Cape Town, South Africa
June 14, 2007
The Alliance for a Green
Revolution in Africa today announced the appointment of
former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as its first chairman.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum on Africa meeting in Cape
Town, where he was due to deliver a keynote address on African
agriculture, Mr. Annan said he was deeply honoured to be taking
up the position and hoped to use it to help drive forward
progress on an issue critical to wider African development.
“I am honoured today to take up this important post and join
with my fellow Africans in a new effort to comprehensively
tackle the challenges holding back hundreds of millions of
small-scale farmers in Africa,” Annan said. “Africa is the only
region where overall food security and livelihoods are
deteriorating. We will reverse this trend by working to create
an environmentally sustainable, uniquely African Green
Revolution. When our poorest farmers finally prosper, all of
Africa will benefit.”
The Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa, which was
established last year with an initial US$150 million grant from
the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation and the
Rockefeller Foundation, seeks to help millions of
small-scale farmers and their families across Africa to lift
themselves and their families out of poverty and hunger through
sustainable increases in farm productivity and incomes. It is
headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, and will be working throughout
the continent on a wide range of interventions across the
agricultural “value chain,” ranging from strengthening local and
regional agricultural markets, to helping improve irrigation,
soil health and training for farmers, to supporting the
development of new seed systems better equipped to cope with the
harsh African climate.
The Alliance is a response to recent calls by African leaders to
chart a new path for prosperity by spurring the continent’s
agricultural development and also seeks to help reverse decades
of relative neglect in funding for agricultural development for
Africa. It strongly endorses the vision laid out in the African
Union’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme
(CAADP), which seeks a 6 percent annual growth in food
production by 2015.
Dr. Monty Jones, head of Forum for Agricultural Research in
Africa, a leading African agricultural research organisation,
and a board member of AGRA, warmly welcomed the appointment.
“With Kofi Annan as our new chairman the Alliance for a Green
Revolution in Africa will be much better placed to build broader
political and economic support behind our vision of pro-poor,
pro-environment partnerships needed to revitalise agriculture
for Africa’s small-scale farmers, and replace widespread poverty
with prosperity,” he said.
A New, Sustainable, Uniquely African Green Revolution
According to Dr. Akin Adesina, vice president of Policy and
Partnership at AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in
Africa is inspired by the successes of the original Green
Revolution that dramatically boosted agricultural productivity
in Asia and Latin America but also seeks to learn lessons from
some of its weaknesses.
“The first Green Revolution more than doubled cereal production
and saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people,” said Dr.
Adesina. “However, that experience also highlighted the critical
importance of ensuring that small farmers are the primary
beneficiaries of our efforts and consumer and environmental
health considerations are made part and parcel of agricultural
development process.”
Annan’s new position with the Alliance comes six months after
his departure from the UN, where he served to two five-year
terms as Secretary-General. During his tenure at the UN, Annan
often drew attention to the link between Africa’s failing
agriculture systems and its persistent hunger and poverty.
Keenly aware that most of Africa’s poor, particularly its poor
women, depend on farming for food and income, in 2004 Annan
called for a “new uniquely African Green Revolution—a revolution
that is long overdue, a revolution that will help the continent
in its quest for dignity and peace.”
“We welcome Kofi Annan as chairman of the board,” said Judith
Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation. “Kofi Annan
keenly understands that meeting the biggest challenges facing
our world today requires broad and inclusive coalitions. His
leadership in coalition building is widely admired.”
In the past 15 years the number of Africans living below the
poverty line ($1/day) has increased by 50 percent and per capita
food production has declined. In the past five years alone, the
number of underweight children in Africa has risen by about 12
percent.
A root cause of this entrenched and deepening poverty is the
fact that millions of small-scale farmers—the majority of them
women working farms smaller than one hectare—cannot grow enough
food to sustain their families, their communities, or their
countries.
“Kofi Annan brings not only a great breadth of experience and
insight into the challenges facing African agriculture, but also
the will and skill to help lead a wide range of partners to
address those challenges,” said Bill Gates, co-chair of the
Gates Foundation.
As Chairman of the Board of the Alliance, Annan plans to travel
regularly throughout Africa to meet with African farmers,
entrepreneurs, scientists and political leaders to discuss and
promote the work of the Alliance. He will articulate the
Alliance’s goal to dramatically boost farm productivity and
incomes while at the same time safeguarding the environment and
advancing equity.
“Kofi Annan’s vision and leadership will be a tremendous asset
for the Alliance as it seeks to advance its vision of helping
farmers and their families across Africa live healthier, more
productive lives,” said Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Gates
Foundation.
Working through Partners across the Agricultural “Value
Chain”
Today, with Annan as its chair, the Alliance is led by a board
of prominent African leaders, and is establishing offices in
Nairobi and Accra. The Alliance is also rapidly establishing
partnerships with organizations and institutions throughout
Africa. It has made more than 10 initial grants, establishing
partnerships with several Ministries of Agriculture, as well as
prominent African plant breeders, soil health experts, and
leaders of agriculture extension programs.
The Alliance is committed to building on this foundation and
developing an inclusive partnership of small farmers,
scientists, national governments, foundations and other donors,
civil society groups, and private sector entrepreneurs. It is
already working with African crop scientists and small-scale
farmers to use conventional breeding techniques to develop more
productive and resilient varieties of Africa’s major food crops,
as well as the means to distribute them. It’s also supporting
programmes that will increase the number of African agricultural
scientists and programmes to monitor and evaluate its work. It
will soon launch an initiative to improve the health of Africa’s
soils, which are the most depleted in the world.
Over the next two years, the Alliance will develop new
partnerships focused on improving water management on often
parched farmlands; building more efficient agricultural markets
through better information, storage and transportation; and
encouraging policy reforms that support small-scale farmers and
promote rural development, environmental sustainability, and
trading systems that favour poor farmers.
The African-led Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa
(AGRA) is a dynamic partnership working across the continent to
help millions of small-scale farmers and their families lift
themselves out of poverty and hunger. Alliance programs develop
practical solutions to dramatically boost farm productivity and
incomes while safeguarding the environment and biodiversity. To
achieve this goal, Alliance partnerships address all key aspects
of African agriculture: from seeds, soil health and water to
markets, agricultural education and policy. |
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