Feed the Future Newsletter, Issue 139, September 2024

Smallholder farms across Africa grow over two-thirds of the region’s food. But extreme weather has decimated crops, and yields are declining due to outdated seeds, inefficient practices and less predictable rainfall patterns — all of which are leaving farmers with less to sell and less to eat. Investing in agriculture is up to four times more effective at fighting poverty in low-income countries than investing in other sectors.

As such, the United States is seizing on a unique window of opportunity to increase our investments in Southern and Eastern Africa, a region suffering this year from the impacts of El Nino yet have great potential to drive agricultural growth. We are doubling down on Feed the Future’s key mandate to build a more resilient global food system through the Feed the Future Accelerator, an effort to deepen our partnership with countries in the region while driving long-term gains in poverty, malnutrition and hunger reduction.