Nairobi — Keynote Address to the 20th Anniversary of the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) on August 31, 2026
Africa can turn agriculture from a low-productivity employer of last resort into a growth engine. It cannot do so by expanding acreage. It can do so by closing enormous yield gaps on existing land, capturing value that now leaks offshore or rots after harvest, building state capacity that treats food systems as a single interconnected problem, and making the sector a destination for skilled young people rather than an exit ramp.
The starting point is sobering. Agriculture still accounts for about 17 percent of Africa’s GDP (roughly 18 percent in sub-Saharan Africa), employs a large share of the workforce, and remains the largest employer of African youth. Cereal yields hover around 1.7 tonnes per hectare against a global average of about 4.2. Rainfed maize in much of sub-Saharan Africa delivers only 15–27 percent of water-limited potential. Fertilizer use is about 23 kg per hectare versus a global rate well above 120 kg. Only about 6 percent of African cropland is irrigated, versus roughly 45 percent in Asia. The continent imports around $70 billion of food a year while wasting 30–40 percent of perishable production and a large share of grains. The CAADP/Malabo process has improved planning and data, but the continent finished 2025 off-track against its own targets.
Agriculture accounts for about 17 percent of Africa’s GDP, employs a large share of the workforce, and remains the largest employer of African youth.
A 10 percent overall GDP growth rate is exceptional and will not be delivered by primary agriculture alone in most countries. What is realistic—and necessary—is agricultural GDP growth of 6–8 percent sustained for a decade, combined with agro-processing, logistics, and input industries that multiply the effect. In agri-dependent economies (Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, and much of the Sahel), that combination can support overall growth in the high single digits and, in well-executed cases, approach the 10 percent threshold. Ghana and Senegal more than doubled crop output per hectare over two decades; Ethiopia’s irrigated wheat expansion raised yields from about 2 to 4.4 t/ha on new lowland schemes. Those are proofs of concept, not yet a continental system. 
Here are four specific directions Africa must take now:
1. High-yield seeds on less acreage (productivity first, land last)
The strategy is intensification, not extensification. Africa holds a large share of the world’s remaining uncultivated arable land; using it as the growth path destroys forests, raises conflict risk, and still leaves yields low. Close the yield gap on current fields.
Action points
• Treat seed systems as industrial infrastructure, not a project. Every country needs a functioning pipeline: public breeding (or licensed CGIAR/private germplasm) → certified multiplication by private and cooperative seed companies → last-mile distribution with quality control. Prioritize climate-adapted hybrids and OPVs for maize, rice, wheat, sorghum, and cassava; heat-tolerant wheat and irrigated rice have already shown large gains in Ethiopia, Sudan, and parts of West Africa under the TAAT model. Mandate variety release timelines of 18–24 months, not five years. 
• Couple seed with soil and fertilizer, or the seed fails. The 2024 Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit target of 54 kg/ha by 2034 is more realistic than the missed Abuja 50 kg/ha target—if it is location-specific, not blanket. Scale soil mapping, micro-dosing, and blended fertilizers. Precision application has produced 20–80 percent yield gains and benefit-cost ratios of 3–12 in pilots; broadcasting expensive urea on exhausted soils does not. Domestic blending and regional phosphate/nitrogen production (Morocco, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania) should be treated as a strategic industry, not just imports.
• Expand farmer-led and public irrigation where water is available, not everywhere. Ninety percent of SSA cropland is rainfed. Small-scale solar pumps, hillside water harvesting (Rwanda’s LWH model), and rehabilitation of existing schemes raise cropping intensity from one season to two. Irrigation without fertilizer and seed is wasted capital; the three must be packaged. 
• Stop measuring success by hectares planted. National scorecards should track yield per hectare, nutrient-use efficiency, and output per worker. Area expansion should require an environmental and land-rights test.
• Protect and scale “opportunity crops” (cassava, teff, finger millet, cowpea, indigenous vegetables) that are more climate-resilient than maize monoculture, while still pushing maize and rice where markets and agro-ecology support them.
