Our guest blogger today is Vincent Rapeta, a young farmer from South Africa. He is speaking at the African Union Youth Forum in Addis Ababa this week as part of their 50th anniversary celebrations. 

Vincent with a crop of tomatoes from his farm. Photo: ONE

I’m Vincent and I come from Limpopo Province in South Africa. I’m 28 and a farmer. I grow maize, butternut squash, watermelon, tomato, beetroot and cabbages. I am a farmer by accident but I’m loving it.

I was raised by a single parent and we were very poor when I was growing up. I think that my mother earned R5000 a year. In today’s US dollars, that is just over $500.

I had dreams of becoming an auditor and fighting corruption but we didn’t have money to send me to university. But I did have an opportunity. I was helping my mother while I was in school on our small plot of two hectares.  And after I was done with school, I started helping her full time- that’s how I became a farmer.

Our produce started being noticed for its quality and in 2006, the local Department of Agriculture selected me to attend an agriculture training programme where I learned about soil quality, when to plant certain crops and also special knowledge about growing tomatoes, which are higher value crops.  I eventually got my own plot and started expanding the amount of produce we could grow, and began to employ some local people to help me manage my plots and harvests.

In 2010, I went to school again to learn about the business side of farming and best management practices. I learned about finances, communications, labour and best standards for my produce. In 2011, I won the Best Farmer award in Molemole Municipality. I was so excited.

Last year I decided to expand my operation and was able to obtain 20 hectares from the traditional council in my area and another 20 from the municipality. I am now trying to get those plots of land suitable for farming as they are still covered in bush. I’ve had to spend my savings to clear the land and drill boreholes for irrigation, but hope to be up and running by the end of this year.

A field of tomatoes on Vincent’s farm in Limpopo, South Africa. Photo: ONE

Farming is hard work. It is very challenging, but so rewarding. I think there are three main challenges for young farmers like me.

First, we need access to land and financial services. I have been very lucky – an elderly neighbour allowed me to farm her plot and I also had my mother’s plot to start from. Not all of my fellow young South Africans without work have been so fortunate.  South Africa is redistributing its land but it often goes to people who don’t make a living from it. A doctor will get a few hectares where I live, but then wake up and go to his job.

Banks require security and collateral for loans. Hail can ruin one season’s harvest. I’ve saved and have been able to use this to expand, but we need insurance and loans to help us move forward. When we take the risk, we need government to meet us half way in managing these costs.

Second, we need to challenge the perception that informal sector farmers like myself provide poor quality produce.  I was once told by a buyer for a big market that he wouldn’t buy tomatoes from black farmers. And this was a black man telling me this. He would buy spinach and butternut but not tomatoes. So we must try to promote the real quality of food that informal farmers produce.

And finally, we need access to fair markets.  As we plan our crop we need to be sure that it will not go to waste. In Limpopo I am lucky that the food bank buys my tomatoes and my income is assured, other youth farmers in the rest of the country don’t have the same opportunities. We need policies that support the development of crop markets so that farmers can increase their harvest, earn more income and improve their families’ lives.

All I can say is that here is so much opportunity in farming. I think young people all over Africa should look to farming to improve their lives and improve our continent. We’re always crying of not having jobs. Well, we can find land. We’re not disabled. Why can’t we just make our own job?  Our governments just need to make it easier by building roads that lead to markets and by providing marketing information and training to farmers.

I dream of owning 1000 hectares in ten years where I can have a herd of cattle and provide so many jobs to contribute to poverty alleviation. I know this is possible and with the right policies from government, all of us here will be farming. 

Find out more about ONE’s work on agriculture, and follow the latest developments from the Africa Union 50th Anniversary celebrations in Addis Ababa on Twitter via @ONEinAfrica 

By Arathi Rao, ONE’s Policy Manager, Agriculture and Nutrition

Children at Mawango School in Malawi eating a mid-morning snack of porridge, supported by the World Food Programme. Photo: Morgana Wingward

Last week world leaders pledged more than $4 billion to global nutrition programs and committed to save 20 million children from malnutrition at Nutrition for Growth, a pre-G8 event, in London. Now that these ambitious targets have been set, and tremendous resources have been mobilised to accomplish this goal, one question remains:How do we actually get there?

