Navigating the Storm: AGRA’s 2024 Report Charts a Bold Course for Resilient, Competitive African Agriculture

NAIROBI, 6th Aug, 2025 – Africa’s agricultural sector faced a perfect storm of challenges in 2024, yet a report from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) outlines a path forward defined by resilience and strategic action. The AGRA Annual Report 2024 acknowledges the formidable headwinds that threatened food systems across the continent, including global trade disruptions, volatile input prices, depreciating currencies, and persistent insecurity. The report specifically highlights the devastating impact of climate change, with severe droughts affecting crop yields in southern and eastern Africa, particularly in Malawi, Zambia, and Mozambique.

Despite this volatile external environment, AGRA’s work in 2024 focused on building a stronger, more resilient foundation for the continent’s farmers. The organization’s strategy is anchored in country-led transformation, with a clear focus on two key objectives: building resilience and enhancing market and sector competitiveness. These are not abstract goals—they are mutually reinforcing drivers of transformation that link the ability to withstand shocks with the capacity to compete and grow in increasingly demanding markets.

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A Year of Challenge – and Determination

The 2024 landscape for African agriculture was unforgiving. Farmers across the continent faced unpredictable rainfall patterns, prolonged dry spells, and in some cases, devastating floods. On top of this, fertilizer and input prices remained volatile, partly due to lingering supply chain disruptions from the global pandemic era, compounded by geopolitical tensions. Currency depreciation in multiple African economies further eroded the purchasing power of farmers and agribusinesses.

Persistent insecurity in parts of the Sahel and Horn of Africa disrupted supply chains and market access. These pressures were exacerbated by structural challenges—fragmented markets, inadequate infrastructure, and limited access to finance—making it harder for smallholder farmers to achieve profitability.

Yet, as the AGRA report makes clear, 2024 was not a year defined solely by adversity. It was a year where Africa’s agricultural sector demonstrated remarkable resilience, driven by innovation, strategic investment, and an unwavering commitment to transformation.

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AGRA’s Strategy 3.0: Country-Led, People-Powered Change

Under its Strategy 3.0, AGRA doubled down on a model of country-led transformation—tailoring its work to the unique needs and priorities of each partner nation while aligning with continental frameworks such as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and the African Union’s climate, nutrition, and trade agendas.

Each of AGRA’s 12 focus countries operates under a “country change narrative”—a five-year, evidence-based plan co-created with governments and partners. These narratives identify the most critical “binding constraints” holding back transformation and map out targeted interventions to unlock growth.

For example:

• Kenya focused on climate adaptation through regenerative agriculture, aiming to restore soil health and boost productivity.
• Tanzania prioritized optimizing maize and rice value chains, linked to a USD 129 million African Development Bank program to expand youth access to land, finance, and markets.
• Nigeria worked to strengthen seed systems and boost farmer access to high-quality, climate-resilient varieties, while building market trust through its Seed Codex system.

This approach allowed AGRA to move beyond fragmented, project-based interventions and instead drive integrated, systems-level change.

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From Policy to Farm: Where the Change Happens

AGRA’s 2024 portfolio reflects a deliberate effort to bridge the gap between national policy ambitions and on-the-ground results. This meant linking seed system reforms to tangible farmer adoption, connecting climate-smart practices to market incentives, and ensuring youth and women were not just beneficiaries but active leaders in transformation.

Kenya: Regenerative Agriculture as a Resilience Engine

In the arid and semi-arid lands of eastern Kenya, the STRAK project—backed by AGRA, the IKEA Foundation, Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture, and other partners—demonstrated the transformative power of regenerative agriculture. Farmers using mulching, manure application, and microdosing nearly tripled sorghum yields in Tharaka Nithi County. In Kitui, every shilling invested in these practices generated a return of KES 5.27.

Over 90% of surveyed farmers adopted regenerative practices, and all four participating counties integrated them into their climate and development plans. This alignment between local policy and farmer practice is exactly what AGRA’s “country-led” philosophy aims to achieve.

Nigeria: Seed Systems as a Competitive Advantage

In Nigeria, AGRA’s partnership with the National Agricultural Seeds Council revolutionized trust and transparency in the seed market. The Seed Codex system authenticated 9.3 million seed packs, cutting counterfeits and lifting adoption rates of improved seed varieties to 52%.

