WAGENINGEN, Netherlands: Bringing a green revolution to Africa and feeding the continent’s 200 million hungry people is one of the greatest development challenges of this century, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said Monday.

Annan said a 50 percent jump in staple food prices in the last year has deepened the crisis for the average African farmer rather than helped him.

Farmers who lack fertilizer for poor soil, who have no access to high yield seed and who cannot move their crops to the market because of high fuel costs gain no benefit from higher farm prices, he said.

Africa needs to revolutionize the entire food chain, he said. That “will require one of the largest efforts in human history,” he said.

Annan is director of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, formed two years ago with grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. He said he has committed US$330 million (€225 million) to help small scale farming in Africa.

Most farms in Africa are less than a hectare (2.5 acres) and only five percent of arable land is irrigated. Four of five people in rural Africa have no electricity, he said.

Annan spoke at the opening of the Academic Year at Wageningen University, an agricultural research institute involved in his program.

Read more at the International Heral Tribune…

… or read the speech Kofi Annan delivered ath Wageningen University

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