Bill Gates Boosts Africa’s Food Drive With $56m

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) yesterday received a grant of $56 million in funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to assist Smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa to increase productivity and address poverty and hunger in the region.

AGRA’s Programme Director for Africa Seeds System (PASS), Joe De Vries, who made the disclosure said the programme began five years ago to produce disease resistant and higher yielding seeds for important food crops.

He revealed that the programme achieved significant success with majority of farmers who accessed the new seed, reporting dramatic increases in their harvest.

The Programme Director said “In Africa, farmers have largely not benefited from improved seeds due to lack of localised crop breeding and efficient, dependable seed delivery system”.

He said crop yields in most of Africa countries had remained one-third of those produced by farmers in other developing regions of the world.

According to the PASS boss, “good seed is not just the driving force behind good harvest and eliminating poverty and hunger, it’s the foundation for rapid growth”.

He explained that by 2017, PASS would add 40 new private independent seed companies to the already established under the first phase of the programme.

He said the programme’s aim was to achieve yearly production of 200,000 metric tons of improved seed for food crops such as maize, cassava, and legumes to support 10 million smallholder farmers.

Continuing, Mr. De Vries said that the programme would continue to support the education of local crop scientists ensuring that every major crop in 13 countries of the region has at least one fully qualified crop breeder.