Fortunately, we have an incredibly useful tool in our hands: The 2013 Lancet Series on Child and Maternal Nutrition,a set of reports that highlights the evidence behind what works in nutrition and who needs our urgent attention.

The 2013 Lancet report updates and expands the landmark 2008 series on nutrition that identified a set of proven, cost-effective interventions designed to improve nutrition in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life. Here are some of this year’s report’s biggest takeaways for the international community as it strives to reduce the number of chronically undernourished children by 20 million by 2020:

Prioritise the 1,000-day window: 3.1 million children die every year due to malnutrition. An additional 165 million children who manage to survive malnutrition in their early years experience stunted growth and cognitive development, undermining their future productivity and therefore income. We need to focus on nutrition of mothers and children during a child’s first 1,000 days, an effort that can have long-term consequences for growth, health and intellectual capacity.

Bring girls’ health into focus: More than one in four children born in low- and middle-income countries are underweight for their age. In addition, most pregnant women living in these countries cannot access nutrition services until the fifth or sixth month of their pregnancies, if at all. As a result, their children start their lives already malnourished. If we prioritise the health of women and girls, we can boost general nutrition, reduce pregnancy complications and boost fetal growth and development.

Expand reach through community health workers: Community health worker programs offer a prime opportunity to increase already successful nutrition programs’ coverage and provide services to populations who presently lack access. Several countries, including Ethiopia, have already started investing in community health worker programs to promote maternal and child health and nutrition with great success. Community health workers hold great promise to bring nutrition services to those most vulnerable to malnutrition, and their capacity to carry out this work should therefore be strengthened.

Align other sectors with nutrition goals: It seems common sense that agriculture, social safety nets and other important sectors could also play a role in advancing nutrition progress. Yet until this point, these programs have often not been designed, implemented or evaluated with improved nutrition outcomes in mind. Going forward, countries should take the opportunity to better integrate nutrition goals into these sectors. Donors should also support rigorous impact evaluations and studies to build a richer evidence base of what works with nutrition-sensitive approaches in agriculture, social safety nets and other sectors.

Devote funding to nutrition programs: The economic toll of malnutrition, on individuals and even countries, is astonishing. Malnutrition can rob individuals of up to 10 percent of their annual earnings and cost African countries up to 11 percent of their annual GDP. The good news is malnutrition solutions offer sound investments for countries’ futures. However, many national nutrition plans are only 20 percent funded. Countries must start prioritising nutrition programs within their national budgets.

Sustain global commitment: Progress towards reducing malnutrition will require a steadfast commitment from the international community. USAID recently pledged $1 billion for nutrition-specific interventions and nearly $9 billion for nutrition-sensitive activities for 2012 to 2014, and other countries have similarly stepped up their commitments.

Moving forward, donors will need to show patience in awaiting outcomes of nutrition programmes, as results cannot be clearly measured until a child’s second birthday. We also need to hold policymakers accountable to their commitments to nutrition progress and harness the global momentum on nutrition to produce more effective programs.

This week, the World Food Prize is being awarded to three scientists who have pioneered the development of crops capable of resisting disease, insects and extreme climate, which has stirred up the debate over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) once again.

At ONE, our 3 million members around the world are united by a singular purpose: to alleviate human suffering by ending extreme poverty, especially in Africa. In the fight against hunger and food insecurity, we believe that it is for African governments and citizens to make their own decisions as to whether specific GMO and non-GMO innovations are appropriate for supporting their strategies to transform the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and the broader agricultural sector. At the same time, we urge them to make these decisions based on a thorough understanding of the growing body of agricultural, environmental, and food safety research on agricultural innovations.

While GMOs get a lot of headlines, it is worth remembering there are many non-GMO innovations with proven potential that don’t get nearly enough support, like improved seed varieties and modern farming techniques. Think of the incredible results we’re seeing from the biofortification of the orange sweet potato. In a project in Uganda, the ‘new’ sweet potato increased Vitamin A intake by two-thirds for older children and nearly doubled it for younger children and women. For children 6–35 months, who are especially vulnerable to Vitamin A deficiency, the new tuber was responsible for more than half of their total vitamin A intake.

