Proposal on
Comprehensive Value Chain Program
Scaling of Staple Food Production
In Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia
Submitted to the
Government of Sweden, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)
September 2010
Table of Contents:
I.Executive Summary
II.Introduction
AGRA-Sweden Partnership:
AGRA is catalyzing a green revolution:
III.Background and Rationale
Agricultural Sector Background in Africa:
Rationale for AGRA’s involvement:
IV.Country Specific Challenges and Opportunities
Malawi:
Zambia:
Rwanda:
Opportunities from this request:
V.Proposed Program Strategy
Overall goal:
Specific objectives:
Expected results:
Gender approach for this program:
VI.Integrated Interventions Designed to Increase Production
Market Access:
Program on Africa’s Seeds Systems:
Soil Health Program:
Policy program: Security of Land Rights:
Farmer Organization Support Centre in Africa (FOSCA):
VII.Monitoring and Evaluation
VIII.Budget
Acronyms
AD’sAgro Dealers
ADAPTAgro-Dealer Project
AfDBAfrican Development Bank
AGMAnnual General Meeting
AGRAAlliance for a Green Revolution in Africa
APSAAfrica Parliamentary Support for Agriculture
AWEPAAssociation of European Parliamentarians with Africa
BMGFBill and Melinda Gates Foundation
CAADPComprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program
CGIARConsultative Group on International Research
EACEast African Community
EAGCEastern Africa Grain Council
ECAUnited Nations Economic Commission for Africa
FAOFood and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations
FO’sFarmer Organizations
FOSCAFarmers Organization Support Centre in Africa
GRGreen Revolution
GLTNGlobal Land tool Network
IFADInternational Fund for Agricultural Development
IFDCInternational Fertilizer Development Centre
IFPRIInternational Food Policy Research Institute
IPCCInternational Panel on Climate Change
ISFMIntegrated Soil Fertility Management
JICA-RIJapan International Cooperation Agency Research Institute
MASPMalawi Agro-dealer support Project
NEPADNew Partnership for Africa’s Development
OECDOrganization for Economic Co-operation and Development
PASSProgram for Africa’s Seed Systems
PSTA IIPlan for the Transformation of Agriculture
RDIRural Development Institute
SHF’sSmallholder farmers
SHPSoil Health Program
SSASub Saharan Africa
UNECAUnited Nations Economic Commission for Africa
USAIDUnited States Agency for International Development
WASAAWomen in Agribusiness in Sub-Saharan Africa Alliance
WFPWorld Food Program
I.Executive Summary
AGRA-Sweden partnership:
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and Sweden’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs are committed to improving food security and the quality of life of poor people – especially women – through the efforts of the people themselves. Together, the Government of Sweden and AGRA can forge a powerful partnership for addressing food security and promoting sustainable development in Africa. This proposal requests the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide US$8 million for a package of interventions in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda. The countries chosen for this program have conditions that present valuable opportunities to intervene in agricultural systems, both in terms of natural endowments and interventions to date. The three countries are making progress, but significant effort is still needed to expand current activities and achievements. With this additional effort, AGRA will accelerate the pace of a comprehensive agricultural transformation.
AGRA is catalyzing a green revolution:
AGRA is an African-based and African-led organization working with partners to catalyze change that rapidly and sustainably increases the productivity and incomes of poor smallholder farmers – most of whom are women – and achieves food security for Africa. AGRA was established on the basis that there is no one “silver bullet” that will address all the challenges facing Africa’s agriculture. Rather, success demands comprehensive change across Africa’s battered food value chain, along with supportive policies and appropriate technologies. AGRA works to support the countries’ strategies and with ministries of agriculture. AGRA’s work is guided by its vision:of a food secure and prosperous Africa, achieved through rapid, sustainable agricultural growth based on smallholder farmers.
Opportunities from this request:
The proposed Sweden-AGRA partnership provides an opportunity for AGRA to deepen its work in seeds, soils, markets and policy work in the three target countries, with special focus on needs of women. This partnership will specifically support integrated efforts that will promote efficient and profitable output markets for farmers; increase smallholder farmer productivity from the use of new crop technologies and better soil and water management; and improve security of land rights to women and other vulnerable groups. These interventions will build upon each other for the greatest impact and sustainability. To support the above interventions and ensure maximum impact, the program will include activities targeted at farmer organizations (FOs) that serve poor producers.
