Strategy for agricultural transformation in africa

Being sufficiently targeted:
a key difference versus the past will be the level of 
focus that the Bank will adopt in pursuing the strategy; the Bank intends to both 
increase the scale of its funding to agriculture and direct those financial resources 
to a series of commodities and agro-ecological zones, and thereby avoid its 
investments becoming too diffuse, losing synergies in driving multi-country value 
chain synergies, and require a breadth of commodity and agro-industry expertise 
that could not be viably created.
• 
Candor on the importance of political will
: transformation will involve 
substantial reform, and will therefore require a high degree of political priority, 
coordination across ministries, and the willingness to push through in the context 
of affected established interests in current market structures. The Bank will 
prioritize activities in countries that demonstrate the political will to adopt an 
ambitious agenda for reform, and work with other countries to support these 
conditions arising in order to open up access to large scale transformation 
investments.
RESOURCES THAT THE BANK WILL COMMIT TO CATALYZE AGRICULTURAL 
TRANSFORMATION IN AFRICA 
4.3 
The AfDB has historically invested an average of US$612m per year in 
agricultural and agribusiness over the period 2011-2015.
As one of its High 5 strategic 
priorities, the Bank envisages agricultural investment rising to US$2.4bn per year going 
forward. Mobilizing funding to this level will position the Bank as the largest catalytic investor 
into African agriculture
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.
4.4 
The Bank will finance this strategy through a combination
of the ADB and ADF 
windows, the Nigeria Trust Fund, other existing special funds at the Bank, and additional funds 
mobilized from the private sector, foundations, bilateral donors and development finance 
institutions for targeted funds for the Agricultural Transformation Agenda.
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 Details on the initiatives that will form the actual implementation plan can be found in the Implementation 
Plan which outlines the Operating Plan and, within this, the initiatives that the Bank will architect or scale / 
replicate 
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 The sources of all overseas development assistance from multilateral and bilateral donors and 
development banks (excluding the AfDB), plus the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, into African 
agriculture was estimated to be c.$1.8bn in 2010 (based on OECD DAC data, and Dalberg estimates)

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4.5