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Let’s Grow Digital

Africa's agriculture is undergoing a digital upheaval. New applications and innovations promise great effects, for example on field yields. Digitalization is therefore also one the most important keys in the global fight against hunger and for feeding a growing world population. However, the digitization of agriculture also poses major challenges and raises new questions. What does the promise of digital growth mean for agriculture?

Let's grow digital

What does the promise of digital growth mean for agriculture?

What it takes now

By Heike Baumüller

Artificial intelligence, big data and blockchain are the hottest topics of our time. The digital transformation of the African agricultural sector is ready for take-off. What will it take for the future of technology to hit the ground running?

The digitised farmyard

By Jan Rübel

Lots of apps are entering the market, but what really makes sense? For African agriculture, some of it seems like a gimmick, some like a real step forward. So this is what a smallholder farm in Africa could look like today - with the help of smartphones, the Internet and electricity.

Can this end world hunger?

By Stig Tanzmann

Time to dig deeper: We can only benefit from technical progress if we have a solid legal framework for everybody. But so far, none is in sight - in many countries. Instead, international corporations grow ever more powerful.

Read more … Can this end world hunger?

Current issue

The youngest continent

The average age on the African continent is 18 years. With a birth rate of five children per woman, the population is expected to double by 2050. At the same time, 90 % of all inhabitants of rural areas live in Africa and Asia.

Therefore Africas future lies in the hands of the largest rural youth generation of all time. This generation has the potential to reform rural areas. But it drives them into the cities. What to do about it?

The youngest continent

A future opportunity for an entire continent

By the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Africa’s population is young and ready to take its destiny into its own hands. Agriculture offers amazing opportunities in this regard. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation wants to support the next generation in this way.

"Leave or stay? That depends on it!"

GIZ study; conducted by Geopoll

Does Africa's youth want to live in the city or in the country? Which career path seems particularly attractive? And how optimistic are the young people about the future? Young adults from rural areas answered these questions by SMS.

Festveranstaltung zur AGRA Tagung im BMZ Berlin mit Strive Masiyiwa

Video: An Appeal from Strive Masiyiwa

Recording Townhall-Meeting Berlin

Berlin, December 2018: The well-known entrepreneur Strive Masiyiwa formulates a dramatic message at a performance in front of young researchers: Every policy in Africa must be geared towards young people. Documentation of a call.

Current issue

A different Green Revolution in Africa

African agriculture is currently facing massive challenges. Due to continuous population growth, rural income must be dramatically raised and agricultural yields must increase sustainably despite climate change. What is the best way to manage this situation? Who are the main stakeholders to ensure socially responsible changes?
Read more...

A different Green Revolution in Africa

Continent in an uptrend

By Dr. Agnes Kalibata

Partnering for Africa’s Century: Innovation and Leadership as Drivers of Growth and Productivity in Rural Areas

‘The Green Revolution reaches its limits’

Stig Tanzmann is a farmer and adviser on agricultural issues at ‘Bread for the World’. Jan Rübel interviewed him about his reservations about AGRA's strategy.

’Farmers are smart’

By Jan Rübel

From the lab to the masses: Maria Andrade bred varieties of biofortified sweet potatoes which are now widely used all over the continent. She sets her hope on the transformation of African agriculture.

From the Fields and into Parliament: Why Agriculture must be a Political Matter

Only if governments and administrations set the right course will the best agricultural practices come to be widely used. Agricultural cooperatives, human rights activists, companies and consultants recognise the leverage of agricultural policy and dialogue.
Read more...

From the Fields and into Parliament: Why Agriculture must be a Political Matter

Ibrahim Mayaki (67 Jahre) ist Generalsekretär der Neuen Partnerschaft für die Entwicklung Afrikas.

The future belongs to the rural area

By Ibrahim Mayaki

African Agriculture Facing Challenges of Entrepreneurship. We need to challenge the traditional sources of financing and investment in the agricultural sector and introduce alternative, innovative private sector financing methods

The 'Grey Gold'

By Maria Schmidt

The Cashew Council is the first international organisation for a raw material stemming from Africa. The industry promises to make progress in processing and refining cashew nuts - and answers to climate change

Human Rights, Land and Rural Development

By Michael Windfuhr

Land rights are no longer governed by the law of the strongest. That is what the international community has agreed to. Governments and private companies have a duty to respect human rights and avoid corruption.

Current issue

Talking about climate, means talking about agriculture

In Africa droughts and other weather phenomena become more severe and more frequent. A more extreme climate threatens people and food security. Farmers and supporters are already reacting with seeds that are more adaptable, climate insurance or the establishment of enterprises. These are the risks, these are the success stories.
Read more...

Talking about climate, means talking about agriculture

Ein schweres Unwetter zieht im Hochland von Angola auf.

