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Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is poised to assist smallholder farmers to achieve a green revolution and end hunger and poverty in Africa. Despite the positive growth of Africa economies, the numbers of the poor and hungry continue to increase and without rapid increase in agricultural productivity, poverty and food insecurity would worsen. Dr Namanga Ngongi, President of AGRA who made the observation in Bamako at the weekend said: �This is the moment for decisive action to achieve a uniquely African Green Revolution that will create a wave of prosperity and food security across the continent by lifting millions of people out of poverty.� Briefing the media at a day�s seminar on Green Revolution, Dr Ngongi said agriculture was the centre of life in Africa and needed to be improved to ensure better livelihood for Africans. The Green Revolution Media Seminar was organised by AGRA for participants from Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Niger and Burkina Faso. Established in 2006, under the Chairmanship of Mr Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General, AGRA aims at adopting a revolution that will transform agriculture to enable the continent to position itself to feed its people, while increasing incomes of the people and end hunger and poverty. As the global financial crisis stares at Africa, hunger and poverty are becoming more acute, inflation is increasing whilst trade imbalances are posing huge social, economic and political risks to the people. It is expected that Africa�s Green Revolution would raise the productivity and incomes of small holder farmers, while protecting biodiversity, ensuring sustainability and promoting equity. Dr Ngongi said: �Unfortunately, millions of African farmers and their families are trapped in poverty. They lacked good seeds, soil depleted and they farm without reliable water supplies or easy access to markets.� He explained that Africa could not achieve the Millennium Development Goals on chronic hunger and poverty and called for attention to be paid on revitalisation of smallholder agriculture in Africa to achieve the targets. Dr Ngongi said Africa could achieve significant increase in food production by improving agriculture at the small scale farming level. He said small scale farmers accounted for 70 to 80 per cent of agricultural production. �We need to open opportunities and achieve equity for Africa�s poorest farmers and that is AGRA�s guiding principle and the focus of our work.� Dr Ngongi said the Asian Green Revolution was successful because it utilised the technology package at its disposal. �An African Green Revolution can also be possible if we apply the power of knowledge and technology with an environmental touch through disseminating many crop varieties that will thrive in diverse conditions, improve soil health and develop technologies that maximize the use of rain water and deliver small scale irrigation.� Dr Andre Bationo, Senior Programme Officer in charge of Soil Programmes of AGRA said the knowledge and technology existed in Africa to end widespread poverty and hunger and that the organisation will harness those forces to ensure that they benefit small holder farmers. This he said would be done through developing breadbasket areas, demonstrating what is possible and establishing the conditions to spur similar transformations in countries across Africa. He called for the need to develop high-yielding crop varieties, which would be well adapted to Africa�s varied agro-ecological environments, turn around the soil fertility crises to ensure to sustainable agricultural growth and strengthen national research and training institutions to better develop and disseminate technologies to farmers. �We need to also create enabling policy environments, develop domestic and regional markets, secure significant public sector investments in public goods and complement national financing with substantial international financial flows�. Dr Aboubacar Toure Programme Officer for the Programme for Africa� Seed Systems, said AGRA was funding fellowship programmes in plant breeding in nine selected African Universities including the University of Ghana, which are currently hosting 67 masters and PHD fellows. The fellows are expected to return to their various countries and work on staple crop, the rigour and effectiveness of plant breeding across the continent to meet the demands of farmers.