Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Support Agriculture in Africa with $56 Million

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have provided the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) with a $56 million grant to support agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa.

The money will be utilized by AGRA to provide disease resistant seeds of important crops that produce higher yields to poor farmers.

It is hoped that this will help to increase their productivity and reduce hunger and poverty.

AGRA’s Program for Africa’s Seed System (PASS) has been largely successful since its launch five years ago.

PASS programme director, Dr. Joe Devries said, “In Africa , farmers have largely not benefited from improved seeds due to a lack of localized crop breeding and efficient, dependable seed delivery system. And so crop yields in most of Africa have remained one-third of those produced by farmers in other developing regions of the worlds.
“Good seed is not just
the driving force behind good harvests and eliminating poverty and hunger, it’s the foundation for rapid economic growth.”

PASS aims to increase the number of companies providing it with seeds to 100 by 2017, and improve its capacity to 200,000 metric tonnes of seeds to support 10 million small farmers.

The grant was announce by the co-Chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Rome during the International Fund for Agriculture (IFAD) annual governing session.

The Foundation has contributed $2 billion to Agriculture since 2006.

Bill Gates speaking at the session said, “If you care about the poorest, you care about agriculture.
“Investments in agriculture are the best weapons against hunger and poverty, and they have made life better for billions of people. The international agriculture community needs to be more innovative, coordinated and focused to really
be effective in helping poor farmers grow more. If we can do that, we can dramatically reduce suffering, and build self-sufficiency.”