"Extreme is the new normal"

By Alexander Müller, and Jes Weigelt

As the climate changes, the population of Africa is growing and fertile land and jobs are becoming scarcer. New ways are currently leading to urbanisation of agriculture and a new mid-sized sector in the countryside

Read more … "Extreme is the new normal"

A classroom in the Garden of Eden

By Iris Manner

Deforestation harms people and the environment. With nurseries, farmers can earn money and do good. You just have to know how to do it

Policy against disasters

Interview with Thomas Loster

Insurance companies could provide protection during droughts in Africa. How exactly this could be done is what the industry is currently trying to figure out. First experiences are available. An interview with the Managing Director of the Munich Re Foundation, Thomas Loster

Focus on West Africa: New impulses from the (agricultural) economy

Some say that nothing works without the private sector. Others say that the development policy does not work like the free market. This debate is also fuelling new initiatives in West Africa. They range from the business of manure and the trade in domestic rice to the processing of cotton and the direct purchase of cocoa from the region by German manufacturers.
Read more...

Focus on West Africa: New impulses from the (agricultural) economy

No dirty dealing

Von Marlis Lindecke

Shit Business is Serious Business: A successful cooperation between research and the private sector.

Bitter fruit

By Frank Brunner

Why aren’t bars of chocolate made where cocoa is grown? Author Frank Brunner analyses the industry’s fragile value chain from the plantation to the supermarket

The price isn’t everything

By Bettina Rühl

In Togo’s capital, Lomé, home-grown rice costs almost twice as much as the imported product from Thailand. Yet there are good reasons for preferring the local product

Read more … The price isn’t everything

Current issue

The Future of the Rural World

The future of humankind will be decided in rural areas. International experts from the world of politics, academia, the private sector and civil society and young Africans themselves share their vision, ideas and experiences.
Read more...

The Future of the Rural World

The future of humankind will be decided in rural areas. How can we create enough jobs and income in rural areas? How can a modern and sustainable agri-food sector contribute to solving these challanges? In this second issue of “world without hunger” our authors discuss new economic and political impetus, young African entrepreneurs tell their stories and we are searching for answers to the question how globalization can be shaped so the rural areas do not lose out.

A new culture of cooperation with Africa

By Horst Köhler

Africa’s biggest challenge – and its greatest opportunity – is its young people. The most important question is: to what weapon will Africa’s young people turn – the polling booth or the gun?

A fresh opportunity

Interview with Lutz Hartmann

By leasing a three hundred hectare fruit plantation in Ethiopia, Lutz Hartmann has realised a long-cherished dream: to run his own business in Africa. Now he has a personal interest in the issue of Africa’s development.

The young need a future

By Iris Schöninger

In 2030 one in every three people looking for work will come from Africa. Today decent work is still a rarity on the continent, but developing the rural areas can solve the problem.

New ideas against hunger

Shepherds become entepreneurs, aid workers coordinate their projects via satellites, drones sow millet: people all around the word fight against hunger. Our magazine collects their ideas and experiences.
Read more...

New ideas against hunger

How innovations are born

By Klaus Töpfer and Alexander Müller

Production of 95 per cent of all food is based on soil. Yet soils everywhere are under threat. We illustrate the role of development cooperation by considering soil.

The farmes themselves are the benchmark

By Andreas Quiring

Strong farmes are the key to a self-determined, sustainable development. Social innovations can help make the farmers’ actual needs the benchmark.

No rainforest for our consumption

By Jenny Walther-Thoß

In the tropics rainforests are still being felled for the production of palm oil, meat and furniture. It is high time to act. Proposals are on the table.

5 questions to S. Fan: Where are the new roads?

2019-10-23

Shortly before ending his position as Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPR) Dr. Shenggen Fan talks about the reforms and new modes of operation needed to achieve global food security in the coming decade

5 questions to F. Patterson: Why is there more hunger?

2019-10-02

Every year in October, the "Welthungerhilfe" aid organisation, with the Irish "Concern Worldwide" NGO, publishes the Global Hunger Index, a tool with which the hunger situation is recorded. What are the trends - and what needs to be done?

Ten theses to ten innovations: A plea

2019-10-02

Green Innovation Centres are a key element of the work of the GIZ to support agricultural development in Africa and India: They spread knowledge, technology and sustainability. What are the experiences? And what are the innovations? A plea.

Projects

Silicon Valley for Africa?

Digital production centres create pull effects on many and different levels - they contain a lot of potentials. This is SAIS: It aims to use this to make innovative solutions from start-ups more widespread.

A GIZ project

Read more … Silicon Valley for Africa?

High on soya

The spread of monocultures is globally harmful to the environment and violates human rights; it makes for more losers than winners. But there are ways out, here one example: Smallholders in Parguay are fighting back.

A Misereor project

XtraPay - thanks to farmers

XtraPay wants to make international supply chains more transparent and establish a direct connection between producer and consumer. The bonus payment system was successfully piloted on 16 August in ten Edeka supermarkets in Braunschweig.

A project of BMZ

Read more … XtraPay - thanks to farmers