Realistic target: move average cereal yields from ~1.7 t/ha toward 3.0–3.5 t/ha within a decade on existing land. That is still well below Asian irrigated averages and is agronomically attainable.
2. Increased and improved investment in value chains
Most of the money and most of the jobs are off the farm. Africa exports raw cocoa, coffee, cashew, and cotton and imports chocolate, instant coffee, tomato paste, and milled rice. Post-harvest loss is a hidden tax of tens of billions of dollars.
Action points
• Build processing next to production, not only in capital cities. Decentralized mills, oil crushers, cassava processing, tomato paste, dairy cooling, and spice plants cut transport of water-heavy raw material and give farmers a buyer at harvest. Models such as Releaf’s rural palm-oil systems in Nigeria show the logic: industrial throughput close to the farm raises farmer price and slashes spoilage.
• Treat cold chain, storage, and rural roads as agricultural policy. Silos, solar cold rooms, reusable crates, and all-weather feeder roads have higher food-security returns than many input subsidies. Public-private agro-industrial parks work only if they are plugged into reliable power, water, customs, and contract farming—not if they are isolated prestige zones.
• Use development finance to crowd in private midstream capital, not replace it. Blended facilities for agri-SMEs (the $65 billion financing gap is real), warehouse-receipt systems, and offtake-backed working capital do more than general “agribusiness funds.” AfCFTA rules of origin and SPS mutual recognition should be used to make regional processed-food trade cheaper than extra-African imports.
• Shift public spending from untargeted fertilizer subsidies toward public goods that raise private returns: research, extension, quality infrastructure, and risk instruments (weather index insurance, commodity exchanges with delivery). Subsidies that exist should be smart: e-vouchers, soil-test-linked blends, and time-bound.
• Measure value-chain investment by three numbers: share of production that is processed domestically, post-harvest loss rate by commodity, and farmer share of retail price.
A decade of serious midstream investment can convert a $70 billion import bill into domestic industry and exportable surplus. That is where GDP multipliers live.
3. Policy capabilities for interconnected challenges
The binding constraint is not a missing strategy document. It is implementation capacity across ministries that do not talk to each other: agriculture, water, trade, finance, land, energy, education, and security.
Action points
• Make the Kampala CAADP cycle (2026–2035) an implementation regime, not another planning cycle. Malabo failed on execution: scores rose modestly to 5.25/10 against a 9.40 “on track” benchmark, and no country met the full set of targets. Require every National Agriculture Investment Plan to name a single accountable delivery unit with a published quarterly dashboard (yields, fertilizer intensity, irrigation hectares actually watered, processed output, youth jobs, budget execution). 
• Create a food-systems cabinet cluster, not an isolated ministry of agriculture. Climate shocks, conflict in producing regions, FX for fertilizer, port congestion, and land administration are one problem. Ethiopia’s cluster-farming approach and Senegal’s linkage of irrigation to its investment programme are examples of joining water, inputs, and markets.
• Fix the three policy failures that kill private investment: insecure land tenure (especially for women and youth), unpredictable trade bans and export restrictions, and late payment by public buyers. Land administration reform and digitized titles are agricultural policy.
• Build domestic policy analytics. Few ministries can model the fiscal cost of a fertilizer subsidy versus a feeder-road programme, or the employment effect of a cassava industrial park. Partner universities, IGET-type institutes, and ReSAKSS-style units should be embedded in treasuries and planning commissions, not left as donor projects.
• Align macroeconomic policy with the farm. High real interest rates, currency instability, and fuel-price spikes destroy input markets faster than any extension service can rebuild them. Central banks and finance ministries must treat food-system stability as a core mandate, as they did (unevenly) after the 2008–11 price spikes.
• Use security policy as agricultural policy in the Sahel and parts of the Great Lakes and Horn. Uncultivated or abandoned land is often a conflict and governance failure first.
Capability is the scarce factor. Countries that built it (Morocco on irrigation and agrifood exports, Rwanda on land and hillside intensification, Ghana and Senegal on yield growth) outperform those with better soils and worse institutions.
