FARM NEWS

Corporations make a killing milking Africa

Published

4 years ago

March 20, 2022

A Ugandan cattle herder with indigenous Ankole Long-horned cattle searches for pasture, in an area where local lands were grabbed by a foreign company for a plantation.

In 2009, the Nigerian government gave some white farmers from Zimbabwe loans and 1,000 hectares (ha) of land each to set up dairy farms in Shonga, an important centre of agriculture about 400 km from the capitol Lagos. Hopes were that their “ultra-modern” farms, stocked with Jersey cows brought in from South Africa, would make a dent in the country’s massive dairy import bill.[1]

“I saw an opportunity here … and I can tell you now there is no doubt I am here for the long term,” said David Higgins, a South African hired to manage the operation’s milk plant, which became a supplier of fresh milk to FrieslandCampina, the Dutch dairy corporation that has dominated the Nigerian market for decades.

However, less than ten years later, the project had all but collapsed. Most of the Zimbabwean farmers had left, and those remaining were “drawing their exit plan”, as one Nigerian researcher put it.[2]

It turns out imported Jersey cows and white “modern” farmers were not the solution to Nigeria’s dairy import woes. The problem, as every cattle herder in Nigeria knows, is the competition with the cheap imported powdered milk that companies like FrieslandCampina dump into the country. The Zimbabwean farmers and their modern methods were equally powerless against it.

Nigeria imports about 98% of the dairy products consumed in the country and spends an average of USD 1.3 billion a year on these imports. It is also the world’s biggest importer of fat-filled milk powder from Europe– a cheap milk lookalike that is made with a mix of milk powders and palm oil that has nearly quadrupled in exports from Europe over the past decade.[3] FrieslandCampina, which brings in huge quantities of subsidised powdered milk from its dairy plants in Europe, controls about 75% of the Nigerian dairy market, with just five companies controlling 99% of it.

Yet Nigeria has one of the largest cattle herds in the world and has a long tradition of local dairy production. By all accounts, things should be similar to Kenya, where herders and small farmers with local breeds of cows supply about 90% of the milk consumed in the country through networks of small-scale traders. The difference is that Kenya has long protected its local dairies with tariffs on imports, while Nigeria opened its market in the 1980s under structural adjustment programmes, and the government has made no real efforts to reign in the import flows ever since.

FrieslandCampina, headquartered in the Netherlands, is in 38 countries and distributes to 100 countries. In every country, they operate as a different company with different brands. It has operated as Bonnet Rouge in West Africa; in Nigeria as Peak and Three Crowns and as WamCo. In Ethiopia, they are the largest investors in the dairy sector operating as Holland Dairy. Together with Syngenta and other agro-chemical companies, Friesland Campina, hopes to be the leader by 2024 in the marketing of Eubiotics – a USD 4 billion industry. Photo : FrieslandCampina DMV plant in The Netherlands, 2014. Wikimedia Commons; User J187B

FrieslandCampina likes to blame the “poor structure of local dairy supply chains” for the situation, and whenever the political scene gets too hot, it rolls out promises to invest in “developing” the dairy sector. It built its first large-scale dairy farm in Nigeria in Vom in the Plateau State, back in 1984, but sold the operation, called Integrated Dairies, to a Nigerian politician a decade later.[4] More recently, with funding from the Dutch government, the company launched a Dairy Development Programme with the Government of Nigeria, in which it pledged to source 10% of its milk from local sources through “backward integration”. Yet, over the initial five years of the project, from 2011-2016, Nigeria’s milk powder imports remained unchanged, and FrieslandCampina was only sourcing 3% of its milk locally.[5]

In 2016, with oil prices tanking and its foreign currency reserves badly depleted, the Nigerian government sought to put milk on a list of imported items with forex restrictions to encourage local production. But after several meetings with FrieslandCampina, in which the company assured the government that it would build up local supplies, the government-backed down.

Three years later, with dairy imports as high as ever, the government finally put milk on the list, accusing companies of treating the “national aspiration [to increase the local milk supply] with imperial contempt”.[6] The companies pushed back hard, however, and the government relented yet again, giving FrieslandCampina and five other corporations an exemption on the import restrictions in February 2020, saying that these companies were committed to “backwards integration”.