Expected outcome:
The project will contribute to increased food security and increased incomes among smallholder households – especially women – in the selected countries.
Project implementation:
AGRA has already invested in the 3 targeted countries and has established relations with the respective governments, private sector and nongovernmental organizations. As such, project implementation will begin as soon as funding notification is received. A detailed logical framework is attached to this proposal showing the project design, including specific activities and outcomes. The project is expected to run over a 2 year period with most of the funds expended during the first year of project inception.
II.Introduction
AGRA-Sweden Partnership:
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is pleased to submit a proposal to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to develop a comprehensive value chain program in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda. This proposal requests the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide US$8 million for a package of interventions in the aforementioned three African countries. The proposed program will support and enable poor smallholder farmers, particularly women, to improve their lives by increasing their farm productivity as well as improving their access to output markets, which will lead to increased food security and incomes. Funding AGRA is in line with Sweden’s policies of supporting poor people’s – especially women’s – quality of life improvement through their own efforts. As AGRA works to support the countries’ National Poverty Eradication Strategies and within the framework of ministries of food and agriculture, funding AGRA is thus, in line with Sweden’s policy of support to country poverty reduction efforts and is consistent with the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action. This proposal responds to the immediate opportunity to improve food security while addressing longer-term interventions needed to fight poverty through increase of household incomes for smallholder farmers.
AGRA is catalyzing a green revolution:
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is an African-based and African-led organization working with our partners to catalyze change that rapidly and sustainably increases the productivity and incomes of poor smallholder farmers – most of whom are women – and achieves food security for Africa. AGRA was established on the basis that there is no one “silver bullet” that will address all the challenges facing Africa’s agriculture. Rather, success demands comprehensive change across Africa’s battered food value chain, along with supportive policies and appropriate technologies. AGRA’s work is guided by its vision: that of a food secure and prosperous Africa, achieved through rapid, sustainable agricultural growth based on smallholder farmers.
AGRA drives innovation, funds demonstration of viable approaches and works with our partners and Africa’s farmers to scale up successes in smallholder farming, with a strong focus on staple food crops in high-potential breadbasket areas. AGRA supports the African Union’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) and has an agreed memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) to help in the implementation of CAADP Compacts at country level. AGRA works in support of and builds partnerships with African governments, the private sector and civil society. It partners as well with farmers’ and women’s organizations; national and international research organizations, including the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR); bilateral and multilateral organizations.
AGRA’s overarching goal is to catalyze a uniquely African Green Revolution. We have set three main goals to achieve by the year 2020:
- Reduce food insecurity by 50 percent in at least 20 countries.
- Double the incomes of 20 million smallholder families.
- Put at least 15 countries on track for attaining and sustaining a uniquely African Green Revolution.
III.Background and Rationale
Agricultural Sector Background in Africa:
Africa's food production per capita has been declining since the 1960s such that in 2009 over 265 million of the continent's people were malnourished and 30% were hungry[1]. Its current food situation is especially worrying since agricultural productivity levels among Africa’s farmers have remained flat or even declined for several decades (see Figure 1 below) while populations in most countries have tripled.
Figure 1: Cereal yield stagnation in Africa compared to other world regions
As long as productivity remains low, rural poverty will persist:
Agriculture is at the centre of life and economies in Africa. About 80 percent of Africans depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, most of these through small farms of less than two hectares. The very low productivity of these farms – in no small part due to the constraints that women farmers experience – fuels the cycles of poverty and hunger in Africa[2]. Moreover, it limits the export potential of the continent's agricultural products - a potentially important income growth source – by reducing their competitiveness[3]. The continent must now develop and invest in solutions to its farmer productivity and food supply problems or face greater hunger, instability and lost opportunity.
Women are particularly affected, yet they hold much potential:
A particularly significant dimension of the poverty and food insecurity problem is that treating all smallholders the same has hindered the kind of impact that would result from meeting the specific needs of women farmers, traders and processors. Due to unequal social relations, technological advance can even lead to inequitable outcomes skewed against women.
