625 faith leaders from more than 20 African countries accuse AGRA-backed agricultural model of failing to curb hunger, call for funding shift to smallholder farmers

African faith leaders have called on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to pay reparations for the alleged ecological and social damage caused by two decades of funding industrial agriculture programmes in Africa, arguing that the model has failed to deliver on its promise to reduce hunger.

The demand is contained in an open letter signed by 625 faith leaders and supported by 360 organisations and partners. The letter was delivered to the foundation on Wednesday and launched on Thursday at an online press conference hosted by the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI).

The campaign coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), established in 2006 by the Gates and Rockefeller foundations to improve agricultural productivity and reduce food insecurity across the continent.

According to the campaigners, AGRA has received more than $1.5 billion since its establishment, with about two-thirds of the funding coming from the Gates Foundation.
SAFCEI Executive Director, Francesca de Gasparis, said hunger had increased in AGRA’s focus countries despite years of investment in the initiative.

“The Green Revolution promised to halve hunger. Instead, 55 million more people in AGRA’s focus countries are going hungry today than when it began,” she said.
De Gasparis urged the foundation to reconsider its approach in light of independent research assessing the initiative’s performance.

“When a strategy fails this badly, for this long, continuing to fund it perpetuates harm. We are calling on the Gates Foundation to take the independent research seriously and change its approach,” she added.

The faith leaders said they first wrote to the foundation in 2021, urging it to stop financing Green Revolution programmes. Although SAFCEI subsequently met with foundation representatives, the campaigners said their concerns had not received a meaningful response.
The latest appeal brings together faith leaders from more than 20 countries across West, East and Southern Africa, including a regional delegation representing Liberia, Kenya, Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

A representative of the Botswana Council of Churches, Gorata Ramokgothwane, said faith communities were working to protect farmers’ rights to save and exchange traditional seeds while challenging restrictive legislation.

“Across Southern Africa, we are working to correct the wrongs caused by AGRA, helping farmers understand their seed rights and pressing parliaments to protect those rights, not to pass restrictive seed laws as many countries have done,” she said.

The campaigners cited research published by Tufts University in August 2026, which analysed 18 years of data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to assess AGRA’s progress against its original targets.
AGRA had aimed to double crop yields and incomes for 30 million farming households and halve food insecurity by 2020.
However, the research found that the number of undernourished people in AGRA’s 13 focus countries increased by 58 per cent, from approximately 95 million to 150 million, representing 55 million additional people.

It also found that staple crop yields grew by 1.2 per cent annually, below the 1.3 per cent recorded in the 12 years before AGRA began.
Although maize production increased by 139 per cent, the study attributed much of the growth to a 71 per cent expansion in cultivated land. Maize yields per unit of land rose by 40 per cent, falling short of the initiative’s target of doubling yields.

The researchers also reported that fertiliser use more than doubled while yield growth slowed. Meanwhile, millet and sorghum, which are valued for their nutritional content and drought tolerance, declined from 25 per cent to 17 per cent of cropland.

Millet production fell by 27 per cent, while yields declined by 17 per cent, according to the study.

The campaigners pointed to Senegal, which was not an AGRA focus country, as an alternative example. The research found that the country halved its number of undernourished people while using approximately half as much fertiliser per hectare as AGRA focus countries.
Board Chair of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), Tolbert Thomas Jallah Jnr, said future agricultural investments should prioritise soil restoration and farming systems led by local communities.

“The evidence is clear. More than a billion dollars has been spent, soils have been degraded, and more Africans are hungry in the countries AGRA set out to help,” he said.
Jallah called for funding to move away from corporate agricultural input supply chains towards community-governed agroecology and soil restoration.

The faith leaders also raised concerns about the impact of commercial seeds and fertilisers on women smallholder farmers, who play a major role in food production across Africa.
They argued that recurring expenditure on agricultural inputs could increase farmers’ vulnerability to debt when prices rise or harvests fail. They also warned that restrictive seed laws could undermine traditional practices of saving and exchanging seeds, particularly those maintained by women over generations.

“Seeds are life. Women have kept them, shared them and fed their families with them for generations,” said Josephina Ngishoono of the Namibia Council of Churches.
She said faith communities were responding through seed banks and seed fairs intended to preserve traditional varieties and strengthen farmers’ independence.

The campaigners also questioned whether the Gates Foundation’s climate-related investments adequately addressed the structural causes of agricultural vulnerability.

Hassan Omari Kinyua of the Africa Faith Actors Network for Climate Justice in Kenya criticised the foundation’s announcement at COP30 in 2025 of a further $1.4 billion commitment, arguing that the approach continued to favour commercially supplied agricultural technologies and inputs.

“You cannot solve an ecological crisis caused by synthetic fertilisers and monocultures with a mobile phone app,” he said, advocating investment in healthy soils, mixed cropping and locally adapted seeds.

The open letter urges the foundation to end funding and programme support for AGRA and similar initiatives promoting industrial agriculture in Africa, provide reparations for the alleged social and ecological damage, and redirect investments towards African-led agroecology and locally developed agricultural knowledge.

The signatories are also seeking a meeting with the foundation before it makes its 2027 funding decisions and have called for a public response to the research findings.

SAFCEI’s Food and Climate Justice Manager, Gabriel Manyangadze, said progress should be measured by whether smallholder farmers and the communities affected by agricultural policies have a meaningful role in shaping investment decisions.

He said future funding should recognise farmers’ knowledge, strengthen local food systems and support approaches that enable rural communities to build resilience to climate change.

The Gates Foundation’s response to the latest demands was not included in the statement provided by the campaigners.