4. Agriculture-targeted skilled workforce — reverse the exit, use the 2050 labour wave
Africa’s working-age population is projected to rise from under 900 million in the mid-2020s to about 1.6 billion by 2050. Sub-Saharan Africa’s share of the global working-age population is headed toward roughly a quarter by mid-century; Africa as a whole will account for a rising share of the world’s labour force as Asia ages. That is only a dividend if people are productive. Today, youth are leaving primary agriculture for low-productivity urban services. By around 2033, services are projected to employ more African youth than farming. That shift is premature if industry and agribusiness have not been built.
The goal is not to trap young people on one-hectare plots. It is to make the whole food system—seed, mechanization, irrigation, processing, logistics, veterinary services, digital advisory, finance, quality control—a skilled career track.
Action points
• Redesign agricultural education around jobs that exist off the farm. TVET and polytechnics should produce mill technicians, cold-chain operators, drone and soil-test technicians, cooperative managers, food-safety auditors, and agri-fintech staff—not only “better hoe farmers.” Apprenticeships inside processors and input firms should count as national service or be subsidized.
• Professionalize extension. One underpaid generalist per 2,000 farmers cannot deliver site-specific advice. Hybrid models: digital advisories (already raising tomato yields and cutting water use in Ghana pilots) plus fee-for-service private agronomists paid by input companies and offtakers.
• Make land and finance accessible to young operators. Group titles, long leases on underused public land, and start-up packages tied to offtake contracts beat rhetoric about “youth in agribusiness.” Women must be included by design; they already do much of the labour and little of the ownership.
• Mechanization as a service, not asset ownership. Most smallholders cannot buy a tractor. Hire centres, two-wheel tractors, and threshers reduce drudgery—the main reason educated youth leave—and raise labour productivity so fewer people can produce more.
• Pay for skills with results. Link training budgets to placement rates in processing plants, commercial farms, and input firms. Track the share of rural secondary graduates who stay in the food system in skilled roles, not just “returned to the village.”
If labour productivity in agriculture and agribusiness rises fast enough, the sector can absorb a large absolute number of workers even as its share of employment falls—the normal path of structural transformation. If it does not, the 2050 workforce becomes an urban unemployment and migration crisis.
A transformed agricultural system that raises yields on less land, industrializes the midstream, governs the interdependencies, and employs a skilled workforce is the only way agriculture can contribute to growth rates that change living standards.
What holds the four pillars together
Three conditions determine whether these actions compound or remain a list.
First, sequencing. Seed and soil without markets produce gluts and collapse. Processing without reliable raw material produces empty factories. Skills without firms produce migration. Start with commodities and corridors where all four can be bundled: irrigated rice and wheat belts, maize belts with storage, horticulture near cities, oil palm and cassava near mills.
Second, use private firms as a delivery system. Governments set rules, finance public goods, and de-risk; they should not run farms or mills. The midstream in Africa is already dominated by MSMEs. Policy should help the capable ones grow rather than inventing parastatals.
Third, prioritize African agency over the technology package. High-yield seed, fertilizer, and irrigation are not a “Western Green Revolution” to be accepted or rejected as a bloc. The failure mode is subsidy-driven maize monoculture that ignores soil health, indigenous crops, and farmer cash-flow. The success mode is the same tools used with African crop mixes, African soil maps, and African market institutions—plus agroforestry and farmer-managed natural regeneration where they raise yields at low cost.
A transformed agricultural system that raises yields on less land, industrializes the midstream, governs the interdependencies, and employs a skilled workforce is the only way agriculture can contribute to growth rates that change living standards. The agronomy is known. The constraint is the same one that has limited African transformation in other sectors: the capability to execute a coherent strategy at national scale, year after year, against climate, politics, and fiscal pressure. That is a governance task first.
Professor Kingsley Moghalu, CEO of Sogato Strategies LLC and President of the Institute for Governance & Economic Transformation (IGET), is a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
