African leaders vow 'Green Revolution' on continent

[Uhuru Kimathi]

by Ade Obisesan
Tue Jun 13, 3:23 PM ET



ABUJA (AFP) - African heads of state and government pledged to lead a new "Green Revolution" on their hunger-stricken continent with an arsenal of better soil, seeds and financial aid for millions of subsistence farmers.

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The systematic use of fertiliser -- by eliminating taxes and tariffs that often keep it out of reach -- is crucial to rejuvenating what experts here called the continent's "dead" soil, the leaders concluded.

"To feed themselves and their countries, farmers will need to shift from low-yielding, extensive land practices to more intensive, higher-yielding practices, with increased use of improved seeds, fertilisers and irrigation," they said in a joint statement at the close of Africa's first agricultural summit.

An 11-point plan approved by the participants, which included at least seven African leaders, calls on governments to reduce the cost of fertilisers by the middle of next year, and to eliminate taxes and tariffs on them immediately.

Their statement, read out by Nigerian Agriculture Minister Adamu Bello, warned that enriching the depleted soil was "crucial for achieving an African 'Green Revolution' in the face of rapidly rising population and declining soil fertility".

The "Green Revolution" refers to main technical advances rolled out from the 1950s, including the creation of hardier hybrid plant breeds and the introduction of chemical fertilisers, pesticides and improved irrigation that boosted food production in many countries worldwide.

Though yields surged everywhere, transforming some states like India, the techniques have been criticised recently for encouraging a loss of biodiversity and increasing pollution through excess fertiliser and pesticide use.

For Africa, where more than 200 million people still suffer from food insecurity, summit host President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria said, it was impossible to overemphasise "the urgent need for Africa to double its fertiliser use, improve agricultural productivity, raise rural income".

He highlighted the twin dangers of "a rapidly growing population and worsening incidents of poverty", and said the despite Africans' intensive labour "our farmers have not enough to show for their toil".

"This summit represents a major attempt to synthesise the desperate policies of our various countries on fertiliser into a programmable, coherent whole," he said.

The leaders present in Abuja included: Niger President Mamadou Tandja; Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema; Denis Sassou-Nguesso, the African Union chairman and president of the Republic of Congo; presidents Ahmad Tejan Kabbah of Sierra Leone, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia, Thomas Yayi Boni of Benin and Togo's Faure Gnassingbe; former Mozambique president Joaquim Chissano and former Mali president Alpha Oumar Konare, the AU Commission chairman.

Bello, Nigeria's agriculture minister, reading out their conclusions -- taken from ministers' and experts' recommendations -- said the AU member states would ask the African Development Bank to "assume leadership to establish, by next year, an African Fertiliser Development Financing mechanism".

He also said they would seek help from the AU commission and New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) to set up "a mechanism to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the resolutions".

"Africa is lagging behind the rest of the world in improved agricultural technology and innovative agronomic services that will nourish the soil, increase agricultural production and improve the quality of life of its teeming farming population," he said.

The summit, an AU initiative, is sponsored by international organisations and donor agencies including the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the World Bank, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and African development Bank.