/SG2000-Nigeria works through the Agricultural Development Projects (ADPs) established in participating states to assign State and Zonal Coordinators and Extension Agents to implement field programs. They provide hands-on training for farmers, ensuring a successful technology transfer process, at the same time assisting them in obtaining inputs and solving the day-to-day challenges in food crop productivity.

Assisting smallholder farmers to confront the constraints to food crop production and the emerging threats brought on by climate change calls for experience, expertise and the strength of partnerships to scale up the delivery and adoption of improved seed and fertilizers.

AGRA supports both public and private sector partners to develop the systems capable of sustaining the availability, delivery and adoption of improved seeds and fertilizers. Within the Partnership for Inclusive Agricultural Transformation (PIATA), an initiative that aligns with the 2014 Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods, AGRA, USAID, Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are collaborating for the agricultural transformation in Africa.

The interventions are in tandem with the African Union’s (AU) promise to end hunger by 2025, and complement national economic strategies by ensuring a seamless implementation of the various initiatives. Thus, the deliberate focus on a market driven, business agenda that encompasses the entire food system beyond agricultural production.

Led by AGRA and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in line with the Seeds Systems Development interventions to increase staple crop productivity, food and income security for smallholder farmers in Nigeria, a recent training was held to upgrade the skills of technical staff in partner seed companies, specifically those directly involved in field, processing and storage activities.

Among them were production managers, technical staff, young breeders, factory managers and outstanding out-growers. The 45 beneficiaries included 37 technical staff from 15 seed companies and 8 seed certification officers from the National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC), Nigeria’s regulatory body in seed systems.

With a focus on seed production techniques for quality maize, rice and soybean seed production technique, trainees learned how to plan, establish and manage seed fields and post-harvest products to produce and distribute good quality foundation and certified seeds for maize, rice and soybean.  Special attention was given to hybrid seed production and maintenance of hybrid parental materials which require more complicated techniques. The local seed companies also benefitted from technical and operational skills to improve their competitiveness in a field dominated by multinational seed companies. hybrid certified and foundation seed production and maintenance techniques (field and post-harvest activities).  They were also introduced to seed certification regulations and standards as well as seed production planning.

Three categories of seed companies were given priority: those involved in Kaduna and Niger Consortia respectively, those that recently received rice breeder seeds from AfricaRice for the production of foundation and certified seeds and young registered seed companies with little experience.

The seed companies selected were from Kano State, Kaduna State, Niger State, Zanfara State, Katsina State and Plateau State respectively. Among the beneficiary seed companies were Premier Seeds, Value seeds, Tecni Seeds, Da-Allgreen Seed, Manoma Seeds, Goldagric, Maina Seeds, Ideal Agro Seeds, WACOT, GreenSpore Agric, Nagari Seeds, Savannah Seeds, Maslaha Seeds, Rahama Seeds and Jamy Nagari Seeds Ltd.

The focus on a market-driven, business agenda that encompasses the entire food system is deliberate.

Participants learned how to computerize their record keeping, data management and seed business analysis.  This is in addition to being able to store short-to-long-term data such as geographic coordinates of out-growers, pre-planting data, planting data, quality assurance data, harvest data as well as post-harvest data as well as generating information for performance evaluation, planning, tracking seed volumes and the evolution of productivity.