Seeds for Impact West Africa Program Launches in Ghana to Support Sustainable Agriculture in Africa

AECF, an African-based fund for agriculture and finance, will launch the Seeds for Impact Program in Ghana with a cocktail reception on the 27th of November 2018 at the Labadi Beach Hotel in partnership with Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA). During the launch reception, stakeholders of the program that will provide financial and technical assistance to seed companies and support linkages in value chains to enable access to improved seed for smallholder farmers across Africa will provide details of the initiative followed by remarks from featured guests including Ghana’s Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto and AECF Board Chair, Lord Paul Boateng.

The Seeds for Impact Program is a 6-year US $60 million programme with initial funding of US $10 million from Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA) that will target private sector companies in 12 countries namely,Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique. The initiative seeks to substantially increase the incomes of thousands of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa by transferring to them in-demand, high-yielding and climate-smart seed and planting material technologies.

“We are thrilled to launch the Seeds for Impact Program with our partners in an effort to assist private and public institutions to make available early generation seed and support innovative agricultural technology providers who can link farmers to finance, improve agricultural productivity and integrate producers with markets. Improved seed can vastly transform agriculture in Africa and improve productivity needed to feed a continent which currently imports up to US $35 billion worth of food annually, an amount that is predicted to increase to US $110 billion by 2025,” shares Linda Odhiambo, Communications Officer for AECF, and organization whose mission is to enhance a prosperous and enterprising rural Africa by investing in Agribusiness, Renewable Energy and Climate Technologies that have the potential to disrupt markets.

Globally the provision and adoption of improved seed and planting material for many crops has raised productivity, improved the lives of millions of farmers and increased the availability of low-cost nutritious food in both rural and urban markets. Africa, however, has so far not sufficiently benefitted from this productivity increase. Crop yields for the smallholder farmers who dominate African agriculture are the lowest in the world, due in part to limited access to quality inputs and improved seed varieties suitable for the different climatic conditions, soils and production systems across the continent.

“With the support of Seeds for Impact, small and medium-sized African private seed producers can make available culturally and climate appropriate seed varieties and sustainably reach large numbers of smallholder farmers with funding that historically has been only available to larger companies,” adds Odhiambo.