Empirical evidence shows that gender inequalities impact negatively on families and the larger economy, a finding supported by macroeconomic analyses on Africa by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the World Bank. For example, in “Can Africa Claim the 21st Century?” (2000), a study by the three institutions concludes that, gender inequality is both an economic and social issue, and that greater gender equality could be a potent force for accelerated poverty reduction in Africa[4]. Comparative evidence from Kenya suggests that men's gross value of output per hectare is 8 percent higher than women's. However, if women had the same human capital endowments and used the same amounts of factors and inputs as men, the value of their output would increase by some 22 percent. Similar results have been recorded in other countries, such as Tanzania, and Burkina Faso. Understanding the nature of the disparities between men and women in agriculture, and acting deliberately to remove them, is one of the key tasks of poverty reduction strategies.
Climate change is now a complicating factor:
The growing effects of climate change are compounding these problems because African agriculture is largely rain-fed and land degradation in recent decades has left natural ecologies fragile. Over the course of this century, rising temperatures and changing precipitation patterns are expected to reduce crop productivity by up to 50%, increase water stress for 75 to 250 million Africans by 2020 and result in more extreme weather events[5]. These latter are the biggest threats to farmers; they further affect agriculture by damaging the infrastructure that is so necessary for successful marketing systems.
Broad-based agricultural transformation is the answer:
Throughout the world, sustained increases in farmer productivity have primarily been sparked by four principal interventions: 1) the introduction of new and better seed; 2) the creation of more fertile soils on which crops are grown, 3) improved market access, and 4) enabling agricultural policies. The International Food Policy Research Institute's (IFPRI) analysis indicates that doubling staple crop productivity across Africa by 2015 would raise average national GDP growth to 5.5% a year, lifting over 70 million people out of poverty. Furthermore, these gains would ensure household and national food security and turn Africa from a food deficit area to a surplus region with 20-40% lower food prices.
Glimmers of a potential African Green Revolution are evident in localized situations where farmers have gained access to improved technologies and favorable marketing opportunities. Yet overall, disjointed and gender-blind efforts hinder the widespread agricultural transformation required. Only through comprehensive, gender-equitable efforts that involve sustainable practices will it be possible to increase farm incomes and eradicate rural poverty. The turnaround is best anchored in technical, social, institutional and market change. Past attempts to bring about this broad change have faltered because they tended to emphasize only one or two aspects of agriculture.
Rationale for AGRA’s involvement:
AGRA’s integrated programs and partnerships are designed to promote rapid, sustainable agricultural growth based on smallholder farmers. AGRA’s work across the food value chain facilitates and supports government and private sector efforts to improve the productivity of the food staples such as maize, cassava, rice, groundnuts and cowpeas. AGRA works to expand and sustain the availability of improved seed and fertilizer, improve farmers’ access to markets, strengthen effective farmers’ organizations, and improve the policy environment – and do so in ways that address the specific needs of women and benefit them. Together, these are the interventions proven to transform agriculture around the world. The activities emphasize strengthening overall livelihoods of individuals, conferring a high degree of sustainability.
AGRA is particularly well positioned to intervene in African agriculture to dramatically raise farm productivity and clink smallholders to markets. The following key features of AGRA’s work make it uniquely suited to triggering an equitable green revolution:
- Investing across the food value chain: through four main programmatic emphases in seeds, soil health, market access and policy whose operations are increasingly being integrated. Each of the programs operates according to careful, in-depth situational assessments and invests substantially through strategically designed interventions in AGRA's countries of focus. Additional attention to credit provision and new work in extension, farmer organization support and water management are all set to significantly enhance the program investments. Altogether, this approach to agriculture in Africa ensures that no one feature of the food system can cause the expected transformation to falter, as has happened in the past.
- Focusing on Africa’s core staples – maize, cassava, sorghum/millet, rice, and grain legumes – means that AGRA helps the category of smallholders that make up a majority of Africa’s poor farmers. Given their scale, unlocking the various opportunities available for these staples results in the most progress in food and incomes.
