Source: African Development Bank Group
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Your Excellencies,
Honourable Ministers,
Distinguished delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good morning.
I am delighted to join you all today at this high-level conference, focusing on smallholder farmers.
On behalf of the African Development Bank Group, I wish to convey our profound gratitude to our host, His Excellency President William Ruto, his government and the people of Kenya for their generous support for hosting this High-Level Conference in Nairobi.
I would have joined you for the sessions at this high-level conference yesterday, but I had a very important engagement at the State House, Kenya. It was such a great honour, yesterday for His Excellency President William Ruto to confer on me the Chief of the Order of the Golden Heart (C.G.H), Kenya’s highest national honour and distinction.
I wish to express my deepest gratitude once again to President Ruto for this exceptional honour, given only to 19 Heads of State and Government and global leaders since 1963.
I am especially delighted that the conferment of this honour was given the same day that farmers and agribusinesses of Africa are gathered right here at the High-level conference on ‘Scaling Financing for Smallholder Farmers”.
As you know, I am a great supporter of African farmers and agribusinesses. So, I wish to ask that you all join me in thanking President Ruto for this great honour.
Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
I wish to commend our partners, the Pan African Farmers’ Organization (PAFO) and all the partner organizations that have worked tirelessly with our teams from the African Development Bank to organize this high-level conference.
We meet here in Nairobi to reposition and expand opportunities for Africa’s smallholder farmers who contribute over 80% of the continent’s food production.
I will be speaking to you today on: “Progress Since Dakar 2 Feed Africa Summit: a portrait of success in building coalitions for supporting smallholder farmers to transform African economies”.
Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
Africa will be the epicentre of feeding the world, since 65% of the uncultivated arable land left in the world is in Africa. Therefore, what Africa does with its agriculture will determine the future of food in the world.
It is with this goal of unleashing the potential of Africa to feed itself, and to do so with pride, that the African Development Bank, in partnership with the Government of Senegal and the African Union, organized the Feed Africa Summit (or Dakar 2) in 2023.
The theme of the Summit was on Achieving Food Sovereignty and Resilience. Attended by 34 heads of state and government, Dakar 2 showed the political commitment of governments towards ensuring food security and food sovereignty in Africa.
Many of you were there!
At the heart of Dakar 2 were 41 Presidential Boardrooms that launched Country Food and Agriculture Delivery Compacts outlining national production targets, enabling policies, smallholder farmers’ support, rural infrastructure development, and innovative financing solutions.
Dakar 2 gave us a renewed sense of purpose and marked a turning point in Africa’s pursuit of food security through the power of partnerships and cooperation.
Dakar 2 showed us the power of partnerships. At the Dakar 2 Feed Africa Summit, development partners committed $30 billion to support the Compacts, with the African Development Bank Group pledging $10 billion.
In less than a year after the Dakar 2 Feed Africa summit, financial commitments from development partners from around the world increased to $72 billion.
This is unprecedented in the history of agriculture in Africa.
Since then, the African Development Bank has made tremendous progress in our combined continental quest to Feed Africa, approving 77 operations valued at $3.9 billion to support the implementation of Compacts in 32 countries.
This year, the African Development Bank plans to approve an additional $1.72 billion in project investments and policy-based operations.
Central to the Compacts is the Bank’s flagship initiative, the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) which aims to double food production by providing proven technologies to more than 40 million smallholder farmers by 2025.
The TAAT platform has delivered heat-tolerant wheat varieties, drought-tolerant maize varieties, and high-yield rice varieties, as well as capacity building, training and other related services to 25 million farmers across the continent.
Our efforts with partners have increased Africa’s crop production by an estimated 120 million tonnes of additional food. A total of $1.7 billion in investments has been influenced by TAAT’s climate-smart technologies – and about 247 million Africans have better nutrition today, due to TAAT.
TAAT is also a key driver of the African Development Bank’s $1.5 billion African Emergency Food Production Facility approved in 2022 to avert a looming food crisis following global geopolitical tensions. The facility is a continental initiative to support 20 million smallholder farmers in 35 countries to access certified seeds and fertilizer to produce 38 million metric tons of food.
