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The African Green Revolution

Lillian Aluanga

Dinah Wetaba has always loved the sound of raindrops pattering down her iron-roofed house in Western Kenya’s Butere District. For Wetaba, a farmer and mother of five, rain completes a cycle of long days toiling on her half acre plot, tilling, planting and tending her maize, beans, sweet potato, soyabean, spinach and collard greens. Lately though, delayed and unpredictable rains have threatened the promise of harvest.

But Wetaba has other worries as well. This season she could not apply fertilizer to her crops. Since 2005, the cost of fertilizer has tripled from Sh1,600, (about US$20) to Sh4,000 (US$60) for a 50kg bag.

As the world grapples with a global crisis that has seen food prices skyrocket and production shrink, Africa is looking to a new project – the African Green Revolution – as its last hope in easing suffering from hunger and malnutrition of one-third its population.

To help millions of small-scale farmers rise out of a cycle of poverty and hunger, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has come up with programs to develop practical solutions that will significantly boost farm productivity and income for the continent’s farmers, while safeguarding the environment.

AGRA is an African-led partnership of farmers, scientists and the private sector, working with governments across the continent to help farmers out of poverty and hunger. It advocates policies that support its work across key aspects of the African agricultural ‘value chain’ – from seeds, soil health, water, markets and agricultural education.

So far, AGRA’s efforts to revolutionize Africa’s food production appear to be gaining ground.

At the July 2008 G8 Summit in Japan, leaders of the worlds’ wealthiest countries promised to work with organizations such as AGRA, which has in less than two years committed US$330 million in programs that address challenges across the agricultural value chain.

Among key challenges facing this chain is the spiraling cost of fertilizer, felt across the continent and on global markets.

In Kenya, the government announced plans in July to introduce subsidies for farmers through an Agricultural Development Fund that will reduce the cost of farming and includes such necessities as fertilizer and seed. Farmers will foot 60 percent of the cost while the government provides 40 percent.

Real Hope or Pipe Dream?

Skeptics have termed it another ‘white elephant’ (given similar attempts in some countries which flopped), claiming its nothing more than a scheme to enrich corporations from the West. But its proponents argue that it’s the continent’s most powerful weapon against hunger.

In the past, there have been concerns that AGRA’s “dalliance” with organizations like Monsanto, (a leading producer of genetically engineered seed), would result in genetically modified organisms being heaped onto unsuspecting farmers.

Dr. Namanga Ngongi, AGRA president, disputes claims of such partnership. “If anything,” he said, “AGRA is counteracting Monsanto as it strives towards supporting the capacity of countries to produce seed using their own natural plant genetic material.”

Kofi Annan, AGRA’s chairman and former UN Secretary General, says the revolution must incorporate the diversity of Africa’s agro-ecological environment and assure sustainable food production with improved varieties of staple food crops and improved soil fertility.

Crucial in improving food productivity is the revitalizing of soils, long weakened by poor farming practices.

“African governments must invest in fertilizer for farmers if we are to realize the concept of an African Green Revolution,” said Dr. Wilson Songa, Kenya’s secretary of agriculture. But that is not enough, he adds. “The fertilizer needs to reach farmers in a timely fashion which requires good roads and a functioning rail network.”

On both counts, the country falls far short, often leaving farmers stranded with rotting fruit and vegetables.

Given the prohibitive cost of fertilizer and desperate need for better yield, Benta Abuko, like many other farmers in her village, has turned to home-made organic manure, made from a mixture of leaves, water, crushed eggshells and cow dung. But she knows this isn’t enough to replenish the depleted soils’ nutrients and feed her family of seven.

In addition, there are questions about the effect of run-off fertilizer on already endangered water bodies. Ngongi says that AGRA recognizes the environmental concerns over pollution, but that the level of fertilizer use in Africa does not justify the claims.

“Fertilizer use per hectare in sub-Saharan Africa is the lowest in the world,” he said.

The region, Ngongi adds, uses about 9kg per hectare compared to the 300kg being used by Europe and China.

Although the soil is further weakened by poor farming practices such as mono-cropping, shrinking acreage and growing populations, farmers like Wetaba and Abuko have little choice but to plant the same crop each season to feed their families.

Frustrated by the time and effort put into farming and the meager earnings, some pyrethrum ( a plant with bright yellow flowers, whose extract is used to manufacture insecticide), maize and wheat growers in Kenya are threatening to seek out more lucrative ventures, such as running small retail businesses. To halt the trend, the government launched the National Accelerated Agricultural Input Program, which identifies and provides very poor farmers with an acre’s worth of seed and fertilizer. With a budget of Sh200m this year alone, targeting some 30,000 farmers, Songa is optimistic that the program will help farmers graduate from poverty to improved productivity and “even have surplus food for sale.”

Access to information is another cog that proponents of the African Green Revolution believe will turn the wheels of change faster. In Kenya, the ministry of agriculture has introduced mechanisms to ensure that precise market information reaches farmers. One example is a collaborative network between the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Services (Kephis) and a mobile phone company to provide farmers with information, for example, on approved crop varieties in their locations. This helps farmers make informed choices on what seed type to plant.

Other challenges arise, such as the difficulty of surviving in the face of civil strife, which creates an environment too unstable for people to remain on the land long enough to invest.

Ngongi also points out that proponents of the green revolution needs to think ahead and strategize on how to combat climate change and the coming shortage of water. For starters, the land under irrigation on the continent would have to increase from the current 7 percent to 40 percent and the need to produce drought resistant crops would push many countries to emphasize the growing of sweet potatoes, millet, sorghum and cassava.

Previously ignored for their inability to attract ‘good markets’ in comparison to other higher income earners like tea and coffee, there is a push to revert to the growing of improved varieties of these indigenous crops, noted for their ability to adapt to harsh weather conditions and added nutritional value.

Already the foods are making a comeback on many dinner tables in Kenyan homes and restaurants.

But AGRA’s initial appearance on the scene was not without a cold shoulder from several African countries suspicious of its objectives. The tide, according to Ngongi, is now changing.

“Ensuring support for new programs to improve agricultural production requires a good working relationship with governments,” Ngongi said. A growing appreciation among African leaders of the relationship between policy and agricultural production is crucial given its importance in accelerating food productivity on the continent.

Although the revolution has support from organizations such as the Rockefeller and Gates foundations, AGRA cites the need for African governments to ultimately sustain their own programs.

In Kenya, a partnership between AGRA, the Equity Bank, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the Ministry of Agriculture, dubbed ‘Kilimo Biashara,’ has seen the signing of an agreement for a loan facility of US$50M to speed up financing for about 2.5 million farmers.

For farmers like Wetaba and Abukho, the gesture may have come too late to salvage their harvest this season. But they cling onto the hope of a better tomorrow, one whose prospects appear brighter by what a green revolution on the continent promises to offer.

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Lillian Aluanga is a journalist with the Standard Newspapers in Nairobi, Kenya.