This latest round of public-private partnership is closely tied to a controversial ban on open grazing that 17 state governors from across southern Nigeria agreed to in May 2021, and which has been called “satanic” by herder leaders.[7] To this end, FrieslandCampina has been given 10,000 ha and Coca-Cola 4,000 ha within the Bobi Grazing Reserve in Niger State to build dairy farms and settle Fulani herders for contract production. Similarly, the Danish multinational dairy company Arla has a partnership with Kaduna State to build its own dairy farm and to settle 1,000 nomadic herders on farmlands provided by the government. The Dutch and Danish governments are helping to fund these projects and provide the participating herders with “improved” crossbred cattle and training on European-style dairy farming, as is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through a programme called Advancing Local Dairy Development in Nigeria.

Ndidi Nwuneli (right), Sahel Consulting managing partner, visiting Genetics Australia in 2018.

The Gates-funded programme is a collaboration with six dairy companies in Nigeria, coordinated by Sahel Consulting (formerly Sahel Capital). One of the companies, L&Z Integrated Farms Limited, is owned by a Mauritius-based private equity fund managed by Sahel Consulting that has investment from the German, Dutch and UK development banks, as well as Nigeria’s sovereign wealth fund.[8] Arla is another one of the companies involved, and the rest are Nigerian dairy companies mostly owned by local politicians or their family members.[9]

Sahel says it is taking a “private sector-led and market-based approach to solve the problems inherent in the dairy sector”, but it completely sidesteps the biggest problem: imports of cheap, subsidised powdered milk. The project’s attempt to shift herders to expensive, European-style dairy farming is thus doomed to fail, just as the Zimbabwean farmers did at Shonga and all past efforts to “modernise” Nigeria’s dairy sector have. This is, after all, the main reason why herders from Nigeria and the surrounding countries, who have had no problem meeting Nigeria’s galloping consumption of beef over the past decades, have been shut out of the dairy market.[10]

A milk mafia

Similar scenarios are mushrooming across Africa. It is no wonder. The continent’s fast-growing urban populations represent a pot of gold for dairy corporations. FrieslandCampina made a whopping USD 48 million in profit from its Nigeria operations in 2019.[11] Now it wants to double its revenues in Africa by expanding in other countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, where the company’s recently acquired dairy plant relies entirely on imports. When asked about this lack of local sourcing, FrieslandCampina’s West Africa director, Roger Adou, said the company was in the process of building an “ecosystem” of local dairy farmers trained in Dutch farming methods. “You cannot blame multinational corporations for the poor organisation of local supply chains,” he said.[12]

Another big player in Africa is the French dairy giant Danone, which joined forces with the Dubai-based private equity company Abraaj Group to take over the Ghana dairy company Fan Milk. After Abraaj went bust, Danone took over the whole company in 2019, using it as a base to expand its reach across West Africa, including in Nigeria, where it has a “backward integration” project with Ogun State.

All of the local dairy projects that these foreign corporations are pursuing should be properly understood as fronts, designed to distract from the massive amounts of money they siphon out of Africa from their sales of cheap, excess powdered milk. The system is built on heavily subsidised overproduction in Europe, North America and Australia/New Zealand. That excess gets dumped into Africa, mainly in the form of fat-filled milk powder, where it is processed and sold to urban consumers at prices that undercut the supply of wholesome local milk. In 2019 Africa imported 2.1 million tonnes of dairy products worth some USD5.3 billion, up from 1.46 million tonnes in 2009, worth USD3.6 billion).[13] [14]

The cream on top

In Africa, dairy is often political, with direct interests extending to the highest levels of government. No more so in Kenya, where the family of the President, Uhuru Kenyatta, owns Brookside Dairy, the largest dairy processor in East Africa. Brookside has attracted several foreign partners, including Abraaj Group of Dubai, which held a 10% stake via a fund partly owned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation before its collapse in 2018, and the French dairy giant Danone, which currently holds a 40% stake.

