Twenty years after an ambitious effort to transform African agriculture was launched, the Green Revolution model has failed to deliver the productivity, income and food security gains it promised, a new assessment has found.
Agricultural policy researcher Timothy Wise, of Tufts University in the US, has revisited the record of Agra (formerly the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa) across its 13 focus countries between 2006 and 2024.
His report, Requiem for Africa's Green Revolution: An Updated Assessment of a Failing Agricultural Productivity Strategy, was released before the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, which began on Monday.
Agra was established in 2006 after an initial $150-million commitment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Its 2020 goals included doubling yields and incomes for 30 million farming households across the region.
Wise’s assessment finds that the Staple Yield Index across Agra's 13 focus countries increased by just 25% between 2006 and 2024, equivalent to annual growth of about 1.2%.
This was slightly slower than the 1.3% annual growth recorded during the 12 years before Agra. Maize yields rose by about 40%, well short of the promised doubling.
Agra released its 20-year Impact, Learning and Foresight review on Monday, presenting a more qualified account of the past two decades: Africa’s agrifood sector has made significant progress, it says, but the gains have not added up to the transformation needed to make farmers prosperous.
‘Technology alone insufficient’
Dr Wegayehu Fitawek, a lecturer in agricultural economics and research fellow at the University of Pretoria, said Wise’s findings raised important questions about the broader Green Revolution approach, although they should not be interpreted as proof that Agra caused the poor outcomes.
“The evidence does not suggest that modern agricultural technologies have failed; rather, it indicates that technology alone is insufficient,” Fitawek said.
African farming conditions differ substantially from those in which the Green Revolution was most successful, with many smallholders dependent on rainfall and having limited access to irrigation, credit, machinery and markets.
“Improved seeds and fertiliser may not generate large returns when water, soil quality or other complementary inputs are lacking,” she said.
Fitawek said the productivity effects of fertiliser and improved seed were highly context-dependent, influenced by rainfall, soil quality, water availability, crop management, extension services, pest control and market access.
“Thus, while fertiliser and improved seed can generate significant productivity gains under appropriate conditions, they are unlikely to be effective as stand-alone development strategies,” she said.
Agra’s report makes a similar point about the structural constraints facing African agriculture.
Agricultural gross value added in Africa is about $1 500 (R24 000) a worker, compared with $4 300 globally, while only about 3% of sub-Saharan Africa’s cropland is irrigated, compared with roughly 40% in Asia.
Agra says Africa’s agrifood sector has nevertheless moved significantly over the past two decades. Agricultural output has roughly doubled in real terms since 2005, farmer incomes have doubled and cereal yields have increased by about 40%.
But it acknowledges that the gains have been uneven and insufficient.
“The transformation Africa seeks has not yet been achieved,” the report says.
Agra says the trajectory will not deliver the African Union’s new agricultural targets for 2035, including increasing agrifood output by 45%, tripling intra-African agricultural trade and halving post-harvest losses.
It identifies three interconnected constraints, or “traps”, that need to be addressed together.
The productivity trap limits reliable and resilient production; the value trap prevents production from consistently translating into income, jobs, processing, trade and competitiveness; and the capability trap reflects weaknesses in institutions, finance, coordination, data and accountability.
“Production is only a means to prosperity,” the report says, acknowledging that Agra's “strongest capabilities remain closer to production than to these wider outcomes”.
More land, not just higher yields
Wise’s analysis shows that production growth for major crops came substantially more from expanding the area under cultivation than from increasing yields.
Maize production increased 139%, with 71% of the growth in planted area and 40% in yields. Rice production rose 190%, driven by a 93% expansion in planted area, while soybean production grew 253% as its planted area expanded 187%; yields rose just 24%. Cassava area more than doubled but yields declined 21%.
Across Agra’s 13 countries, total cropland expanded by 46%, compared with 40% growth in maize yields and just 25% growth in staple yields overall.
Wise concludes there is “little evidence of sustainable intensification in Agra countries as a group”, arguing that Green Revolution incentives instead encouraged farmers to shift land out of traditional staple crops and bring new land under cultivation.
