Sustain Africa’s country programmes in Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda and Zambia have completed, with programmes in Burkina Faso and Ghana completing at the end of August 2024. In total so far, 165,471 metric tons (MT) of rebated fertilizer has been provided to 1.98 million farmers. The government advisory programme in Nigeria is currently closing, while […]
Sustain Africa’s country programmes in Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda and Zambia have completed, with programmes in Burkina Faso and Ghana completing at the end of August 2024. In total so far, 165,471 metric tons (MT) of rebated fertilizer has been provided to 1.98 million farmers. The government advisory programme in Nigeria is currently closing, while the Kenya programme has now completed.
Training was provided to 374.294 farmers, helping them to apply the right amount of the right type of fertilizer as well as learn related good agricultural practices. The trainings were extremely well received by farmers.
Just over 2.290 demonstrations were held, with an additional 739 field days. Research shows that demonstration plots can achieve fourfold improvements in farmer yields and the transmission to farmers of the methods used to achieve these yields is extremely important in trying to increase yields overall which are very low in Sub-Saharan Africa compared to other regions, and which prevent the use of fertilizer being profitable for many farmers.
The Malawi and Uganda programmes also had a resilience component, supplying rebated vegetable seeds to farmers to enable them to plant alternative crops in the winter season for income generation and household nutrition.
Programmes in Burkina Faso and Ghana wrap up at the end of August 2024. The programme in Burkina Faso was scaled to 10.000 MT to complement the government rolled-out subsidy programmes, targeting farmers who lacked access to the government subsidy product.
In Ghana, meanwhile, supplier ETG committed to an additional volume of 11,000 MT, almost doubling the capacity of the programme. So far, 26,092 MT of fertilizer has been supplied to farmers.
In Kenya and Nigeria, Sustain Africa is providing advisory services to government. The Kenya programme has closed, with the Nigeria programme wrapping up in August 2024.
In Tanzania, Sustain Africa supported a feasibility study for a liming project to redress high soil acidity. A similar scoping is currently being prepared for Kenya.
A further component of Sustain Africa’s remit has been a ‘learning agenda’ to examine what to do in a fertilizer crisis and, perhaps more importantly, what to do in between so the next fertilizer price crisis will not hit as hard and as suddenly. This has comprised: a large quantitative research project across six countries; a qualitative study on responses to the price spike also in six countries; a study identifying gaps and bottlenecks in fertilizer financing, and potential solutions; an evaluation of the Sustain Africa programme and recommendations for an effective multistakeholder response to price spikes going forward and; a fertilizer price spike index which will be hosted from 2025 on AfricaFertilizerWatch. Read more about the key findings from the learning agenda here.
