How Africa’s Green Revolution and Monoculture Promotion Threaten Traditional Crops and Food Security

A farmer stands amid an arid corn field on his farm in Kwale, Kenya on January 27, 2009. This year, AGRA, the donor-funded agricultural development initiative formerly known as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, is celebrating its 20th anniversary. AGRA’s slogan is “sustainably growing Africa’s food systems”, but for years, researchers and farmers have warned that the policies it promotes are having a negative impact on African agriculture. New research provides more evidence to that effect, documenting how AGRA’s Green Revolution, with its well-funded promotion of commercial seeds, fertilisers and other inputs, has failed to spur the “productivity revolution” promised by its founders.

Worse still, its promotion of monocultures, such as maize, has led to the massive expansion of land dedicated to them. At the same time, more resilient and nutritious local crops, such as millet, are losing ground. Hunger continues to increase in Africa, driven by climate change, desertification, conflict and disruptions to international supply lines from international conflicts like the Ukraine war. The Green Revolution promoted by AGRA does not seem to have made much of a difference, as the number of undernourished people has increased by about 60 percent in countries where AGRA has had a significant presence.

In countries that have participated in AGRA projects, crops such as maize are promoted and funded with billions of dollars in subsidies and investment. Despite that, yields for maize have grown only modestly, just 40 percent over 18 years, well below the 100 percent improvement promised by AGRA. While some countries like Malawi and Ethiopia have seen stronger yield growth for maize, others such as Kenya have seen yields decline. Meanwhile, traditional African staples such as sorghum, cassava, and groundnuts have lost land and investment.

Millet has suffered the most among climate-resilient, nutritious grains. Since 2006, millet production has fallen 27 percent, while maize production has more than doubled. For generations, millet has fed communities across some of Africa’s driest regions, withstanding heat and drought. In 2023, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) celebrated the “Year of Millets”, highlighting the multiple benefits of the crop to the environment and social welfare. The same is true of many of Africa’s traditional crops, including sorghum, fonio, cowpeas, cassava, and indigenous vegetables.

Rhetorically, AGRA now professes to value the very crops that its Green Revolution helped push to the margins, but its current seed strategy still emphasises improved varieties, certified seeds, faster variety turnover, commercialisation and market-oriented seed systems. Investment needs to support farmers’ rights to save, use, exchange and develop their seeds, protect crop diversity and indigenous knowledge, and ensure that farmers and communities determine which varieties survive and spread. It is time for AGRA, the African Development Bank, foreign donors and African governments to stop subsidising and promoting the crops that are driving the loss of agricultural diversity.