As of December 2024, the African Emergency Food Production Facility had delivered 459,000 tons of seed, distributed 2.8 million tonnes of fertilizer to 12.3 million farmers. It has supported the production of 37.6 million metric tons of additional food in Africa. are on course to meeting and even surpassing the target we set just about two years ago.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
We are working hard to connect farmers to market off-takers, and to accelerate the processing and value addition to food and agricultural commodities. We are doing this through the development and roll out of Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones.
The African Development Bank has committed $934.51 million to the Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones, which has been matched with co-financing from our partners amounting to $938.27 million. Currently, we have 27 ongoing Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones projects across 11 countries.
However, despite lots of progress being made, one area that continues to remain a challenge for farmers, especially smallholder farmers, and small and medium sized agribusinesses, is lack of access to finance.
There exists an annual financing deficit of $75 billion for farmers and small and medium enterprises. Data from 35 lenders found a perception of higher risks and lower returns by commercial banks to lending to agriculture-linked small and medium enterprises.
Therefore, we must find efficient ways to “de-risk” lending to farmers and small and medium enterprises. This can be achieved by absorbing incremental risk and thereby increasing lenders’ risk appetite and by leveraging outside private sector finance into the agricultural sector.
The three major investment channels deployed effectively by the African Development Bank in addressing these challenges include: (1) the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA), (2) the African Fertilizer Financing Mechanism, and (3) the Inputs Supplier Risk Sharing Program.
First: as of February 2025, the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa program had approved $2.52 billion in financing for over 24,000 of Africa’s women-led businesses. This has been achieved through partnerships with the Africa Guarantee Fund which now works with over 185 financial institutions across 44 African countries.
Second: The African Fertilizer Financing Mechanism has implemented trade credit guarantee projects in 8 countries, including Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique. The $17.1 million trade credit guarantee was leveraged by 4.7 times, including 13 times leverage in Tanzania. It has enabled the distribution of 125,193 metric tons of fertilizer worth $62.8 million, which benefited 776,971 smallholder farmers during the 2019–2024 seasons. These projects also facilitated access to finance for over 126 hub agro-based enterprises involved in fertilizer distribution, with women beneficiaries representing 36% of the African Fertilizer Financing Mechanism projects.
And the third channel is the African Development Bank’s new $600 million Inputs Supplier Risk Sharing Program. This is to support the development of more robust agricultural inputs market systems through de-risking of the inputs supply ecosystem. This is focusing on Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana and Zambia. Initially this will be undertaken through the deployment of a risk sharing mechanism, backed by the Bank’s Partial Credit Guarantee instrument, to attract private sector, and donor resources for the development of a sustainable agricultural-inputs market system.
Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
In addition, the African Development Bank is working with Mastercard and other partners on developing the “Mobilizing Access to the Digital Economy,” or the MADE Alliance Africa. The Bank’s first phase commitment includes $300 million to the MADE Alliance Africa’s initial five years of programming. By doing so, the African Development Bank aims to bring 3 million farmers in Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria into the digital economy.
I am pleased to inform you that we will be consulting with our Board of Directors of the African Development Bank to establish a $500 million facility to unlock $10 billion of financing for smallholder farmers, as well as small and medium sized agribusiness enterprises.
This will include the use of trade credit guarantees, first loss coverage, blended finance, and origination incentives that defray the high transaction costs of serving enterprises, as well as technical assistance.
Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
From Dakar 2 Feed Africa summit to Nairobi ‘Scaling up finance for farmers” conference today, we stand on the threshold of making history by pushing the boundaries of innovation and building extensive collaborative alliances to accelerate action towards bridging the financing gap facing smallholder farmers and small and medium sized agribusinesses.
The African Development Bank remains fully committed to collaborating with the Pan African Farmers’ Organization and its subsidiary farmers’ organizations, as well as development partners and financial institutions, to fully unlock financing for smallholder farmers and small and medium sized agribusiness enterprises.
Together, let us expand access to finance at scale for farmers and small and medium sized agribusinesses.
Together, let us provide strong policy support for farmers.
Africa must never abandon its farmers.
Together, let us unleash the potential of agriculture in Africa.
Let us make Africa the breadbasket of the world.
And together, let us feed Africa, with pride!
Thank you very much.