AGRA, US join forces to help small-scale African farmers

Posted 06 12 2008 3:13PM

WASHINGTON (AFP) - An African agriculture aid group headed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Kofi Annan and the United States on Wednesday forged a partnership to tackle the continent's hunger and poverty.

The initiative by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and the US government's Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), two of the world's largest grant-making organizations in African agriculture development, is focused on helping small-scale farmers boost productivity.

With spiraling food prices exacerbating world hunger and sparking riots, the new alliance is the latest international effort to help reverse decades of underinvestment in African agriculture at the root of suffering in the poorest continent.

AGRA aims at small-scale farmers, providing investments such as seeds, fertilizers and training to the rural poor; MCC will complement its program with investments in much needed infrastructure, such as roads and irrigation systems.

Africa, where most of the populations are employed in agriculture, has less infrastructure than Asia had at the start of its green revolution in the 1960s and 1970s.

"Closing this infrastructure gap will help to accelerate Africa's green revolution," AGRA said.

The partnership plan was signed at a news conference in Washington by Annan and US ambassador John Danilovich, chief executive of MCC, a federal company that fights poverty with an emphasis on good governance.

"Nowhere is this crisis more serious than in Africa," said Annan, chairman of the year-old AGRA.

The former United Nations secretary general and Nobel Peace laureate in 2001 pointed out that African farmers now produce only a quarter of the world average per acre.

In the late 1960s, Africa exported food. But grinding poverty, lack of infrastructure, seeds and fertilizers, and the flight of Africans from rural areas to cities in search of jobs has increased dependence on imports.

"It's been a silent hunger for more than 30 years," said Annan, 70, the Ghanaian diplomat who was the first sub-Saharan African to head the world body, from 1997 to 2007.

Even before the global food crisis deepened widespread poverty and hunger in Africa, there were 200 million people suffering from chronic hunger and 33 million children malnourished, he said.

"It shouldn't have come to this."

Danilovich said that "like AGRA, MCC believes that one of the most significant ways we can promote poverty reduction and sustainable economic growth throughout Africa is to improve capacity and efficiency of the agricultural sector."

Annan called for an end to trade policy restrictions that make subsidized imported Italian tomatoes cheaper to buy in Africa than locally produced and barriers that countries have erected to protect their food supplies.

Most Africans do not want aid, they want to feed themselves, Annan said, envisaging a future when Africa could once again have enough surplus food for exports.

"We want to resume that again in a world trading system that's fair," he said.

To that end, AGRA is working with millions of small-scale farmers and their families to develop practical solutions to boost farm productivity and the incomes of the poor while safeguarding the environment.

Formed with initial support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, AGRA last week signed a partnership agreement with the World Food Program and two other UN food agencies at the UN-sponsored food crisis summit in Rome.