Twenty years after the launch of an ambitious effort to transform African agriculture, a new assessment has questioned whether the Green Revolution model delivered the productivity, income and food security gains it promised.
Agricultural policy researcher Timothy Wise of Tufts University revisited the record of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) 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, found that the Staple Yield Index across the 13 countries increased by 25% over the period, equivalent to annual growth of about 1.2%.
That was slightly slower than the 1.3% annual growth recorded during the 12 years before Agra was established.
The findings challenge one of the central premises behind Agra, which was launched in 2006 with an initial $150 million commitment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Its 2020 targets included doubling yields and incomes for 30 million farming households.
Maize yields increased by about 40%, according to Wise’s assessment, falling well short of the promised doubling.
The assessment also points to a broader problem. Much of the increase in agricultural production came from putting more land into cultivation rather than achieving substantially higher yields on existing farmland.
Maize production rose 139%, with 71% of that increase attributed to expansion in planted area and 40% to higher yields. Rice production increased 190%, driven by a 93% expansion in planted area, while soybean production grew 253% as the area planted increased 187%. Soybean yields rose by only 24%.
Across the 13 Agra countries, total cropland expanded by 46%, compared with a 25% increase in staple yields.
Wise concludes that there is “little evidence of sustainable intensification in Agra countries as a group”, arguing that the model encouraged agricultural expansion rather than delivering the productivity gains needed to produce more from existing land.
That conclusion does not mean improved seeds, fertiliser or other agricultural technologies have no value.
Dr Wegayehu Fitawek, a lecturer in agricultural economics and research fellow at the University of Pretoria, said the findings raised important questions about the broader Green Revolution approach but should not be taken as evidence that Agra itself caused poor agricultural outcomes.
“The evidence does not suggest that modern agricultural technologies have failed; rather, it indicates that technology alone is insufficient,” Fitawek said.
Many African smallholder farmers operate under conditions very different from those in which earlier Green Revolution programmes achieved their strongest results. Limited irrigation, credit, machinery, extension services and market access can constrain the benefits of improved seeds and fertiliser.
“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,” Fitawek said.
The limitations are reflected in the wider agricultural system. Agra’s own 20-year review says agricultural gross value added in Africa is about $1,500 per 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’s assessment presents a more qualified account of its record than the Wise report. It says agricultural output in Africa has roughly doubled in real terms since 2005, farmer incomes have doubled and cereal yields have increased by about 40%.
But it also acknowledges that those gains have not produced the transformation the organisation originally sought.
“The transformation Africa seeks has not yet been achieved,” Agra says.
The organisation identifies three interconnected constraints. The productivity trap limits reliable and resilient production; the value trap prevents increased production from consistently translating into income, jobs, processing and trade; and the capability trap reflects weaknesses in institutions, finance, coordination, data and accountability.
The distinction between producing more and improving livelihoods is particularly important in the assessment of food security.
Wise estimates that the number of undernourished people across the 13 Agra countries increased by 58% between 2006 and 2024, reaching about 150 million. Only Ethiopia and Ghana recorded declines in undernourishment, according to his analysis.
Fitawek cautioned against interpreting that increase as evidence that Agra caused rising hunger.
Undernourishment is also shaped by poverty, food prices, inequality, conflict, climate shocks, population growth and access to markets, she said.
“Therefore, the 58% figure provides evidence that agricultural productivity alone has not automatically improved food security,” Fitawek said. “Producing more food does not necessarily mean that poor households can afford or access it.”
The choice of crops also raises questions about what kind of agricultural transformation is being promoted.
Millet and sorghum accounted for about 25% of cropland before Agra’s Green Revolution push but their combined share has since fallen to 17%. Millet production declined by 27%, with planted area falling 12% and yields declining 17%.
Wise argues that the shift towards maize has come at the expense of crops that can be more resilient to drought and provide important nutrients.
“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,” he writes.
The debate is increasingly important as climate change makes agricultural resilience as important as maximising yields.
Fitawek argues that improved seeds and fertiliser should remain part of the toolkit, but alongside irrigation and water management, crop diversification, agroforestry, soil-health measures, water harvesting and drought-tolerant varieties.
Those interventions also require infrastructure and functioning markets. Roads, storage, processing facilities, affordable finance, weather information and risk-management systems can determine whether higher production translates into higher and more stable incomes.
Agra’s own review points in a similar direction, acknowledging that its interventions have not always produced durable results.
“Results weakened when they depended on temporary grants, Agra’s coordination or individual champions,” the report says.
The organisation says it has supported more than 100 seed companies, helped develop more than 650 improved seed varieties and worked with 25,000 agro-dealers and 33,000 community extensionists. It also says five million farmers were trained in soil health and climate-smart practices and that its work helped leverage about $691 million for national agricultural investment plans.
Wise argues that the disappointing outcomes cannot simply be explained by a lack of investment.
The more fundamental question, his assessment suggests, is whether resources have been directed towards a model that places too much emphasis on production and input adoption without addressing the wider conditions that determine farmer incomes and food security.
Agra itself appears to have moved away from that narrower model.
Former Agra president Agnes Kalibata said in a 2025 interview with Devex that the organisation’s rebranding reflected a shift in its thinking.
“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.”
The emerging debate is therefore less about whether Africa should embrace or reject modern agricultural technology than about what must accompany it.
For Fitawek, the priority should be a farmer-centred system that combines technology with climate resilience, ecological management, diversified crops, functioning markets and better infrastructure.
“The focus should be on increasing and stabilising farmer incomes and productivity while improving resilience to drought, heat and changing rainfall patterns,” she said.
Two decades after Agra’s launch, the evidence presented by both its critics and its own review points to a similar conclusion: producing more food is only one part of agricultural transformation. The harder task is turning productivity gains into resilient farms, higher incomes and reliable access to nutritious food.