We know that the GMO industry is dominated by a few corporations. Without effective regulation, that can be a problem. The needs of smallholder farmers are more important than those of corporations, and national policymakers should be the arbiters of corporate interests. So African governments need to make sure that they’re guided by the local needs and realities of smallholders.

A staggering 3.1 million children die every year from malnutrition and about one in seven people on the planet goes to bed hungry every night. We have to do better than that. In working to do so, we should not rule out any safe options that save lives. At ONE, we want to do what we can to support agricultural research so that African policy makers are guided by the best evidence of what works, what doesn’t, what’s safe and what is not.

The ONE Africa Award is an annual $100,000 USD prize which celebrates the innovations and progress being made by African civil society towards achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.  We are excited to announce our six finalists for 2013, and this blog series looks at the remarkable work of each organisation.

Doper l’Entrepreneuriat par la Finance Innovante et Solidaire’s (DEFIS) is a Malian organisation which loosely translates as “Boosting the Entrepreneur through Innovative Finance and Solidarity.” DEFIS also plays on the French word “défis” to meet Mali’s challenges head on together in solidarity.

DEFIS focus on getting northern farmers’ produce into southern markets and also work to ensure that southern consumers know they are receiving quality, affordable produce from the north. DEFIS has a strong emphasis on overcoming conflict to renew and restore economic partnerships between Mali’s northern and southern regions.

DEFIS has shown it was possible to “save the farming season” during the recent conflict by supplying targeted inputs to farmers in the north so that they could provide for themselves and their families instead of receiving aid and handouts. DEFIS also aims to improve the nutrition of southern households by promoting the consumption of local foods.

During the political instability of 2012-13, the stories of real Malians living their lives were often lost in the international headlines about coups, jihadists and the threats to the archives in Timbuktu. One particular group—farmers in northern Mali—saw their livelihoods threatened as their traditional source of financing fled south to safety.

Banks and microfinance institutions shut down. Civil servants and teachers, another traditional source of finance, moved away. The farmers in northern Mali were left with no means to buy seed, petrol and other agricultural inputs. Instead, aid agencies and charities rushed into the vacuum created by the instability and start handing out parcels of food. How could able-bodied men and women, wanting to maintain their independence, accept the very food they could grow and sell for themselves if they only had what they needed to do so?

DEFIS grew out of a grassroots movement of different groups searching for a solution to this problem. Farmers co-operatives, social entrepreneurs and businesses developed a model where co-operatives would ‘pre-purchase’ harvests from farmers in the north, providing the investment they needed.

DEFIS is not only linking and sustaining livelihoods, but also creating new understanding between Mali’s citizens. Many southern Malians think of northern Mali as vast desert terrain with little ability to sustain robust agriculture. DEFIS challenges that notion and is now bringing together parts of the country that have had historical divisions.

The winner of the 2013 ONE Africa Award will be announced on 8th November in Addis Ababa. Be the first to know who takes the prize by following @ONEinAfrica on Twitter.

Audax Rukonge is the Executive Secretary of ANSAF, winners of the 2013 ONE Africa Award.  He explains how it felt to win the award, and what it will mean for the future of the organisation.

We applied for the ONE Award because we believe agriculture can transform the lives of smallholder farmers, and address food insecurity as well as poverty.  From the work we have been doing, the people we have been linking with and the changes we have started seeing back home, we felt that we could be a strong candidate for the ONE Award this year.

ANSAF stands for Agriculture Non-State Actors Forum.  It’s a network for smallholder farmers, NGOs and businesses in Tanzania.

We help smallholder farmers to reflect on what is working or not working in their own experience and use this to develop an advocacy agenda. We discuss this with senior government officials, donors, and the parliamentary committee on agriculture.

Cashew nut processing in Tanzania. Photo: ONE

Over the last six years our work has mainly been on budget allocation, trying to increase the share going to smallholder farmers in the agriculture sector.  We represent several farmer groups but when it comes to policy change, this affects the entire population of farmers in Tanzania – up to 10 million people.

When I found out we had won the award, I thought ‘wow this is fantastic!’ It was great news for us.  Everyone was excited, including the board members back home.

But it made us think – this now sets us a challenge.  We need to increase the work we do: supporting more farmers, accessing more information and helping raise the farmers’ voices with our dialogue platforms.

