Does AGRA's new $550M strategy address past failures?

Last week, AGRA launched its new five-year strategy and brand identity — which includes a name change from the Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa to simply AGRA. An AGRA spokesperson said the new brand identity is aligned to the organization's evolving approach toward inclusive and sustainable food systems transformation in Africa. “The new brand represents our thinking on how we can help grow sustainable food systems in Africa, and improve resilience so as to better withstand shocks [that] impact particularly on food systems,” they said. The spokesperson added that the challenges that the continent faces from external shocks and crises, and deep rooted structural constraints, have created an urgent need to rapidly strengthen the food system and transform agriculture. This prompted the organization to place a much greater emphasis on sustainable farming and markets and trade in their new strategy. The new strategy — which requires $550 million in funding — will build on AGRA’s achievements to date, and the lessons it has learned with its partners. AGRA is working with its resource partners and hopes to be at least 50% funded for the five-year period by June 2023, the spokesperson said. Targets set out include getting 30% of the farmers they work with to adopt sustainable farming practices, investing $300 million to enhance market competitiveness for farmers, and increasing funding for women-led SMEs by 25%. With these goals, the organization hopes to act as a catalyst for the accelerated transformation of agriculture and rapid strengthening of food systems by concentrating on key areas such as seed system development, and government engagement and expanding its work in sustainable farming, and markets and trade. But critics of the organization said the strategy fails to address past failures. Timothy Wise, a senior adviser at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, said the organization “seems to have learned the wrong lessons” and “has committed to more of the same with what seems like window dressing for ‘sustainable farming’ and ‘inclusion’ of women.” “But at this point the name change means that AGRA now stands for nothing, literally and figuratively.” --— Timothy Wise, senior adviser, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy AGRA was founded in 2006 with the vision of using a Green Revolution — a push to transform agriculture and raise yields through what it calls “innovative approaches.” Its last strategy, launched in 2017, aimed to increase incomes and food security for 30 million farming households across 11 focus countries by 2021. In its new strategy the organization states that it aims to “support” up to 28 million farmers in 15 countries and trigger productivity with improved seeds “thus improving the pathway to higher incomes and better food security.” Last week, Agnes Kalibata, the president of AGRA, told the Seattle Times that the organization’s idea of a Green Revolution has “been misunderstood” and that their aim was to champion a uniquely African Green Revolution, which was intended to avoid mistakes of the past. But critics say the organization promotes monoculture farming — growing only one crop at each time on a specific field — which forces farmers to rely on chemicals that harm the environment while making the farmers themselves dependent on corporations and long supply chains. Wise said AGRA's name change and dropping the Green Revolution would have been welcomed if the organization also dropped its promotion of commercial seeds and synthetic fertilizers, as African food producers have demanded. “I was hoping that AGRA would have listened carefully to African civil society and faith leaders, taken seriously the failure of their Green Revolution approach to catalyze any sort of productivity revolution in Africa, and pulled back from such failing programs,” he said. “But at this point the name change means that AGRA now stands for nothing, literally and figuratively.” An independent evaluation of AGRA’s last strategy, Partnership for Inclusive Agricultural Transformation in Africa, found that its “impact on inclusive finance, output markets, and farmer outcomes was mixed,” as “seed companies, agro-dealers, buyers, and farmers … reported acute credit constraints … despite PIATA’s investments in inclusive finance.” The evaluation also suggested that “AGRA did not meet its headline goal of increased incomes and food security for 9 million smallholders.” Wise said the organization's new strategy fails to address the “real problems” identified in this evaluation and lacks concrete objectives to generate productivity, income, and food security improvements for farmers. “How can an initiative based on increasing agricultural productivity fail to set any goal for yield improvements for farmers?” he asked. But Hailemariam Desalegn, AGRA’s board chair, said the new strategy was informed by the lessons they had learned. He said the organization tried to facilitate a “uniquely African Green Revolution” over the last couple of decades but as climate shocks become more pronounced they have realized that sustainable farming is the way to go. He said the organization was also forced to rethink how the continent should produce, distribute, and consume food because of the numerous shocks experienced by the agrifood sector — and had learned that markets and trade are critical components of the transformation. This will enable a sharpening of focus, he said, knowing farmers and small- and medium-sized enterprises depend heavily on markets to sell their produce. “The business as usual model cannot work anymore,” he said at the launch of the strategy. “The only solution is for Africa to transform its food systems and to move onto a sustainable development pathway.” Kalibata added that the organization also plans on leveraging partnerships “to avoid being overwhelmed.” “It's a big sector,” she said. “As AGRA we can only do so much but if we build strong partnerships with other people that are trying to deliver, we can go very far.” She said the organization will also expand its focus from agriculture to food systems and nutrition. “We can't do an agriculture that deteriorates the environment, we can't do an agriculture that does not appreciate that the right food is as important as food — it can't just be food,” she said. “We started with agriculture, we will end with food.”