Ethiopia: African farmers' woes motivate AU push for green revolution

The fate of farmers affected by climate change and unable to feed Africans dominated Tuesday’s opening of the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF), which has attracted 1,000 delegates from 80 nations around the world.

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the African Union Commission Chairperson, said lowering the cost of producing food for the African people and making Africa a leading exporter of food to the rest of the world is one of the key priorities of the AU vision of a progressive Africa.

“We want agriculture that is modern and anchored on modern science,” Dlamini-Zuma said at the opening of the AGRF, holding against a backdrop of challenges to food production and climate change.

The AU is gearing for the modernization of agriculture to grow the sector at the rate of 50 % by 2025. The sector’s increase objectives were part of pledges made by African leaders at the Summit in June 2014 in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, where 2025 was agreed upon as the deadline to end hunger.

Dlamini-Zuma said there is need to deepen the food markets and entirely link the farmers to the market for their commodities.

Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said a real transformation of the African agriculture was significant but would be completed only if the leaders of Africa stuck to the implementation of pledges.

“African leaders must be held accountable to the promises they make to improve agriculture,” Annan said. “Africa’s collective and real revolution will be critical for our next.”

At the Forum, agricultural experts said improving agriculture in Africa requires additional investments in other sectors, inclunding roads, to enable the farmers to transport their goods to the market.

But transparency and access to the right data for farmers still remain an issue.

Eleni-Gebremedhin, founder of the Ethiopian Commodities Exchange (ECX) said despite the efforts to create commodity exchanges to improve on the price of farm produce, farmers were still being cheated.

“There are challenges in ensuring the transparency in agriculture through the agricultural commodity exchanges. There are institutions inside and outside of Ethiopia, who are against this model locally and internationally,” Eleni said.

Food security experts at the AGRF said although African small-scale farmers were blamed for poor production of food crops, they were not properly supported to ensure they entirely produce.

Rhoda Peace Tumusiime, AU Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture, said the AU declared 2014 as the year of agriculture to ensure the effective follow-up of the commitments to improve agriculture.

Tumusiime said the challenge was to avail seeds to farmers and create systems to follow up on the evolution of the commitments made by African leaders to improve the welfare of farmers.

“The African Union will work to catalyse these commitments. We want to see an Africa with modern agriculture. We need science to move the agriculture schedule. We need seeds modified to ensure the products are available at each stage,” Tumusiime said.