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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.

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