We also want to do more to encourage the government.  It has been investing in the agricultural sector, but we want these funds to be strategically distributed in such a way that many more people are lifted from poverty and hunger. So we need to intensify our advocacy work, including our campaign for 10% of national budget to be allocated to agriculture and increased strategic investment.

We want to do more work with the media and journalists to give farmers a bigger platform. And finally we want to do more budget tracking to check how funds for agriculture are being allocated. At the moment we track eight or ten local government authorities every year, but with the ONE Award prize funds we can increase this number.  We’d also like to go beyond agriculture and look at the entire national budget’s major investment areas and the results of that spending.

In the future I would like to see ANSAF mentioned when people talk about agriculture sector transformation.  We hope to reach beyond Tanzania and link up across East Africa, the whole continent or even with the AU to put forward our opinions on trade policies and the obstacles we need to overcome.

If you have a question for Audax, leave a comment below and he will reply.

You can also watch a video about ANSAF’s work in Tanzania.

Last month, the advocacy group Global Witness uncovered an alarming story of ordinary citizens who were allegedly assaulted and arrested in Liberia by police, during a protest of land expansion by a UK-based company producing palm oil. While the company denies any wrongdoing, the land in question is communally owned, and this story highlights the growing problem of “land grabs” and weak and opaque land tenure systems.

Photo credit: Deborah Espinosa for Landesa. Uganda.

Land grabs is the term used when land is taken from vulnerable communities without consent or fair payment, and reports of this practice have been on the rise in recent years. Many of these new land acquisitions are different, as companies are specifically targeting African countries that have weak land governance systems.

Investors have obtained millions of hectares of land, including 1 million each in Ethiopia, Liberia, Mozambique and Sudan between 2004 and 2009 – an area equivalent to nearly 2 million football fields. Proponents of these deals argue that they can increase food production and help farmers gain improved agricultural skills. But others are worried that investors lack the experience working in these conditions, and that weak protection of land rights may mean that local populations will not be compensated adequately when forced off their land. To add to the problems, many alleged land grabs have been negotiated secretly and often without consultation.

Land is often a poor person’s most valuable asset. It provides “tenure security” or legal protection against forced evictions; it provides critically important collateral for access to credit; and it provides a means of income and food security for the millions of farmers in Africa. Establishing recognised land rights can be an important step towards protecting communities from large-scale dispossession. Additionally, farmers with secure access to their land are more likely to use better farming practices that preserve the health of the soil, which encourages higher resistance against crop diseases and pests.

Governments have an important role to play in improving land rights, which could help protect citizens’ assets, help farmers grow more food, and reduce levels of poverty. Advancements in technology such as satellites, Google Earth, and global positioning systems (GPS) have made land surveys more efficient, cost-effective, and less prone to corruption by local officials, which can help governments to improve land tenure systems. While every context and locale is different, the following policy recommendations can provide guidance on how to ensure equitable access to one of Africa’s most important natural resources.

• Improve tenure security and register all communally owned land.
• Strengthen land administration systems, processes and infrastructure.
• Develop a system to resolve land disputes, through the legal systems. It’s also important to develop a universal framework for companies to ensure responsible private sector investment. Not all large-scale land acquisitions are land grabs, and many investments can help farmers by giving them access to new markets and providing advanced training and management advice. While governments have the UN’s Voluntary Guidelines on the responsible governance of land tenure as a reference, an equivalent does not yet exist for companies, although the Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment – developed by the FAO, IFAD, and the World Bank – are progressing through the consultation process. Initiatives to increase responsible private sector investment in agriculture, particularly the G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, must adhere to reasonable and realistic safeguards – developed with input from other key stakeholders – to protect local communities and the environment.

Last week, ONE jointly organised a two-day multilateral forum on agricultural policy with the Beninese platform of civil society (PASCiB) in Cotonou.

It is not the first time that ONE and Benin have collaborated. In 2012, I had the honour to meet with Dr. Thomas Yayi Boni, then chairman of the African Union, to advocate for agriculture to be put on the agenda of the AU. He declared 2014 the “AU Year of Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition.

For the continent, 2014 is an opportunity to launch initiatives to develop the sector and promote food security. For Benin, 2014 is a singular opportunity to harness the country’s potential to inject new impetus into its agricultural development programs.

