20 Years After, Africa Rejects Green Revolution Despite $1bn Investment

BY CHIKA OKEKE, Abuja

African countries have rejected the Green Revolution programme twenty years after it was formed, despite the over $1 billion invested to end hunger, increase crop yields and reduce post-harvest losses.

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, AGRA, was founded in 2006 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation with the goal to catalyse a farming revolution in Africa.

A breakdown of the investment revealed that the Gates Foundation donated a $200 million grant, while the Mastercard Foundation with a $350 million five-year donation restricted the support to promoting youth employment, which was not part of the core Green Revolution strategy.

AGRA also secured a $105 million grant from the Green Climate Fund, GCF, for a program to reduce post-harvest crop losses as a form of climate adaptation and mitigation.

To commemorate the anniversary, Alliance for Food Sovereignty Africa, AFSA, in collaboration with an independent researcher at Tufts University, Timothy A. Wise conducted a report, which revealed twenty years of failed Green Revolution program, even as farmers in the benefitting countries are already charting a different path.

AFSA is Africa’s largest civil society movement, bringing together farmers, pastoralists, fishers, Indigenous, faith groups, women’s movements, youth and consumer associations in a united voice for food sovereignty on the continent.  It is a network of networks operating in 50 African countries including Nigeria, reaching 200 million people.

The report titled: "Requiem for Africa’s Green Revolution: An updated assessment of a failing agricultural productivity strategy,” was specifically conducted by Timothy A. Wise.

It captured programs in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Senegal.

According to the report, AGRA’s ambitious goals were to double productivity and incomes for 30 million small-scale farming households while cutting food insecurity in half by 2020.

It added: “Those objectives aligned with those of the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program, CAADP, an African Union initiative launched the same year as AGRA to stimulate greater investment by African governments in agriculture.

“CAADP’s goals became enshrined in the 2014 Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods.

“The largest financial support for Green Revolution technologies comes from African governments themselves, which continue to spend large portions of their agriculture budgets on subsidies for seeds, fertilizers, and other Green Revolution inputs. Reliable numbers are difficult to determine, but such incentives have been estimated to exceed $1 billion per year.”

National Coordinator of the Zambia Alliance for Agroecology and Biodiversity, ZAAB, Mutinta Nketani said: “After billions poured into AGRA aligned policies, farmers have only grown hungrier and more in debt, describing the situation in Zambia. We cannot continue this way.”

The General Coordinator of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, AFSA, Million Belay added: “The agroecological alternative isn't theoretical. Farmers are already building the agroecological alternative: restoring soils, protecting their seeds, diversifying their farms and reducing dependence on expensive external inputs. It's time to fund what works."