Agroecology is delivering measurable gains for African farmers, but the systems, which need to take it to national scale are dangerously underfunded and understaffed.

Presenting an executive brief prepared for ministerial-level consideration at the FARA Science Week, Prof. Anthony Egeru, said the evidence for agroecology’s performance in Africa is now real and expanding, warning that adoption remains uneven and largely dependent on donor projects rather than embedded in national or landscape-level policy.

He spoke at a session: “Agroecology and Ecological Organic Agriculture at Scale: Levers and Inhibitors for Sustainable Food Systems,” held under the broader theme: “Food Sovereignty in Africa: Scaling Agroecology and Ecological Organic Agriculture for Resilient and Sustainable Agrifood Systems in Africa.”

Egeru grounded his remarks in the political momentum created by the Kampala CAADP Declaration, adopted by African Union Heads of State in January 2025, and its accompanying Strategy and Action Plan for 2026-2035, which for the first-time names agroecology as a core continental strategy for safeguarding biodiversity, improving nutrition, restoring soil health and strengthening local food systems.

He described the declaration as the strongest continental policy signal on agroecology to date, and said it now falls to ministries to translate that commitment into budget lines, extension reform and territorial planning.

Citing a systematic review of 70 peer-reviewed studies spanning 25 African countries between 2019 and 2024, Egeru said Senegal, Kenya, Tanzania and Burkina Faso are furthest along in scaling agroecological practice, supported by stronger institutions, policy and financing. He noted that farmer-level adoption in Benin, estimated at roughly 10 per cent, is broadly representative of much of the region.

He said data from FAO’s Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation, applied across roughly 2,500 households in eight countries including Benin, Ethiopia, Kenya and Madagascar, consistently shows that greater agroecological integration improves economic, environmental and social outcomes without sacrificing productivity.

Egeru pointed to a series of independently verified on-farm results: Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration, practiced across 24 million hectares from Niger to Ethiopia and Malawi, has lifted yields by an average of 50 per cent and helped double household incomes through firewood sales, while regenerating some 200 million trees over two decades.

Push-pull cereal-legume intercropping, now used by more than 155,000 smallholders in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia, has raised maize yields by up to 2.2 times and cut stemborer crop losses from around 40 percent to about 5 percent. In Burkina Faso, the combination of zaï pits and stone bunds has restored between 200,000 and 300,000 hectares of degraded land, in some cases lifting yields by as much as 500 percent and adding roughly 80,000 tonnes of food production annually.

Indeed, over the last two years, the Innovation Transfer Partners (ITPs) model implemented by RUFORUM for scaling and deepening impact of technology and innovations transfer has demonstrated that young agro-preneurs can sustain the momentum of deliverying agroecology TIMPs to farmers at scale. This is because they have been able to reach over 200,000 farmers in under 24 months in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. This is therefore an approach that is scalable with multiple wins of jobs and wealth creation, inclusion, and environmental sustainability among others.

Egeru also highlighted institutional shifts underpinning this progress, including Zimbabwe’s formal adoption of agroecology as a national climate adaptation strategy, CGIAR-led “Agroecological Living Landscapes” now operating in five countries, the integration of agroecology into university curricula in Kenya, and the institutionalization of Farmer Field School delivery within government extension systems in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.