Flanked by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso and Niger to the north, Benin is a small country with a population of 11 million and huge unexploited agriculture potential. Only 17% of its land is farmed. Besides, it has followed NEPAD/ECOWAS guidance in agreeing on a strategic plan and an investment plans to boost its agriculture sector but the implementation didn’t follow.

Benin has both potential and willingness to progress but the actors were not able to agree on what to start with. Together with PASCiB, ONE has organised this forum to gather all actors – the minister of agriculture and government representatives, farmers, agro-industry, civil society organisations, and development partners – and agree on a one-year action plan to get out of the stagnation.

ONE is very proud to say that an agreement has been achieved and that all actors have now clear roles and responsibilities framed by a strict timeline so that 2014 will be a boost to Beninese agriculture development.

At ONE, we hope that consensus in Benin will be emulated other countries and Dr. Yayi Boni’s engagement will pull other leaders to commit. 2014 is a  time for  our leaders  to invest in small holder farmers, create jobs and transform millions of lives.

Look out for the launch of our exciting pan-African campaign on agriculture, coming on 29 January 2014.

As Bill and Melinda Gates said in their 2014 Annual Letter earlier this month “By almost any measure, the world is better than it has ever been. People are living longer, healthier lives. Many nations that were aid recipients are now self-sufficient.” 

Yet despite this fact, you’ve probably heard a lot of myths that paint a more depressing picture, especially around food and agriculture. “African countries can’t grow enough food to feed themselves” or “All farmers in Africa are poor”.  Sound familiar?

We’ve decided to bust some of these myths with help from our friends at Shujaaz, an amazing set of comic creators in Nairobi.

Shujaaz, which means “heroes” in Sheng (a mixture of Swahili and English) is a free comic distributed through Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper. Launched in 2010, it was born out of the nationwide reflection that followed the post election violence. It aims to educate and entertain Kenyan youths, giving them tips on everything from planting seeds to the role they can play in society.

Check out the full series of comic strips and help us give agriculture in Africa a new image by signing our DO AGRIC petition.

Our guest blogger today is Mercy Karanja, Senior Program Officer and Senior Regional Advisor to East Africa for Agricultural Development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She grew up on a farm in Kenya, and along with her nine siblings, was able to go to school thanks to her parents farming activities. This post was first published on allAfrica.com

New technologies and ideas – from mobile phone information systems to new crop varieties – are rapidly transforming agriculture across Africa. Yet the sector continues to be stereotyped as one synonymous with poverty and subsistence.

Today we publish a new report, Ripe for Change: The Promise of Africa’s Agricultural Transformation.

It’s a vision of what a continent-wide agricultural transformation would look like for millions of smallholder farmers, illustrated by examples of success across the continent.  The new face of Africa is changing. Across the continent, populations, economies and ideas are on the move. Many believe it’s Africa’s turn on the global stage.

However, in many cases these changes have not resulted in improvements in everyday life for the average citizen. Some economic sectors, such as mining and utilities, accrue wealth for a privileged few. On the other hand, agriculture – a sector that employs two-thirds of Africans and contributes to a third of GDP – has the ability to drive economic growth and lift tens of millions of people out of poverty.

In fact, in sub-Saharan Africa, growth in agriculture is 11 times more powerful in reducing poverty than growth in other sectors.

African leaders publicly committed to this vision in 2003 in Maputo, by promising to spend 10% of national budgets on agriculture and to implement policies that would drive agricultural growth to 6% per year.

Over a decade later only a few countries have met these promises.  Worse yet, many of the same challenges that existed then remain today. Farmer yields have been stagnant for decades due to a number of issues: a lack of open and effective public spending, inadequate support for women, poor land governance, few resources for pro-poor research and extension services, and weak links in agriculture value chains that create few opportunities for responsible private sector investment, among others.

However, success is possible and this report tells stories from Ghana, Ethiopia, and Burkina Faso.

In Ghana, effective investments and reforms in agriculture helped reduce extreme poverty by 44%.  In Ethiopia, extreme poverty declined by 49%, in part due to investments in farmer training and rural road construction. Burkina Faso made reforms to the cotton sector that created hundreds of thousands of jobs, improved food security, and boosted farmer incomes.

