In July, the United Nations sounded alarms with its 2020 hunger report, which documented a 25% increase from 2019 to 2020 in the number of severely undernourished people in the world. Sub-Saharan Africa saw a similar spike with an estimated 44 million more people suffering severe hunger. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) was founded 15 years ago to address that productivity problem. With generous funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller foundations, the alliance was founded as an international NGO dedicated to addressing chronic hunger and poverty. The alliance set two key ambitious goals to be achieved by 2020. The first was to double yields and incomes for 30 million smallholder farming households. The second was to reduce food insecurity by half. With funding from private foundations and a few western bilateral donors the organisation has focused on 13 African countries for most of its 15 years, spending about one billion dollars.
SOURCE: THE CONVERSATION