Fitawek said expansion could place pressure on marginal land, increasing soil degradation and erosion, while conversion of natural habitats and expansion of monocultures could reduce biodiversity and resilience.
More food has not meant less hunger
The shift in crops is particularly significant.
Before Agra's Green Revolution push, millet and sorghum were more prevalent than maize and rice. Their combined share of cropland has since fallen from 25% to 17%.
Millet was particularly hard hit: production fell 27%, with planted area declining 12% and yields decreasing 17%.
“One of the more worrisome trends in the last twenty years of Green Revolution promotion is the ascendance of maize over other more climate-resilient and nutritious staples such as millets,” Wise writes.
Millets and sorghum are more drought-tolerant and provide higher levels of micronutrients including iron, zinc, calcium and fibre than maize.
Fitawek said food security could not be measured simply by the amount of calories produced.
“Food security should also go beyond producing more calories and address Africa's double burden of malnutrition,” she said, including micronutrient deficiencies and rising diet-related health problems.
Wise found that the increase in production has also failed to translate automatically into reduced hunger.
He estimates that the number of undernourished people across the 13 Agra countries increased by 58% between 2006 and 2024, reaching 150 million.
Only Ethiopia and Ghana recorded declines in undernourishment, while 55 million more people were undernourished across Agra countries in 2024 than before Agra was launched.
Wise notes that the increase was barely better than the 60% rise across sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, suggesting little evidence of a Green Revolution “dividend” for Agra countries.
Fitawek cautioned against treating the 58% increase as evidence that Agra caused the rise in hunger, noting that undernourishment was shaped by poverty, food prices, inequality, conflict, climate shocks, population growth and access to markets.
“Therefore, the 58% figure provides evidence that agricultural productivity alone has not automatically improved food security,” she said. “Producing more food does not necessarily mean that poor households can afford or access it.”
She said climate change made the distinction increasingly important, with greater variability in rainfall and temperature creating a need for yield stability and risk reduction alongside yield maximisation.
Building climate-resilience
For Fitawek, the answer is therefore not to abandon improved seeds, fertiliser or technology but to combine them with irrigation and water management, crop diversification, rotations, legumes, agroforestry, soil-health management, water harvesting and drought-tolerant varieties.
The measures also need to be supported by better roads, storage, processing, markets, affordable finance, weather information and risk-management tools, she said.
Agra’s report similarly argues that the next phase of agricultural transformation cannot be built around production alone.
It says farmers must be able to produce reliably and resiliently, production must be connected to markets, processing, trade and jobs so farmers capture more value, and countries need lasting institutional capacity, finance, data, coordination and accountability.
Agriculture, it argues, can no longer be treated as the responsibility of agriculture actors alone. Farmer prosperity depends on decisions across finance, trade, water, energy, infrastructure, health, nutrition, education, climate, science and industry.
Agra also acknowledges weaknesses in the durability of its interventions. “Results weakened when they depended on temporary grants, Agra’s coordination or individual champions,” its report says.
Agra points to support for more than 100 seed companies, over 650 improved seed varieties, 25 000 agro-dealers and 33 000 community extensionists. Five million farmers were trained in soil health and climate-smart practices, while it helped leverage about $691 million for national agricultural investment plans.
Wise argues that the disappointing results cannot simply be blamed on insufficient investment.
He says public resources continue to support Green Revolution programmes despite poor results, while adoption remains limited, yield growth slow and small gains often fail to cover higher input costs.
“The Green Revolution for Africa has failed at every step of its ambitious theory of change,” Wise concludes.
Former Agra president Agnes Kalibata acknowledged the organisation’s changing direction in a 2025 interview with Devex.
“Part of why we [Agra] rebranded was that the Green Revolution ship has sailed,” she said. “We can't continue pursuing what's not working for others.”
For Fitawek, the central lesson is that Africa needs neither a wholesale rejection of modern agricultural technology nor a continuation of a uniform input-driven model.
Instead, she argues for a farmer-centred, climate-resilient and nutrition-sensitive food system that combines appropriate technologies with ecological management, diversification, functioning markets, infrastructure and climate-risk management.
“The focus should be on increasing and stabilising farmer incomes and productivity while improving resilience to drought, heat and changing rainfall patterns,” she said.