For the agriculture of the future to achieve the promises made in Maputo, governments, farmers, civil society and business must work together towards shared goals. The power to transform the lives of Africans is within their hands.

See for yourself what’s needed to transform African agriculture –  read our new report and share our infographic.

D’banj meets cocoa farmer Adam in Ghana. Photo: ONE

Today the Koko Master has become the Koko Farmer.

I’ve just returned from Ghana where I was lucky to meet an amazing cocoa farmer called Adam Yakubu. Spending time with him I learnt that farming is not only the foundation of our economy, but it’s also cool. This is where our food comes from. This is real.

But here’s the problem. Smallholder farmers like Adam are the people that feed us, but too often they struggle to feed themselves. They’ve been ignored by our leaders for too long.

We can change this if we DO AGRIC. Join me and tell  African leaders to invest in agriculture and support smallholder farmers by signing ONE’s petition. 

In 2003, our leaders pledged to invest more in agriculture – 8 of them did, but 46 have not kept their promises.  2014 is the African Union Year of Agriculture, so let’s come together and tell them to act.

We need to wake our governments up to the fact that if they DO AGRIC, Africa doesn’t just have the potential to  feed itself, it has the potential to help feed the world.

Sign the petition, then help spread the word by sharing this post on Facebook.

Today we’re in Addis Ababa for the launch of ONE’s exciting and ambitious pan-African campaign: DO AGRIC.

This is the issue of our time. 2014 has been declared the ‘Year of Agriculture & Food Security’ by the African Union.  As delegates gather for the 22^nd AU Summit in Ethiopia’s capital, ONE is also here to make sure they deliver for the 70% of Africans who make a living from agriculture.

It’s an obscenity that so often the people who feed us are struggling to survive.  Smallholder farmers are the people most connected to our land and animals, but can lack the resources to make them thrive.  Better irrigation, farming equipment, storage, market access, and women’s land rights could mean brighter futures for millions. They have been ignored by many of our leaders for too long.

Studies show that investing in agriculture pays. It could help lift 85 million people out of extreme poverty by 2024, provide jobs, and boost the continent’s economy.  We also know that based on Africa’s share (60%) of remaining global arable land, our continent doesn’t just have the potential to feed itself – it has the potential to help feed the world.

In 2003, African leaders pledged to invest 10% of their national budgets in agriculture – eight of them did, while the rest, despite efforts to scale up their budgetary commitments have yet to keep their promises. Explore which countries are delivering on agriculture in our interactive infographic. 

Over the coming months, we will be working with our non-state actor partners to mobilise hundreds of thousands of African citizens to demand their leaders step up to the challenge and DO AGRIC.

With the help of ambassadors like D’banj, Yaya Touré and Juliani, we hope to inspire a new generation of Africans to see the potential of a career in agriculture.  And we’ll be giving farmers like Adam from Ghana a platform to say what’s working and what’s not.

Take the first step by signing our petition, calling for African leaders to DO AGRIC now.

Last week, we launched our pan-African campaign DO AGRIC at the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa.

We were joined by D’banj, the African Union Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Economy H.E Rhoda Peace Tumusiime, Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Agriculture from Mali, Benin and Niger, farmer organisations and several partners.

I was particularly inspired by a successful youth female farmer from Uganda – Elizabeth Nsimadala – who told the audience, “I am a proud successful farmer; I am above the salary scale of public sector servants in Uganda.  I do agriculture not only because it pays, but because I can do it better.”

Elizabeth Nsimadala, a farmer from Uganda, speaks at the DO AGRIC launch in Addis Ababa.

DO AGRIC is about African leaders deciding to create millions of Elizabeths after years of neglecting the agriculture sector.   We know that this is possible because growth in agriculture is 11 more effective at reducing poverty as growth in other sectors.

We’re asking millions of African citizens to come together and demand our leaders keep the promise they have made to invest 10% of budgets in agriculture, and do more to support smallholder farmers.

D’banj signs the DO AGRIC petition. Photo: ONE

D’ banj was there in person to kick off the campaign by being the first person to the petition.   Listen to him talking about why young people should be looking to agriculture for a career on BBC Africa.

African Footballer of the Year for three years running and Manchester City player, Yaya Touré, echoed the call to action in a public service announcement filmed for the launch.

