The persistence of hunger and food crises across the world has spawned some false solutions. One of the most notable of these is the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), launched in 2006 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation together with the Rockefeller Foundation, and supported by numerous international organizations and governments in the Global North, along with some African governments.

AGRA, registered in the United States, was founded to give new impetus to the fight against hunger in Africa with a corporate-driven “Green Revolution” approach. It promised to double the agricultural yields and incomes of thirty million small-scale food producer households by 2020, thus halving both hunger and poverty in the focus countries. The promises have been grand, but civil society organizations in Africa and beyond, as well as large numbers of African farmers, are raising critical concerns about the program, arguing that it has failed completely to fulfill its own agenda.

In July 2020, five African and five German organizations jointly published the study “False Promises: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).” It was the first study to scientifically assess the program’s impacts and to ask whether AGRA had met its goals. It found that AGRA had failed to do so. Instead of halving hunger, the situation in the thirteen priority countries the organization focuses on has in fact worsened since AGRA was launched. The number of people going hungry has increased by a staggering 30 percent during the AGRA years.