By Abdallah el-Kurebe
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation (CTA) have signed a letter of agreement that would mark the beginning of a new collaboration to spearhead the use of innovative approaches to agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa.
Signing the agreement during the “Fin4Ag14” Conference, which took place in Nairobi, Kenya this week, Jane Karuku, AGRA President stated that “Through combining AGRA’s extensive footprint across 17 sub-Saharan Africa countries, its inclusive and innovative agriculture value chain approach to agricultural development and CTA’s outstanding advocacy, ICT and knowledge-sharing capabilities, we will have extra fire power to drive a uniquely African green revolution forward.”
Relatively, CTA Director, Michael Hailu said: “The timing for formalizing this collaboration could not be better: there is a new positive energy around both agriculture development and ICT at the moment and this collaboration will help us to harness that energy in our joint efforts to drive a green revolution in Africa – one that will get more youthful and women farmers into the farms and in agribusiness.”
Through this collaboration, sector players will be encouraged to adopt structured trade tools such as Grades and Standards, Warehouse Receipts Systems and Commodity Exchanges, which would help to enhance regional agricultural trade.
The innovative approaches include the promotion of more inclusive agricultural financing; use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) across value chains; structured trade tools and advocacy for policy reform.
Other aspects include: increasing the interaction between producer organizations, youth and women groups, relevant professional associations, analysts and policy-makers for the development of evidence-based agricultural development policies; and sharing of the knowledge jointly generated by both organizations as best practices and lessons learnt to enhance smallholder agriculture.
Currently ICTs were being used to raise the agricultural productivity of Africa’s smallholder farmers across the produce value chain. This range from providing access to information on improved seeds, soil fertility management and extension services to remunerative market access.
Additionally, farmers are now using ICTs to gain access to agricultural financing and to strengthen institutional arrangements such as farmers’ organizations.
AGRA and the CTA share the same objectives of addressing key development issues facing the agricultural sector through improved policy-making, enhanced institutional capacity for excellent and innovative agricultural value chains and strong partnerships, including use of ICTs for agricultural development.
AGRA works across sub-Saharan Africa with a head office in Nairobi, Kenya and country offices in Ghana, Mali, Mozambique and Tanzania.
