Yara and Africa

Africa has great, but still largely untapped, potential for economic growth through improved agricultural productivity. Yara offers key inputs that Africa requires to support such development: mineral fertilizer products and crop nutrition knowledge. Recent examples of significant yield improvements demonstrate the potential of a green revolution tailored to African conditions. Extended and balanced use of fertilizers, within the framework of sustainable agriculture, is one key prerequisite to realize the revolution.

As the only global fertilizer company with permanent representation on the continent, Yara has an established business in Africa. We shipped our first mineral fertilizers to Africa in 1929 and have gradually extended our market presence, especially from the 1980s, and now sell our products to about 40 countries on the continent. We also produce fertilizers at plants in Egypt and Libya.

Building on established business relations and market knowledge, Yara was already in a position to participate when UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called for an African Green Revolution at a high-level seminar in Addis Ababa in 2004. He challenged the private sector to contribute, and Yara, present at the session, was the first private company to say yes.

As the only private company in the UN Hunger Task Force which followed up and reported on the UN Millennium Development Goals in 2004, we gained crucial insight into the complex issues related to hunger and poverty that are an integral part of developing African agriculture and economies.

We established our Africa Program in 2005 and created the Yara Prize, which from 2006 was linked to the Oslo series of African Green Revolution (AGR) Conferences that Yara hosted.

Africa’s main agricultural challenge is the sector’s low productivity and profitability, with food production hardly coping with population growth. African soils often suffer from a lack of nutrients and a shortage of water, as well as from poor infrastructure. Climate change has to be added as a major challenge in the years to come.

Yara has some of the answers – and we have taken action: In response to Kofi Annan, we have acted as a global catalyst by advocating the AGR, particularly in promoting public-private partnerships (PPP) to rally support for investments in the sector.

"Partnership for productivity," with a focus on investments to improve food production, has been a key angle, consistent with African strategies as well as our crop nutrition concept: targeted fertilization can increase yields on existing land – limiting land-use change, which is a main driver of global warming. With Africa’s very low application of mineral fertilizer, major productivity improvements can be obtained by increased fertilizer use.

Yara initiated the African Green Revolution Conference series as the global venue for promoting PPPs. In so doing, particular attention has been given to the great majority of the continent’s farmers - the smallholders - encouraging a transformation of African agriculture from subsistence farming to profitable entrepreneurship.

The Oslo Declaration and Agenda for Action on the AGR specifically calls for improved productivity and profitability, for PPPs, and increased investments in Africa’s agriculture along the entire value chain. The declaration was adopted at a ministerial and high-level roundtable hosted by Yara in conjunction with the 2007 conference. The declaration is synchronized with and supports the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) – Africa’s own agricultural strategy.

Following up on our advocacy of the AGR and promotion of PPPs, we extended our involvement and expanded our Africa Program into its second phase, "Partnering for productivity."

Initiating PPPs on the ground and applying a value chain approach, we have entered into such projects in Tanzania (2006), Malawi (2007) and Ghana (2008). Furthermore, in 2008 we launched the concept of agricultural growth corridors, with subsequent establishment of two partnerships in East Africa, linked to the ports of Beira (Mozambique) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania).