Keypoints:
- Farmer incomes have doubled, AGRA says
- Cereal yields have risen about 40 percent
- Africa remains off track for 2035 goals
AFRICA has doubled farmer incomes, raised cereal yields by about 40 percent and nearly doubled agricultural output in real terms since 2005, according to a new AGRA assessment that warns the progress still falls short of genuine transformation.
The AGRA Impact, Learning and Foresight Report 2026 argues that the continent’s current trajectory will not deliver the Kampala Declaration and CAADP 3.0 targets for 2035. It calls for a broader alliance linking agriculture with finance, markets, infrastructure, science and industry.
Progress without transformation
AGRA describes the report as a candid account of two decades of work, documenting where the organisation and its partners helped build agricultural capacity, where gains proved fragile and what must change.
The report says the rate of growth in agriculture’s gross value added increased from about 2.3 percent to almost four percent. Local seed industries have also emerged, supported by more than 25,000 agro-dealers and 33,000 community extension workers.
Yet productivity remains below the levels Africa needs. Farmer incomes lag global averages, hunger has risen and many producers cannot convert larger harvests into stable earnings.
AGRA President Alice Ruhweza said Africa’s agrifood sector had demonstrated its ability to advance when the right conditions were in place. The priority now, she argued, was to turn that progress into income, resilience, dignity and opportunity.
From Maputo to farmer prosperity
The report places the findings within a longer history stretching from the famines and crop failures of the 1980s to the 2003 Maputo Declaration, which established an African Union-led framework for agricultural transformation.
That agenda has since evolved into the Kampala Declaration and CAADP’s latest strategy. However, AGRA warns that expanding existing interventions without fixing weaknesses across the wider food system will not close the transformation gap.
AGRA Board Chair Hailemariam Dessalegn said progress becomes transformation only when productivity is restored, value is retained and institutional capability is sustained.
Three traps hold farmers back
The report identifies three connected barriers: a productivity trap restricting reliable and climate-resilient production; a value trap preventing harvests from becoming income, jobs and trade; and a capability trap weakening institutions, financing, data and accountability.
Addressing one barrier while neglecting the others will produce limited results. Farmers need dependable inputs and knowledge, but they must also have access to finance, aggregation, processing facilities and reliable buyers.
The challenge reflects a wider concern that Africa’s agrifood transformation requires coordinated delivery, not a collection of isolated projects.
A wider economic alliance
AGRA argues that agricultural transformation can no longer be left to agriculture ministries and development organisations alone. Farmer outcomes are also shaped by decisions involving trade, water, energy, transport, health, education, climate policy and scientific research.
When farmers cannot produce reliably or secure fair returns, food prices rise, import bills grow and young people lose confidence in rural economies. Prosperous farmers, by contrast, can strengthen domestic markets, support healthier communities and drive more inclusive growth.
Over two decades, AGRA and its partners say they supported 118 seed companies, more than 650 improved seed varieties, five million farmers and nearly 800 scientists. The organisation also helped mobilise about $691m for national agricultural investment plans.
AGRA stresses that these are contributions to a much wider continental effort, not a claim of sole credit for Africa’s agricultural gains.
Kigali puts the agenda to the test
The report was launched in Nairobi on August 31 as part of AGRA’s 20th-anniversary programme. Its findings are now being carried into the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, which began on September 1 and runs until September 4.
The forum is convening more than 5,000 delegates from over 50 countries under the theme ‘Investing in Africa’s Agri-Food Systems: Nourishing Nations, Growing Jobs, Building Resilience’. Its official opening is scheduled for September 2.
The gathering will provide an early test of whether governments, investors, researchers and development partners are prepared to move beyond promises and organise agricultural policy around a common measure of success: whether farmers genuinely prosper.
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