New international donors have also stepped forward. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, sponsored by the Gates and Rockefeller foundations, has given a massive boost to the agenda. Aid to Africa from the governments of wealthy countries has been promised to double between 2004 and 2010, and much of that should go to agriculture. 

An additional reason speaks to the urgency for change: Africa’s vulnerability to food insecurity has skyrocketed. The population has outstripped the food supply, the only region of the world in which this is true. Climate change is already wreaking havoc on crop yields, and the changing timing and increased unpredictability of rains. Depletion of soil nutrients has reached crisis proportions across the continent. Soaring world food prices has put a crippling burden on Africa as a net food importer. This way lies disaster.

Here are bold but realistic goals that Africa and its donor partners can adopt: to double grain yields in Africa by 2012, to graduate at least three quarters of African smallholder farm households from subsistence to commercial farming within a decade, and to expand nutrition programs alongside increased food production to cut the ranks of the hungry by at least half by 2015.

We should establish a special fund for the green revolution in Africa akin to the highly successful Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. An annual flow of $10 billion from the rich countries, half through the fund, would finance the needed breakthroughs. It would amount to roughly $10 per person in the donor countries, a modest sum that would give Africa the historic opportunity to banish extreme poverty and chronic hunger for hundreds of millions of its people. 

This article was originally published with the title The African Green Revolution.

3 Comments

1. 1. Assegai 06:44 PM 5/16/08

   I concur, some government stimulus is always helpful to get the wheels rolling.

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2. 2. TonyRR 11:32 PM 5/22/08

   Property rights are needed as much as aid. Long term farming will not survive, when the local strongman/warlord can take farm land away with force at a whim.

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3. 3. nwabunwanne 10:39 AM 5/23/08

   It would be good to see a sort of Agricultural bank that focuses on rural areas and their needs because too often policy makers are too busy giving speeches on the "Green Revolution" and doing little else from a far off capital. Africa happens to have a huge inland population greater than in other parts of the world and infrastructure is vital for this population to tap into far-off and often far-wealthier populations. For example, linkages between northern nigeria and the big cities of the south would go a long way in helping the rural communities increase incomes than subsistence farming for day-to-day living.

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