New Effort to Revive African Small-Scale Farming and Markets

A new initiative has been launched to revive small-scale farming and agricultural markets in Africa. The announcement comes from AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

Dr. Akin Adesina is the group's vice-president for policy and partnership. From Nairobi, he spoke to VOA English to Africa Service reporter Joe De Capua about why it's important to boost the small-scale agricultural sector.

"Agriculture is the basic source of employment for probably 75 percent of Africa's population. And so clearly that is the major sector that Africa has. If one is therefore going to have economic growth, it's absolutely critical to increase or improve the productivity of agriculture and also the profitability of agriculture. Most of the farmers that you have in Africa today have very low yields of their crops. They're not able to produce enough to feed themselves (much less have enough to sell). So we think it's absolutely critical to improve the productivity of African farming and in particular to help them to get at least surpluses and be able to sell it at good prices to ad income, send their kids to school, building houses, putting clothing on their bodies and have a better life," he says.

AGRA says this will be done by "building nation-wide networks of agro-dealers who will open and operate thousands of farm supply stores in remote rural areas."