The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) recently launched the Farmer Organisation Support Centre in Africa (FOSCA), in Accra, Ghana to address the issue of food security in Africa. FOSCA is an initiative to provide support to Farmer Organisations (FOs) in Africa, to bring about food security in the continent.The programme was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. DEBO OLADIMEJI who attended the event, presents an overview of the situation of poverty, insecurity and food insecurity in Africa.THE issue of poverty, hunger and insecurity in Africa may be direct or indirect consequences of governance. Institutions like the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and countries like the United States and people like former Nigerian President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, are agreed that Africa has enormous promise and potentials in the agriculture, and there is absolutely no reason why the continent should suffer food shortage.Speaking recently at the public presentation of the Africa Human Development Report 2012 in Abuja, Obasanjo blamed the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) of the former military President, Ibrahim Babangida administration for the problem of food insecurity in the country.'I don't like the word SAP because it was one of the things that killed our agriculture,' he said.The UNDP resident representative Mr. Daouda Toure, on his part said the report pointed out two disturbing paradoxes in sub-Saharan Africa.'The Paradox is that Africa is not predestined to hunger and malnutrition. Our continent has the lowest occupation of arable land, yet one quarter of the African population is affected by hunger,' he said.At a telephone conference with the US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Ambassador Johnnie Carson, at the US Embassy in Lagos recently, Carson disclosed thatthe US President, Barack Obama, has instituted a new major initiative called Feed the Future, to create a green agricultural revolution in Africa of the type that occurred in Latin America and in Asia in the 1960s and 70s. According to him, it effectively ended widespread hunger there and has transformed places like Brazil into economic powerhouses, and which has ended food insufficiencies in places like India.And as part of its own contribution to addressing food insecurity in Africa, AGRA launched the Farmer Organisation Support Centre in Africa (FOSCA), in Accra, Ghana, recently.AGRA is set to identify opportunities for smallholder farmers to make more income, and to overcome poverty by creating wealth, making sure that majority of men and women embrace the green revolution project that AGRA is spearheading.The FOSCA initiative aims to strengthen the managerial, organisational and technical capacity of farmer organisations with the aim of transforming them to provide demand-driven and income-enhancing services to their members,Just like the UNDP 2012 Report, AGRA was worried that in Africa more than 50 percent of the people live in extreme poverty. Almost 400 million people live on less than a dollar a day. In other regions, agriculture has played a vital role in reducing poverty. But so far, African agriculture has failed to provide a way out of poverty.Agricultural productivity in Africa lags behind all other continents. While cereal crop yields in Asia have doubled or quadrupled since the 1960s, they have stagnated in Africa. And as populations have increased, food production per capita has been declining in the continent in the past 30 years.AGRA has a vision of food security and prosperous Africa through rapid smallholders agricultural growth and transformation. It also aims to trigger a uniquely African green revolution, that will transform African agriculture into a high productive, efficient, competitive and sustainable system with food security and led million out of poverty.Speaking during the launch, Sylvia Mwichuli, AGRA's Director, Communication and Public Affairs was optimistic that with AGRA's support things are changing in the agricultural sector in Africa. 'I was in Malawi recently and had the privilege of seeing what the National Smallholder Farmers' Association of Malawi (NASFAM) is doing. I have heard stories of how Malawi was doing great, but you do not know how great Malawi is doing until you visit NASFAM. And you see what the farmer organisations can do to change the standard of living of the people,' she said.Speaking in an interview after the launch, the acting Minister for Food and Agriculture in Ghana, Mr. Mike Hammer, who inaugurated the FOSCA project, disclosed that AGRA is one of the major organisations in Africa still looking at the smallholder farmers. 'Farmers who don't have the technology, they don't have access to marketing and credits. They are looking at the entire value change. How to enable them to market their produce and to sustain their businesses,' he said.African governments, he added, should be committed to ensuring that they work with farmer organisations, so that they would be able to achieve their desired objectives. 'I believe that, it is important for Ghana and Nigeria to have a bilateral agreement where we will be collaborating with our brothers in other African countries,' he said.According to him it is quite clear that AGRA has a great role to play in Africa, supporting governments to improve agriculture which is the mainstay of most African countries. 'If it can help Ghana, why not Nigeria'' he said.Personal Security The Challenge Of Food Insecurity In NigeriaDr. David Sario Ameyaw, AGRA'sDirector for Monitoring and Evaluation noted that there is a correlation between crisis and food insecurity in Nigeria. 'Nigeria is one of the prosperous countries in the continent. The population is more than two-thirds of the continent. My thinking is that with agriculture not given priority, very soon, Nigeria is going to have food insecurity. If AGRA can work with the smallholder farmers in Nigeria, Nigeria will be the breadbasket of the whole continent of Africa. But with the insecurity in Northern Nigeria, if we don't arrest it, it is going to affect agricultural productivity.'Fortunately, the former vice president of AGRA, Dr. Akinwunmi Ayo Adesina, is now the Federal Minister of Agriculture in Nigeria. My advice is that Nigeria should embrace the programme that he is introducing to ensure an increase in agricultural production. Whatever the government can do to reduce insecurity will contribute a lot to agricultural growth in the country,' he said.Ameyaw added that African farmers lack access to infrastructure, inputs and knowledge.According to him, majority of the population in the rural areas are farmers. 'If you want to develop the continent you have to target where the majority of the population are. And the highest population of small- scale farmers are based in rural areas, that is why we are targeting them,' he said .Fadel Ndiame, AGRA's Farmer Organisation Support Centre in Africa, Lead Coordinator also remarked that Nigeria has a lot of potentials in agriculture and human resources.However, he agreed with Obasanjo that insecurity is a challenge to food security in Africa. 