Press release number: IFAD 36/04

Rome, 11 October 2004: According to Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, the lack of national and international political commitment to agriculture in Africa is preventing the sub-continent from enjoying the kind of agricultural growth that happened in Asia a generation earlier. “African governments allocate only five per cent of public expenditure to ministries of agriculture, despite the fact that 60 to 70 per cent of the population lives in rural areas,” said Borlaug during a recent visit to the headquarters of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

Borlaug explained why advances in agricultural technology have not helped Africa to enjoy the same boost in food production and drop in poverty as occurred in Asia in the 1960s and 1970s. Without more investment, high yielding crop varieties and other new technologies are limited in their ability to increase agriculture growth.

“IFAD agrees that more investment is needed to remove the constraints facing African farmers,” says Mohamed Beavogui, IFAD’s Director of Central and Western Africa Division. “Better market access, improved infrastructure such as roads and water, research and new skills could lay the foundation for rural development.”

Borlaug is President of Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA), which is developing markets for millet and sorghum in western and central Africa with support from IFAD. The SAA is an offshoot of the Sasakawa-Global 2000 programme, an initiative led in partnership with former United States President Jimmy Carter.

Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work helping to feed a hungry world. High-yielding, disease-resistant wheat varieties that he developed in the 1940s and 1950s went on to transform agricultural practices in Asia and Latin America.

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IFAD is a specialized agency of the United Nations dedicated to combating rural poverty in the most disadvantaged regions of the world. Since 1978, IFAD has invested USD 8.2 billion in 660 rural development projects and programmes, about 250 million rural people have been supported in their efforts to overcome poverty.