- Creative partnerships with public and private sector which make the technologies, knowledge and skills smallholders need to improve their farming and marketing efforts available and accessible. This particular AGRA capability and approach will prove especially critical to ensure that the efforts endure well beyond AGRA's own interventions. For example, the seed program's work to link public crop breeding research institutions with private seed enterprises and networks of agro-dealers (most of which are rural SMEs) stimulates a sustainable robustness in seed systems.
- Increasing attention to women’s needs: AGRA recognizes that women are central to an African green revolution that reduces both hunger and poverty. Realizing that promoting gender equality could be a potent force for accelerated poverty reduction in Africa[6], AGRA is giving increasing attention to the specific needs of women and tailoring its activities to ensure that women benefit substantively, including bringing on board professional gender expertise.
Through well-designed and executed monitoring and evaluation, AGRA is continually refining its approach to the transformation task to ensure the greatest impact on the poor and food security. Furthermore, internal and external financial and program systems audit processes are carried out on a regular basis. To catalyze change AGRA works across three integrated portfolios of strategic activities in 13 countries: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
AGRA is well suited to carry out the proposed project as it has the requisite capacity to successfully implement the proposed projects. To date AGRA has committed over US$ 158 million towards agricultural transformation in 13 African countries. Thus far, programmatic experience shows that AGRA’s contribution can deliver real impact towards higher incomes and increased farm output. With careful targeting of women in each activity, the benefits are expected to accrue to them disproportionately. Selected achievements and lessons learned indicate AGRA’s huge potential to achieve its Green Revolution goals:
- The Program on Africa's Seed Systems (PASS) has accelerated the release of 137 improved crop varieties with 12,700 MT of certified seed produced and over 9,390agro-dealers trained. PASS support for new dynamism in the private sector, through Africa’s small and medium seed companies, has increased availability of improved crop varieties to smallholder farmers.
- The Soil Health Program’s (SHP) extension activities have established over 2,000 large scale fertilizer use demonstrations in the 2009/2010 cropping season in the 13 AGRA focal countries. Adopting integrated soil fertility management practices increases yield – in 3 years, 5,000 farm households in 20 pilot sites in Niger adopted better natural resource management technologies, producing 50% more food as a result.
- Agro-dealers are critical for linking the flow of improved seed varieties and fertilizers with farmers – the AGRA supported Agro-Dealer Program (ADP) has so far established a network of 9,200 agro-dealers, leading to the increase in volumes of improved seed, fertilizer and other inputs made available to smallholder farmers. AGRA has seen impressive results through its work in this space in Kenya where travel distance for farmers to access inputs on average decreased from 17 km to 4 km.
- Market Access has helped farmers’ to aggregate marketable volumes of the right quality and linked them to the World Food Program’s Purchase for Progress (P4P) and other major buyers. Substantial income improvements of up to 30% compared to farm gate prices have resulted. Bulking of crop produce by smallholder farmers increases volume of sales and income
- AGRA’s Policy Program, in partnership with a USAID team and the Ministry of Agriculture in Malawi provided maize pricing and trade policy options to the Government of Malawi that contributed to the lifting of the export ban and freed the high floor price on maize that denied farmers market opportunities. Working with local stakeholders to analyze policies and advocate for policy change produces positive results – AGRA mobilized local stakeholders to support the review of seed and fertilizer laws in Ghana and Nigeria. The Plant Bill was approved in Ghana following this process. In addition, following discussions with AGRA and other partners, the Government of Tanzania recently announced a major policy change: it has now liberalized foundation seed production.
- Through Innovative Finance, AGRA and its partners have provided loan guarantees to leverage US$ 160 million from commercial banks to provide loans to farmers and others involved in the agricultural value chain. The loans are available in five countries: Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda. Lending to small scale farmers represents 75% of all loan portfolios.
IV.Country Specific Challenges and Opportunities
Malawi:
In this southeast African nation of 14 million people, 85 percent of the workforce is engaged in agriculture. Malawi’s GDP per capita of US$756 is one of the lowest in the world, and more than 65 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. The smallholder sub-sector occupies 1.8 million hectares; with over one-half of the households having less than one hectare, and one-quarter having less than 0.5 hectare. The majority of households are unable to meet their food requirements with about 27% of under-five children in Malawi are underweight, and nearly 50% are stunted (UNICEF).