The News
ABUJA, Nigeria — African farmers need better seeds to solve the malnutrition challenge that causes health problems in a fifth of the continent’s population, Bill Gates said during a visit to Nigeria.
Headline appearances by the billionaire philanthropist have been a hallmark of the Gates Foundation’s interest and interventions in Africa’s agriculture and health sectors in recent years. “The thing that’s holding back potential the most is malnutrition,” Gates told an audience of advocacy groups, students and reporters on Tuesday.
An estimated 278 million Africans are undernourished, according to the anti-poverty charity Oxfam. It said that number was rising due to poor government policies, high inflation, and climate change. The Gates Foundation, which co-founded a “green revolution” alliance in 2006 to ramp up farm productivity with advanced seeds, has increasingly argued that innovation around seeds is key for climate adaptation.
Nigeria’s abundance of arable land should make it a net food exporter if traditional seeds and systems are improved to produce more at lower costs, said Gates. There should be confidence in the country and the rest of Africa that “even as weather is changing due to climate change, we can come up with seeds that deal with the increased temperature and often can thrive with less water or too much water,” he said.
The foundation designs public domain seeds from which it makes no royalties or profits, Gates said, unlike commercial hybrid seeds developed by other players in the sector.
In this article:
Know More
Soaring food prices in Nigeria over the past year have aggravated malnutrition problems, stretching the resources of government health facilities and aid organizations.
In June, Swiss non-profit Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said it had “a crisis at hand” as its clinics in Nigeria’s northern states faced a surge in the number of “severely malnourished” people admitted for treatment. More than 2,600 people died after diagnosis of acute malnourishment in seven states in 2023, MSF said.
In January, Nigeria became the second African country after South Africa to approve the commercialization of genetically engineered corn.
Four maize varieties approved could quadruple yields to 10 tons per hectare compared to harvests of the 2022/2023 season, the US Department of Agriculture said. The agency often attributes high corn yields in South Africa to modified seeds, though drought due to the El Niño weather effect could cause an 18% drop for the coming season.
Room for Disagreement
Some interventions modeled on the Gates Foundation’s seed improvement advocacy have not produced desired results, critics say.
African Center for Biodiversity, a South African group that campaigns against genetically modified food, said a years-long government program in Zambia aimed at boosting food production with improved seeds has been “a driver of ecological degradation” and has “promoted farmer dependence on external inputs.”
Other critics have directly accused the foundation of “playing god” in Africa and requested “reparations” for damaged land and water.
Gates said he did not know the seeds in question in Zambia, and that the foundation does not do “specific work” in the country.
Notable
- Before arriving in Nigeria this week, Gates visited Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to review “wheat cluster productivity and poultry farming,” according to a post on Ahmed’s X account. Ethiopia’s Tigray region, where drought has imperiled reservoirs and farmlands, faces a starvation crisis that could affect 2 million residents.