Here is a brief report card of the AfDB’s topline results: the Bank trained three million people on better farming practices, put 20,000 food marketing and storage into use, constructed four thousand kilometers of feeder roads, offered 150,000 microcredit loans, irrigated and built other water systems on 181,000 hectares of farmland.

“The Development Effectiveness Review is mission accomplished, as the AfDB sets out an even more ambitious agenda in its Feed Africa strategy to end hunger and extreme poverty by 2025,” said Simon Mizrahi, Director of Quality Assurance and Results Department that authored the Development Effectiveness Review on Agriculture.

Making no little plans

The Review details the progress and the pitfalls to date in transforming Africa’s agriculture sector, and lays out what steps must be taken to catapult Africa into becoming a global agricultural powerhouse in the next decade. In recent years, agriculture has zoomed to the top of Africa’s policy agenda, with African countries pledging to eradicate hunger and halve post-harvest losses in under a decade.

It has become increasingly clear that “investing in agriculture is the best way to end hunger, malnutrition, and extreme poverty in Africa,” the development report states. Given that seven out of 10 Africans earn a living from the land, agriculture can create economic growth spread more evenly across society, and extending deeper into rural areas, and helping more women, who make up 70 percent of farmers. The report also pointed out that agriculture can create jobs for the 10 million young Africans entering the labor force every year.

Africa has tremendous scope to grow and develop its farming sector and make it an engine of economic growth, the report highlighted: Africa imports twice the food it exports, and agriculture yields in Africa are only one-quarter those of China. African agriculture makes up a mere five percent of global trade.

At the same time, improving the lot of farmers and farming is crucial to the sustainable growth and development of Africa: eighty percent of the typical household budget is spent on food, while forty percent of food produced spoils after the harvest, due to bad or nonexistent roads or lack of storage.

A more robust agriculture system is also key to ending hunger, the Development report says, since one out of four people lacks regular access to food. What is more, agricultural development must be reoriented to factor in climate change: 65 percent of Africa’s arable land is now degraded, and moisture and fertility losses in African soils are worsening.

Over the last five years, the report detailed how AfDB steered its investments into promoting the continent’s transition to commercial agriculture: building up regional transport corridors to link rural farmers to city centers and ports, providing irrigation and building canals to reduce vulnerability to drought, planting over 64 million trees to boost the land’s hardiness in the face of climate change, and bringing agriculture experts together to collaborate, such as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, which helps family farms across 18 African countries.

Making headway

Some of the Bank’s most noteworthy operations cited in the report during the period include the Africa Food Crisis Response Programme, which fast-tracked relief that raised US$1.0 billion and led to better harvests; New Rice for Africa, which boosted the hardiness, nutrition and yields of rice and improved the livelihoods of almost a quarter of a million subsistence farmers, with a large share of the development for women’s groups; and the Congo Basin Forest Partnership, which reduced deforestation and degradation by producing millions of trees and agroforest saplings, involving almost 50,000 people in producing and processing non-timber forest products and creating 46,60 hectares of community forest plantations.

One of the largest contributions of the AfDB in shaping the agriculture agenda was its leading role during the Feeding Africa conference in Dakar in October 2015, helping craft a plan for Africa to transform Africa’s agriculture sector. The plan is designed to ramp up nutrition programs, boost agriculture productivity through research, develop farming corridors and agribusiness industrial zones to get infrastructure support, set up a risk-sharing facility, start raising US$3 billion to finance women farmers, and develop diaspora agriculture bonds based on remittances flows.

Progress report card

The sum total of these efforts showed the AfDB has made good progress on several fronts: 97 percent of the Bank’s agriculture projects were rated satisfactory. In the meantime, project approval times shrank to six months from nine months. Largely as a result of the Bank’s Integrated Safeguards on social and environmental impact and its enhanced focus on gender equality, 89% of projects had a climate-informed design, and 87% factored in gender differences, major improvements on both aspects. The number of projects managed by field offices grew to 70%, a leap from 40%, to meet the demand of member countries to working more closely with the Bank.

Doubling down

Now the AfDB is gearing up to deliver more under its new strategy through 2025 by investing US$24 billion, and boosting overall investment through equity, debt, risk and other financial means.

AfDB’s new Feed Africa strategy is one of its High Five priorities, which aims to end poverty, hunger, and malnutrition by 2025 and make the continent a net food exporter. The Bank will achieve this by focusing on certain foods and growing zones, from wheat in North Africa to fish farming everywhere, and making Africa’s food value chains world-class by building markets, setting up commodity exchanges and linking farmers and buyers, among other means. Feed Africa will support agribusiness and innovation, climate-smart agriculture and build roads, energy, and water infrastructure.

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2016 Development Effectiveness Review on Agriculture

Agriculture is at the heart of Africa’s development: 7 in every 10 Africans rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. While Africa has enjoyed impressive growth rates for over a decade, this growth has barely touched the millions living on the land. Africa has yet to experience the agricultural miracle that has transformed other developing regions.

Yet Africa has vast agricultural potential, and most of the technologies required to boost yields are already at hand. With the right policies and investments, African agriculture could readily become an engine for inclusive growth across the continent.

The African Development Bank’s (AfDB) work in agriculture has delivered a wide range of benefits to farmers: better seeds, irrigation and sustainable technologies, and greater access to finance and to markets. Bank projects have increased yields, production levels and incomes for farmers, resulting in more dynamic local economies. We recognise, however, that much more needs to be done.

Total investment in African agriculture is still well short of the levels required to deliver fundamental change and prosperity. Africa’s rapid rates of population growth and urbanization are creating vast unmet demands for food and agricultural products. The continent needs a major injection of both public and private finance into all stages of the agricultural value chain, using finance in smarter ways to create dynamic enterprises throughout the sector and markets. This must include both small- and large-scale agribusinesses, to ensure that agricultural development generates inclusive growth.

This is the right time for a big and sustained push on agriculture. That’s why the Bank has made the transformation of this sector, one of its five top priorities (the “High5s”), along with light up and power Africa, industrialize Africa, integrate Africa and improve the quality of life of the people of Africa.

For our part, working with African governments, other development partners and the private sector, the Bank has refocused its assistance on transforming agriculture and agribusiness by 2025. We are working to create better returns to farmers and agribusinesses, including more opportunities for women and young people, while promoting improved food security and nutrition across the continent.