Meanwhile in Kenya, musician and poet Juliani hit the farms and streets to promote agribusiness as way out of poverty for Africa youth, with support from our partner AGRA.

In Addis Ababa, the campaign launched at a joint event hosted by the Pan-African Farmers Organization (PAFO), ActionAid International, ONE, ACORD International, Oxfam and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.  It brought together policy makers, multilateral institutions, the private sector, agriculture experts and regional and national farmer organisations from the east, west, and southern regions of Africa.

Participants in the bilingual forum discussed a set of 10 recommendations for how investment in agriculture could be boosted by a mix of public and private sector investment as well as policy reforms that benefit smallholder farmers. These recommendations were presented to the African Union commission, along with a petition from PAFO, at a high level session where DO AGRIC was also on the agenda.

It was great to see such diverse organisations agreeing to send a common message to the African Union. ONE’s new report, Ripe for Change, documents the development impacts of agriculture investments across Africa and actively contributed to these joint recommendations.

10 joint policy priorities for the Enhanced Maputo Framework promoted by DO AGRIC

1. Open and effective spending with an emphasis on transparent and accountable budgets and the quality and quantity of spending
2. Eliminate the gender gap
3. Strengthen land rights of farmers and specifically women
4. Commit 1 % of resources for research and development and extension
5. Strengthen value chains and responsible private sector investment in markets, youth and women
6. Lower barriers to intra-regional trade
7. Enhance sustainability and climate resilience of small farmers
8. Reduce post-harvest loss
9. Nutrition and agriculture
10. Ensure implementation and results arising from the CAADP Results Framework.

Find out more about the DO AGRIC campaign, and sign the petition.

Anne Wafula is a farmer in Kenya, and is part of the One Acre Fund network. Photo: Hailey Tucker

With the African Union Year of Agriculture and Food Security in full swing, ONE today is releasing a joint report with the World Bank’s Gender Innovation Lab aimed at sparking policy change on a formidable barrier holding back Africa’s agricultural transformation – a wide and pervasive gender gap.

Levelling the Field: Improving Opportunities for Women Farmers in Africa brings forward fresh, new data measuring the gender gap in African agriculture and sets out a roadmap to guide policy change. Tackling the specific drivers of the productivity gap identified in the report could deliver a powerful one-two punch of improved gender equality and economic growth.

Women make up half of Africa’s agricultural workforce overall, and more than half in some countries. Yet for several years we have had evidence of a troubling reality: on average, women farmers produce less per unit of land than men.

This gender gap in agricultural productivity affects women’s incomes, their children’s opportunities, and the availability of food and prospects for economic growth in their wider communities. But so far, we have only had limited data showing the extent and causes of the gap, and we’ve had even less evidence on how to address it.

Here are a few of the report’s biggest takeaways:

1) The gender gap in African agriculture is real, and in many countries, quite dramatic.

Across six countries (Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda) that comprise more than 40% of sub-Saharan Africa’s population, women farmers consistently produce less per unit of land than men.

A simple comparison of average productivity reveals that women farmers produce up to a quarter less than men. Yet when comparing men and women who farm similar sized plots across similar settings, the gender gap ranges from 23% in Tanzania to a shocking 66% in Niger.

2) Ensuring that women have equal access to key resources like labour, fertiliser, or training does not always generate equal returns for women farmers.

Our research has unearthed a surprising discovery. Previously it was believed that the gender gap stemmed solely from women’s inability to access key resources like fertiliser, training, or labour. Our report finds that, in many cases, even when men and women use the same amount of a particular resource, men get higher yields as a result.

For example, in Ethiopia, differences in benefits received from the use of resources account for more than half (57%) of the gender gap in agricultural productivity. As it turns out, although men and women use the same amount of fertiliser on their plots (equality of access), men still receive higher yields than women (inequality of returns).

These new findings demonstrate the need for policy makers to better design policies that actually address these problems, which in this case may relate to the quality of fertiliser women farmers use or how or when they apply it.

3) While the drivers of the gender gap vary by country, challenges related to labour, fertiliser, and land, cut across borders.