The results at the farm level were striking. Farmer Amina Micah in Kaduna State saw her maize yield jump from 1.5 MT/ha to 5.6 MT/ha after adopting improved seed and receiving advisory support through AGRA’s last-mile delivery model.

Tanzania: Youth at the Heart of Growth

By leveraging USD 129 million in financing from the AfDB, AGRA helped Tanzania expand its Building Better Tomorrow youth program—opening pathways to land, finance, extension services, and markets. This investment aims not just to boost productivity in rice and maize, but to create dignified, lasting employment in agribusiness.

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Nutrition as a Resilience Strategy

AGRA’s report also underlines the role of nutrition-sensitive agriculture in building resilience. In Kenya, Tanzania, and Malawi, the Advancing Availability of Biofortified Foods in Institutions program linked school feeding initiatives to smallholder supply chains.

The introduction of high-iron beans and vitamin A maize doubled yields and aggregated over 3,000 metric tons of grain, improving incomes for farmers while providing nearly one million schoolchildren with nutrient-rich meals. By aligning production with structured institutional demand, AGRA created a virtuous cycle benefiting both farmers and communities.

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Partnerships that Shift the Continental Agenda

Two events in 2024 illustrate AGRA’s growing influence as a convener and catalyst for policy alignment:

1. Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit (Nairobi) – AGRA co-led discussions resulting in the Nairobi Declaration, where African states committed to tripling fertilizer production by 2034, restoring 30% of degraded land, and reaching 70% of smallholder farmers with appropriate soil inputs.
2. Africa Food Systems Forum (Kigali) – AGRA used this platform to advance CAADP frameworks, regional food trade under AfCFTA, and mobilize over USD 13 billion through government-led legacy programs.

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Cross-Cutting Drivers: Youth, Women, and Climate Action

AGRA’s 2024 strategy embedded three cross-cutting priorities into all programs:

• Youth Leadership – Through YEFFA, AGRA committed USD 56 million in multi-year investments reaching nearly 500,000 young people, placing them at the center of value chains, policy dialogues, and agribusiness ecosystems.
• Women’s Economic Empowerment – VALUE4HER connected over 3,500 women-led agribusinesses to markets, finance, and mentorship, closing the gender gap in agricultural entrepreneurship.
• Climate Resilience – AGRA fast-tracked climate-smart, nutrient-rich seed varieties in 12 countries and introduced electronic seed labeling systems to combat counterfeiting.

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Seed Systems: The Foundation for Transformation

Perhaps no area better captures AGRA’s dual focus on resilience and competitiveness than seed systems. In 2024, AGRA supported national seed investment plans in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Ghana, and Nigeria—with five more underway.

By combining policy reform, private-sector engagement, and last-mile distribution, AGRA not only increased adoption of improved seed varieties but also positioned these systems as a cornerstone of climate adaptation and market growth.

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Stories of Transformation

The report humanizes these achievements through powerful farmer stories:

• Phoebe Maitala (Nigeria) – Doubled her maize yield using improved seeds and precision spacing, then launched a processing business producing flour and baby food.
• Charity Ezekiel (Nigeria) – Boosted yields from 10 to 34 bags/ha, added value through processing, and began mentoring other women farmers.
• Agnes Nzowa (Tanzania) – Transitioned from homemaker to founder of Huno Plus, a food processing business now supplying supermarkets, after training and seed funding from an AGRA-partner program.

These stories underscore that systemic change is measured not only in policy frameworks and yield data, but in the lives and livelihoods of millions of Africans.

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Looking Forward: Resilience as a Competitive Edge

AGRA’s leadership is clear-eyed about the road ahead. While the external environment remains unpredictable, the 2024 Annual Report argues that Africa’s agricultural transformation is no longer a distant aspiration—it is underway, and it is anchored in approaches that can withstand volatility.

As Board Chair H.E. Hailemariam Dessalegn writes:

“AGRA is moving beyond incremental change… to drive meaningful transformation where it matters most.”

And in the words of President Alice Ruhweza:

“Agriculture remains Africa’s most powerful lever for inclusive economic growth—and smallholder farmers are at the heart of that transformation.”

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The takeaway? The storms will come again—whether in the form of climate shocks, market instability, or geopolitical disruption. But if Africa continues to invest in country-led strategies that build resilience and market competitiveness in tandem, then those storms will no longer dictate the fate of its farmers. Instead, they will be weathered by systems designed to adapt, compete, and grow.