Rockefeller Foundation executives, Ms Claudia Juech, Managing Director and Dr, C.D Glin, Associate Director, Africa Regional Office, Nairobi, Kenya came to Lagos during the Africa Futures RoundTable summit, where organisations from around the globe did some brain-storming on what the preferred future of the continent might look like and how this would be enabled.

THE future of Africa would not be in the right perspective if it does not have all-inclusive socio-economic parameters. For three days, the issues discussed included increasing capital and exploring trends in agro-processing, extractive resources and maximising knowledge assets in science and technology.

It also took into account issues that bordered on social capital to harness forces of integration, or disintegration, as the case may be. Creating jobs, reducing poverty and the environment as it relates to the future of cities in Africa came within the purview of what is called the Scanning Group – African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET), Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), South Africa Node of the Millennium Project (SANMP), The Society for International Development (SID) and Forum for Futures Studie (FSF).

In all this, Ms. Juech says the Rockefeller Foundation, which has operated as an international charity since 1913, played a major role and would continue to do so even as it positions itself for the next 100 years in which the ‘Initiative to Identify and Pursue Innovative Solutions’ to promote people’s well-being, is key.

Assistance through AGRA, IITA, others

Agriculture in Africa has seen a lot of challenges and receives so much aid from multilateral organisations and funding agencies continue to get attention; it is a sector that Glin, the Foundation’s Associate Director for the Africa Regional office says it is committed.

Over the years, it had remained a conjecture how peasant, resource-poor farmers have benefitted from the foundation but Glin says “Historically, there have been achievements, especially when you take stock from the 70s, 80, and 90s, the focus has been on capacity building for Africa-led agriculture.

“Through AGRA, we establish the science and technology that is needed and work with extension service providers and farmer cooperatives. We want to think about how the knowledge is disseminated though agriculture research institutions that we fund.”

In building capacities, he revealed that over 500 individuals have been assisted to get Master’s in Agric Economics and some PhDs earned in the US; invariably they have come back to impact the continent.

He quickly points out that, “one beneficiary is Nigeria minister of Agric, Dr. Akin Adesina; he got support for Masters’ and Ph.D from Rockefeller Foundation; worked for the foundation and in 2006 became a leading figure in AGRA, Dr. Adesina has now come home to Nigeria.”

Africa-based agriculture value chain is yet another area of interest for Rockefeller Foundation, and AGRA strongly represents what has become its flagship in part of the big picture for Africa-owned, -led, and -managed agriculture institution.

Though the Foundation is not an implementing organisation; it very rarely would be seen directly, the Associate Director explains, it has also supported the Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NISRAL) and agricultural credit guarantee schemes in other parts of Africa.

Climate-smart development initiative

Ms Juech said, “We are interested in climate-smart development and initiative. Therefore, we fund the climate side of the component of Africa agriculture research and development.

The foundation, according to her, has really fostered cooperation such that agricultural scientists can really marry climate change thinking and agriculture thinking to boost development.

We work through others – weather insurance micro-irrigation, credit guarantee, etc.

Like insurance providers, local community based organisations (who aggregate farmers to develop affordable products.

Micro-finance, insurance in agriculture

For instance, Glin says, “In Uganda, we put in $500m to a Bank that was not leading to smallholder farmers. The fund has served as a guarantee for the farmers. This fund has led to four million dollars being lent to these small farmers.

“We act as facilitators and catalysts in this regard. Through research funding even the micro-irrigation scheme could not have got to small farmers in different countries if the foundation did not do any thing in that direction. There are help lines for farmers.”

It is interesting to know that farmers could access support in the risk-ladden agri-ventures. Glin says, “We also support resilience such that index-based weather insurance is promoted for small-holder farmers. This is because agriculture is risky and mostly rain fed. So a number of organisations that we support have been able to develop insurance products and try to reduce some of the risk if it does not rain.”  So, we have gone into a number of countries with these products, not directly but through organisations that we support.”

100 years ahead

Ms Juech says the foundation has re-positioned to do the long haul in the next 100 years on the plank of innovation. She pointed out that the environment for philanthropy has changed and being a big player in philanthropy, Rockefeller Foundation saw the need to re-invent and innovate as well.

“We need to push transformational idea as we look at government, multilateral agencies, etc instruct to bring solutions. We want to look at how to help the population and how to help with ideas, which should be disseminated after being scaled up; that is what is our role in the ecosystem.”