Support smallholder farmers to bolster food security in Africa
I have been a technocrat for most of my working life, some of which was spent leading the Rockefeller Foundation’s Africa office as the managing director. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) was started during my time with the Rockefeller Foundation, so I have had the chance to closely witness its contribution in transforming the lives of our farmers over the years.
This history has spurred me to acknowledge Agra’s impact in improving farming in Kenya as it holds its flagship annual summit, the AGRF, in Nairobi this week.
We will be urging governments, businesses and the agriculture ecosystem to embrace Agra’s model for inclusive agricultural transformation that has been so effective over the last decade.
I do not have any personal gains to make from this, but I feel compelled to tell the world about Agra’s positive impact on smallholder households.
Agra’s founding team, led by its first chairman, the late Dr Kofi Annan, adopted a straightforward path to inclusive agricultural transformation. Towards this end, Agra has been working to boost investments that help smallholder farmers in Africa to achieve food and nutrition security, and increase their income.
This was expected to be achieved through a stepwise process, which would see an initial decade spent on structural development before giving way to a period of rapid take-off. This is the stage Agra is in. By the end of 2016, Agra had invested heavily in capacity development by supporting the training – at post-graduate level – of specialists, including soil-health technicians, who are now leading the replenishment of Africa’s depleted soils. They have developed crop varieties that mature early to increase yields.
Agra has also engaged African governments, including Kenya, on their national priorities for agricultural transformation, a process that informed their next steps for development. These engagements have also supported better agricultural practices at the regional and county levels.
The interventions have included the development of resilience and sustainability plans in response to the effects of climate change. In Kiambu County, through collaboration with Agra, our farmers have been trained on good agricultural practices, including diversification of crop enterprises that has led to increased food output, while reversing the region’s biodiversity loss.
Development funds
Through an innovative farmer-led extension program – the Village Based Advisor model – smallholder farmers in Kiambu now have access to good and progressive agronomic practices throughout their production cycle, as a result of which we are now witnessing a rapid modernisation of our agricultural sector.
We are now exploring ways of up scaling this and sharing these skills with other counties.
Such evidence of immediate benefits arising from investments in farming have inspired many governments to transform their agricultural sectors.
With such success, it’s saddening to see some new ‘development’ organisations dedicating their resources to undermining the progress made; energies that could otherwise be used to boost Agra’s efforts to solve Africa’s hunger and poverty problems.
As an agriculture expert and a policy maker, I note with concern a recent call by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) to stop Agra’s funding support without any clear justification rather than just competition for development funds.
It’s unfair for any organisation to dedicate resources towards criticising another, especially when the criticism is based on patronising external perceptions of what Africa’s priorities should be. That would turn the clock back on the progress made over recent years.
Africa’s farmers are increasingly enlightened, and that is easily confirmed from their actions and how they perceive different organisations.
Based on my constant engagement with smallholder farmers, Agra is regarded as a farmer’s friend and will continue to contribute to Africa’s long-term dream of achieving sustainable agricultural transformation.
Dr Nyoro is the Governor of Kiambu County
The Daily Nation of Nairobi
