{"id":3164,"date":"2026-08-25T16:34:47","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T16:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=3164"},"modified":"2026-08-25T16:34:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T16:34:47","slug":"gates-and-rockefeller-foundations-green-revolution-failing-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=3164","title":{"rendered":"Gates and Rockefeller Foundations’ Green Revolution Failing Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Yves here. Mentions of the Gates Foundation regularly produces almost Pavlovian reactions of antipathy for social engineering by squllionaires. However, it is not as if that response is unwarranted. As the case below, the Gates\/Rockefeller Foundation initiative, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, not only did not produce much-hyped increases in agricultural productivity, but also had undesirable side effects like benefitting wealthier landowners with bigger plots relative to smallholders. It also diverted government energies and funds from approaches that could have been more effective.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, this article does not mention that the green revolution made considerable of \u201cmodern\u201d farming, particularly chemical fertilizers. This means that both crops and even soil have come to depend on their use, and so will be harder hit than otherwise as a result of Iran war induced fertilizer cost increases and shortages. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not as if the very wealthy have not sponsored socially valuable initiatives. Andrew Carnegie\u2019s libraries were wonderful additions to many communities in America, particularly small cities. But the modern super-rich seem wedded to active meddling and imposing their vision, which is often not shared by the supposed beneficiaries of their tender ministrations.<\/p>\n

By Timothy A. Wise, Senior Advisor at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and a Senior Research Fellow at Tufts University\u2019s Global Development and Environment Institute and Jomo Kwame Sundaram, former UN Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development. Originally published at InterPress Service<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

As AGRA turns 20, a new report exposes its worsening failure to double productivity and incomes and halve undernourishment in participating African nations as promised.<\/p>\n

AGRA Still Failing Africa\u2019s Farmers<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, now known simply as AGRA, was established in 2006.<\/p>\n

The multi-billion-dollar initiative, by the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations, has been pursued over the last twenty years in 13 focus countries.<\/p>\n

After considerable evidence of failure became apparent, it abandoned its original ambitious goals in 2022, adopting AGRA 3.0, focusing on food systems and policy reforms.<\/p>\n

It also \u2018rebranded\u2019 by changing its name to AGRA, removing its explicit association with the much criticised Green Revolution. Wise\u2019s 2020 assessment<\/a> of AGRA up to 2018 found progress on its own declared goals quite modest and uneven.<\/p>\n

Wise\u2019s latest review<\/a> finds even slower productivity growth and worsening hunger under AGRA compared to before 2006. Its improved seeds and fertilizer promotion did not even achieve sustainable intensification, i.e., growing much more food on the same land.<\/p>\n

Dubious Progress<\/strong><\/p>\n

Increased food production and sales were supposed to reduce rural poverty and food insecurity.<\/p>\n

But yield growth has been slow and uneven. Productivity grew more slowly than before 2006 despite billions of dollars spent on subsidies for a few AGRA-favoured crops.<\/p>\n

High-yielding seeds and related agrochemicals were not widely adopted by most smallholders except when heavily subsidised.<\/p>\n

But subsidies have encouraged planting favoured crops on new farmland. Modest yield growth often failed to cover the costs of more expensive inputs, leaving farmers in debt.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, cultivation and yields of millet, a nutritious climate-resilient staple, has declined over the last two decades.<\/p>\n

Instead of halving the number of hungry, undernourishment has risen by 58% in participating countries since 2006. Tragically, the number of hungry in the 13 AGRA countries nearly doubled over the last six years!<\/p>\n

AGRA Unmonitored<\/strong><\/p>\n

The African Union was induced to support AGRA by encouraging more government investments in food agriculture. In 2006, it launched the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program (CAADP).<\/p>\n

CAADP called for dramatically raising government spending on agriculture to 10% of government budgets. However, most governments failed to provide the required funding.<\/p>\n

But many governments, particularly in AGRA countries, have spent large shares of their scarce public resources on agriculture. Many have invested in Green Revolution programmes.<\/p>\n

Despite setting<\/a> similar productivity, income, and hunger objectives, by 2025, no country met CAADP\u2019s targets according to its rigorous biennial progress reports using more benchmarks.<\/p>\n

High-yielding seeds and related agrochemicals were not widely adopted by most smallholders except when heavily subsidised.<\/p>\n

AGRA\u2019s main initiatives, involving input markets and industrial farming, are too costly for most small-scale farmers, benefiting wealthier farmers more.<\/p>\n

For Wise, the poor outcomes are not solely or even primarily due to AGRA. Instead, he blames the Green Revolution approach, previously strongly supported by private foundations and now by the World Bank Group.<\/p>\n

In contrast, Senegal, not one of the AGRA 13, has succeeded in halving hunger, with more diversified policies supporting a wider range of crops and farming methods.<\/p>\n

What Failure?<\/strong><\/p>\n

AGRA has never reported actual progress against its original goals of doubling productivity and incomes while halving hunger for 30 million farming households.<\/p>\n

With fewer measurable goals, progress reports<\/a> now focus on the number of commercial seeds produced, private financing generated, and enterprises launched.<\/p>\n

Instead, AGRA claimed<\/a>, \u201cwe directly reached 11 million farmers and indirectly reached 26 million farmers. This achievement significantly outstripped our initial targets to reach 30 million smallholder households.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Reaching\u2019 37 million farmers, mostly \u2018indirectly\u2019, says little about its actual impacts on farmers. Unsurprisingly, most donors have cut support for AGRA.<\/p>\n

Now, AGRA is influencing national and continent-wide policymaking to accelerate agricultural commercialisation. Its new focus on food systems and policies shifts attention as its website now makes little mention of productivity or small-scale farmers.<\/p>\n

Whither AGRA?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yield growth has been slow and uneven, mainly for a few food crops prioritised by AGRA. Those modest yield gains often did not cover the costs of expensive inputs, leaving many farmers in debt.<\/p>\n

Increased food production and sales were supposed to reduce rural poverty and hunger. Instead, malnutrition has risen in most AGRA countries, as dietary diversity has declined with crop diversity.<\/p>\n

Asia\u2019s Green Revolution<\/a> offered far more support to farmers than Africa\u2019s, although its achievements have been more mixed than typically claimed. Africa\u2019s Green Revolution has offered much less, mainly improved commercial seeds.<\/p>\n

AGRA still denies the failure of its earlier policies. Instead, it now pays lip service to low-input approaches including agroecology.<\/p>\n

In 2025, AGRA president Agnes Kalibata acknowledged<\/a>, as she stepped down from her post, \u201cPart of why [AGRA] rebranded was that the Green Revolution ship has sailed. We can\u2019t continue pursuing what\u2019s not working for others.\u201d<\/p>\n

After twenty years, AGRA should take heed of that advice.<\/p>\n

\"Print<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yves here. Mentions of the Gates Foundation regularly produces almost Pavlovian reactions of antipathy for social engineering by squllionaires. However, it is not as if that response is unwarranted. As the case below, the Gates\/Rockefeller Foundation initiative, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, not only did not produce much-hyped increases in agricultural productivity, but…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1843,4253,5130,5128,1912,5131,5129],"class_list":["post-3164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","tag-africa","tag-failing","tag-foundations","tag-gates","tag-green","tag-revolution","tag-rockefeller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}