The Africa Fertilizer Summit is a high-level regional initiative with a historic aim - to boost fertilizer use across the continent and trigger a Green Revolution in Africa. The summit will be held from 9 13 June in Abuja, Nigeria. The President of IFAD, Lennart Båge is expected to attend.

The African Union (AU) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) called for the summit, which will be organized with the assistance of the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), hosted by the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and chaired by President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria. IFAD is one of the major sponsors of the summit, together with partners like the Rockefeller Foundation and the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom.

IFAD is also working with farmers’ organizations in the region to ensure that their common position and perspectives are clearly articulated in the outcomes of the summit.

Africa’s soils are the poorest in the world. Decades of soil nutrient mining, where frequent cropping and erosion by wind and water take vital nutrients out of the soil, have created what is now acknowledged to be a soil fertility crisis. It is estimated that the continent loses the equivalent of over US$4 billion worth of soil nutrients each year.

More than 204 million people in Africa suffer from hunger and malnutrition, and over the past 30 years the situation has deteriorated as the amount of food produced per person in the continent has fallen.

The summit’s key message is that a move toward reducing hunger in Africa must begin by addressing its severely depleted soils.

No region in the world has been able to boost agricultural production without increasing fertilizer use, as part of a package that also includes improved seeds and irrigation. In parts of Asia and Latin America, where the Green Revolution boosted crop yields in the 1960s and 1970s, farmers now use an annual average of 140 kilograms of fertilizer per hectare of crops.

In sub-Saharan Africa, farmers apply an average of 8 kilograms of fertilizer per hectare per year - less than 10 per cent of the global average.

Even modest increases in the use of fertilizers, in combination with the efficient use of other farm inputs, could trigger an African Green Revolution, according to NEPAD. This would contribute to Africa’s ability to meet the first Millennium Development Goal of reducing hunger and extreme poverty by half by 2015.

IFAD’s work with smallholders
IFAD’s mission is to enable rural poor people to overcome poverty. It has been working with small farmers worldwide for more than 25 years to help them sustainably increase the amount of food they produce. The vast majority of African farmers are smallholders.

IFAD is taking part in the Africa Fertilizer Summit with the explicit aim of ensuring that the needs of African smallholders, particularly the poorest, are taken into account when regional and national action plans are drawn up to boost fertilizer use.

IFAD will underline the economic and environmental benefits of using organic and inorganic fertilizers to safeguard the environment and farmers’ livelihood base, while sustainably boosting food production.

Improving small farmers’ access to financial resources and markets is key to increasing fertilizer use in Africa. Transporting fertilizers from an African seaport to a farm 100 kilometres inland can cost more than shipping the same fertilizers from North America to the African seaport. As a result, African smallholders pay two to four times the average world price for fertilizer.

Contract farmers may be able to get credit from buyers to cover fertilizer costs, but other sources of credit for small farmers are very limited. IFAD supports the use of smart subsidies for the African fertilizer sector in certain situations, to enable the poorest farmers to access fertilizers. The subsidies must be effectively targeted to ensure that they benefit the right people, avoid resource capture by powerful interests and stimulate, rather than undermine, private sector market development for fertilizers. Subsidies must also have effective exit plans to ensure that they don’t become an unsustainable burden to the governments providing them.

In order to boost fertilizer use and smallholder production, it is vital to empower small farmers and the groups that represent them to enable them to improve their access to fertilizers. Groups of farmers can negotiate with fertilizer suppliers as bulk orders bring down transaction and transport costs.

Farmers’ groups also enable smallholders to learn how to use organic and inorganic fertilizers profitably and sustainably. At Farmers’ Field Schools for example, smallholders conduct their own field trials and find out for themselves which fertilizers work best for their crops and farming systems, when they are best applied and in what quantities.

Farmers’ side-event
A side-event will be held at the summit where farmers’ organizations will present the pivotal role of family smallholdings and mixed farming systems in African agriculture. The role small farmers play in managing soil fertility will be stressed, together with their struggle for sustainable agriculture and food security. IFAD will take part in their panel discussion.

IFAD in Africa

• Since IFAD was established in 1977, African countries have received around US$4 billion in loans and grants to finance close to 345 programmes and projects in 51 countries.

• Nearly 50 per cent of IFAD’s programmes and projects have been devoted to African countries since the organization started work.

• In the current portfolio, 116 of the total 234 programmes and projects are in Africa.

• IFAD’s current loans to Africa are worth US$1.68 billion, out of a total current portfolio of US$3.69 billion.

• Nearly 170 million people, rural poor men, women and children, have been reached by IFAD’s operations in Africa.

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IFAD is a specialized agency of the United Nations dedicated to eradicating poverty and hunger in rural areas of developing countries. Through low-interest loans and grants, it develops and finances projects that enable rural poor people to overcome poverty themselves. There are 187 ongoing IFAD-supported rural poverty eradication programmes and projects, totalling US$6.2 billion. IFAD has invested more than US$2.9 billion in these initiatives. Cofinancing has been provided by governments, beneficiaries, multilateral and bilateral donors and other partners. At full development, these programmes will help nearly 80 million rural poor women and men to achieve better lives for themselves and their families. Since starting operations in 1978, IFAD has invested US$9.0 billion in 705 programmes and projects that have helped nearly 300 million poor rural men and women achieve better lives for themselves and their families. Governments and other financing sources in the recipient countries, including project participants, have contributed almost US$8.8 billion, and multilateral, bilateral and other donors have provided another US$7.0 billion in cofinancing.