'Not only Nigeria, we have a similar situation in Mali. We are working with farmer organisations in Mali. But with the insecurity in Mali, we cannot deploy our resources there. The airport is closed. We will definitely not go into regions where the life of our staff or partners will be in danger,' he said.He disclosed that Nigeria would have been a fertile ground to achieve the green revolution in Africa. 'We need to work together with everybody who can do something for the government to create the condition for a successful implementation of our programme in Nigeria,' he said.Ndiame added that AGRA is in partnership with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan to help strengthen the capacity of farmers in the production of yam in Nigeria. 'We cannot succeed in transforming agriculture, especially in West Africa, without Nigeria. We believe that Nigeria is fully aware that partnering with AGRA can bring about transformation in agriculture.'AGRA doesn't implement project itself. We work with the citizens of the country. We are ready to work with agriculture-based institutions in Nigeria, to the extent that those institutions are able to operate.'Initially, we focused on four countries. In West Africa, we started with Mali and Ghana. In East Africa we have Tanzania, and Southern Africa we started with Mozambique. Nigeria is in what we called the priority two countries. The idea was to have few countries to test our concept,' he said.He said that one of the most successful programmes of AGRA is innovative finance. 'Where you can partner with banks to make sure that they provide loans for farmers. Nigeria's minister of Agriculture is the best person to showcase how government, the bank and the private sectors can work together to enable a successful transformation in agriculture,' he said.There is hope, Ndiame added, that some countries like Ethiopia will meet up the 2015 millennium development goals. 'Ethiopia is making tremendous progress in this respect. Well, we need to revisit the strategies so that more countries can meet the millennium goals,' he said.Malawi, Tanzania A Case Of Mixed FeelingsJoseph Nyirongo, Head of Programme, Farmers Union of Malawi said that access to improved seeds is still a challenge in Malawi. 'The demand is higher than what the seed companies are producing.'Access to technology and mechanisation is also a problem as most farmers still don't have access to mechanised farming,' he said.Another major challenge, he noted, is managing post-harvest loses. 'Farmers lose about 40 per cent of their produce as a result of poor storage facilities, poor road network, marketing information,' he said, adding that the strength of the Farmers Union is in their membership. 'Unfortunately, we cannot meet the demands of our members. Where there is a project, that is where we function. We have fear in terms of continuity of the government policy. We met with our new President, Joyce Banda and told her it is important for her to continue with the subsidy programme started by her predecessor, President, Bingu wa Mutharika,' he said.He agreed that the former president of Malawi revolutionalised agriculture with the subsidy programme.Stephen Ruvuga, Executive Director, National Network of Farmers' Group in Tanzania, disclosed that one area that agriculture could make progress in Africa is in the area of technology, using better seeds, irrigation, bio-technology, and genetically modified crops.'The pace of technology has been quite fast. I see AGRA focusing on areas other institutions are also focusing, but till today many farmers have not benefited from new agricultural technology. What I am asking AGRA to do is to find out what is preventing them (farmers) from accessing the available technology. AGRA is spending a lot of money on technology, seedlings etc, but are they following the right steps' So I think that instead of focusing on technology, they should focus on the farmers,' he said.He regretted that farmers remain money-making machine for NGOs. ' Everybody wants farmers to remain the way they are (poor). No farmer can advance without proper credit supports,' he counselled.He recalled that while it is true that hundreds of new varieties of seeds are coming out every year, 'most of the farmers still remain in their traditional ways, not making use of the new technology or liking them.'Then what does AGRA really mean in reality' They want a certain specific programme that is adapted to Africa condition. How is it going to be different from what happened in Latin America or Asia where the rich farmers are the ones that are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer' How is AGRA going to be different from the green revolution of these countries.'' he queried.In Rwanda Women Take OverDiana Muguwaneza, from the Rwanda Development Organisation (a non governmental organisation) disclosed that in that country women and men participate in farming almost 50/50. 'Our new constitution empowers the women to go to school. In the past, women were neglected, they just get married at 18 years. Today, education is free to O' level in Rwanda. This gives the girls the opportunity to go to school,' she said.But even in leadership, women are not neglected in Rwanda. 'In parliament, women are more than men, it is about 55 percent women. It means that the government is creating opportunity for women to participate in governance. We have credit schemes for women. Women make profit from farming, other countries should encourage women to participate in farming,' she said.She disclosed that the 1994 Rwandan genocide reduced the population of men.In Ghana Illiteracy, Indebtedness, Are ObstaclesMohammed Adamu, President of Farmer Association, Ghana, regretted that the programme and policies of the ruling party are not in favour of sustainable agriculture.'So government supported farmers that are loyal to the party in power. It is a major problem because some of those farmers will take loans from government financial institutions and will not pay back,' he said.He is worried that there is a high illiteracy rate among the farmers in Ghana. 'Most of them can not read or write. When you are trying to influence policy, you can't get support. Our inability to collect hundred per cent dues from our members is a problem,' he said.On her part, Mrs. Irene Egyir, Senior Lecturer in the College of Agriculture, University of Ghana and the CEO of an NGO called Multi Features and Capacity Enhancing Services was not impressed by the attitudes of Ghanaian farmers to loans.According to her, she discovered that finance was one of the major problems facing the urban farmers in Ghana, and decided to help them with soft loans.'The farmers were squatters on government land; they have been farming on it for years. They told me that they have ready market for their vegetables, like Hidden Tree Limited etc.'So she loaned them money to pay in eight weeks instead of six weeks maturity time for their vegetables.'The first time, only one person defaulted. So, I was encouraged. Second round, four people did not finish paying. By the third round about forty percent of the farmers did not pay. My manager said that he would not deal with them again,' she agonised.But Egyir has made up her mind to continue giving loans to the farmers.
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