Labour emerges as the chief barrier to progress for women farmers, and it’s a challenge that policy-makers have largely overlooked. Agriculture in Africa depends heavily on manual labour, from farmers’ households, families and communities. Unfortunately, across every country profiled in the report, women face difficulties mobilising the workers they need to make their farms successful.

Policy guidance on this front has been woefully insufficient. For this reason, the report calls upon African policy-makers and donors to do more to develop effective policies and programs to help women farmers overcome their labour challenges.

2014 offers an historic opportunity for policy-makers, donor governments and development partners to commit to concrete actions to narrow the gender gap in agriculture. The African Union has declared it to be the “Year of Agriculture and Food Security,” bringing much needed attention to the sector’s potential to transform the continent.

As part of this historic year, we are calling on African leaders to make a new, robust commitment to narrow the gender gap in agriculture and unveil this commitment at the African Union Summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea this June.

For more detail on our findings and our ten-point policy agenda, download the full report.

Please also take one minute to tell African leaders to invest in women farmers and agriculture by signing our DO AGRIC petition.

Farm visit before the forum.

Nestled among the hills in Tanzania’s Southern Highlands, Iringa is the quiet, yet bustling city where ONE and Agricultural Non State Actors Forum (ANSAF) chose to launch the DO AGRIC campaign in Tanzania.

There are only two ways into Iringa, a long, eight hour journey by road through Tanzania’s rolling hills or by air. Either way, the views of this country are stunning and call to mind Nigerian songstress TY Bello’s song, “the land is green, its green, oh oh”.

Hundreds of people, farmers & farm organsations participated in the launch.

I arrived in Iringa by charter plane, my first such experience. It was a smooth flight with the exception of several dips and bumps caused by the rain. From the Iringa airport, we drove to the office of the Regional Commissioner and Member of Parliament, Dr. Christine Ishengoma in the centre of town, where a press conference announcing the launch was well under way. Dr. Ishengoma told us how delighted she was that the DO AGRIC campaign was launching in Iringa.

Hosting the launch of DO AGRIC (in Kiswahili, “Kilimo Inalipa”) in Iringa and even more specifically in Kanin’gombe village, highlighted the importance of local focus for a continent-wide campaign.

Although agriculture accounts for 28% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Tanzania, only 6% of the national budget is allocated to support it.

Three out of four Tanzanians rely on agriculture for their livelihood. Therefore reforming Tanzania’s agriculture policies can transform smallholder farmers’ opportunities. For this reason, ONE and ANSAF, with the help of a local female farmer, presented the government of Tanzania with a joint petition and recommendations to increase spending and promote agriculture-led growth in Tanzania.

Masoud Kipanya: “I spend more time in agriculture, because while I am in rural areas doing farming, I am walking on top of money”.

Agriculture is also gaining ground among the youth population. Juma Ngumuo, an Assistant Project Coordinator at the Tanzanian Graduate Farmers Association, is one among many currently working to educate young people about the opportunities in agriculture. For Juma and others like him farming is a business and a social opportunity that leverages one person’s ability to employ and lift others out of poverty. In his words, ‘farming is cool’!

Leland Fellow and ONE special representative Mercy Erhiawarien speaks on necessary policy recommendations to transform Tanzanian agriculture.

His message was echoed by celebrities in Tanzania, including musicians Mrisho Mpoto, Professor Jay and conscious cartoonist, Masoud Kipanya who also attended the launch. With shouts of “Kilimo Hoyee”, each celebrity shared their passion for agriculture, inspiring farmers and others to realise agriculture’s potential. Mrisho Mpoto reminded participants and farmers that “nothing is impossible in agriculture”. Professor Jay noted the important role Tanzanian agriculture plays as a foundation for economic development. Together the celebrities encouraged participants to “talk, speak, sing and walk the agriculture way”.

Other Tanzanian celebrities have also endorsed the campaign. Celebrated musicians Diamond and A.Y. joined artists from 11 African countries earlier this year to record the biggest music video collaboration on the continent for the campaign, which launches in Lagos on 3 April.

In the next few months, ONE and ANSAF will work with citizens and local farmer organisations, putting pressure on policymakers to enact policies that place smallholder farmers at the centre of agriculture programs and support smallholder farmer enterprise.

Sign the DO AGRIC petition and call for African leaders to invest in agriculture and smallholder farmers in Tanzania and across Africa.