Brookside is expanding beyond its borders through the acquisition of other politically-connected dairy companies in neighbouring countries. In 2016, Brookside took over Inyange, Rwanda’s top food processing company connected to President Paul Kagame’s party.[15] And, the year before it bought the former Ugandan Dairy Corporation, which had been privatised through a scandalous corrupt bidding process and acquired by a family close to President Yoweri Museveni, who himself is rumoured to be one of Brookside’s leading suppliers of milk through his large-scale ranches.[16]

Donors insist that Africa’s reliance on imports can be resolved by “modernising” their farms and supply chains. The Gates Foundation supports multiple initiatives in Africa to boost per farm milk production by replacing local breeds with high-yielding breeds and introducing commercial animal feeds and pharmaceuticals, such as the East Africa Dairy Development Project in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda.[17] So too do the governments of the Netherlands, France and Denmark– home base to the largest companies exporting dairy to Africa.[18] (Box: Africa’s rich livestock diversity) Meanwhile, the Economic Community of West African States has launched a five-year “dairy offensive” based on the same model, as its member states move ahead with trade deals with Europe that will reduce tariffs on milk powder from a feeble 5% to zero![19]

Private equity funds are also piling into Africa, with much of their funds supplied by development banks and foundations convinced that there’s money to be made in this modernisation drive. Yet, of the multiple investments private equity firms have made in local African dairy production, few are succeeding (Table: Private equity funds and dairy in Africa). Dubai-based Midcom, for example, tried to buy into the dairy business in Uganda in 2013, with backing from the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and the Rise Fund, a US-based private equity fund managed by TPG. It’s subsidiary, Pearl Dairies, claimed it would not only become a major player on the national market, but that it would build an export business to neighbouring African countries. But a trade spat with Kenya, where the local dairy industry is controlled by the family of the president, sent the company into a tailspin (Box: The cream on top). In March 2021, Pearl Dairies announced it was shuttering its Ugandan dairy plant and shifting to organic honey production for export to Europe.[20]

Development banks, donors and governments are wasting money and resources trying to industrialise local dairy production in Africa when there is huge untapped potential in traditional systems, which are being held back by imports. Herders in Burkina Faso, for example, once supplied the entire nation with fresh milk. But imports of cheap fat-filled milk from Europe have all but destroyed their production over the past decade. “I’ve tried selling my milk, but most of the time it goes to waste and ends up being poured away,” says Hamidou Bandé, president of Burkina Faso’s National Herders’ Union. He keeps 300 cows but now only sells their meat because he cannot find a market for their milk. “It hurts. The milk we throw away could have been for the calves or our children.”[21]

Selling milk by the roadside in Borana, Kenya.

Contrast this situation with that of Uganda, where a 60% tariff protects small dairy farmers on dairy imports.[22] Today smallholder dairies, composed of small-scale cattle farmers and herders and small-scale dairy vendors and processors, supply 80% of the milk consumed in Uganda. With regional tariffs keeping milk powder imports out of East Africa, small dairy farmers in Uganda have been able to effectively supply a surge in demand over the past two decades, and they have done so with indigenous cattle breeds and traditional farming practices.[23] The country’s few dairy companies have, on several occasions, tried to use their political connections to get laws passed to undermine this so-called “informal sector”, but farmers and small vendors have allied to stop them. Nationwide protests of farmers and vendors forced the government to back away from a ban on raw milk sales in both 2007 and 2014.[24]

Africa’s rich livestock diversity

Of the 222 million cattle that provide Africans with dairy and meat, most are owned by smallholder farmers and pastoralists.[25] This cattle population is highly diverse. There are at least 150 indigenous cattle breeds that have been identified on the African continent, and many more remain uncategorised.[26]

Cattle herding in different countries is carried out by specific tribes, such as the Banyankole in Uganda, Masaai in Kenya and Tanzania, and the Fulani throughout the Sahel and West Africa. They each have their own local breeds, like the famous Ankole long-horned cattle found in and around Uganda or the humped Zebu cattle that are kept by Fulani herders, of which there are many of different varieties adapted to the local geographies where they are grazed.[27]

Many of these groups are nomadic herders who move for long distances and periods of time, looking for feed and water for their animals. As such, their cattle breeds are adapted to the local conditions like the high temperatures, drought, the long distances between sources of grass and water and the various endemic diseases, as well as to the needs and cultures of those who depend on them.[28]

Ankole Long-horned cattle, indigenous to the Ankole region in Uganda.

In recent years, farmers and even pastoralists have been pushed to adopt “high-yielding” breeds of cows, often crosses between the cows used on industrial dairy farms in Europe and local breeds. These new breeds are offered to women, particularly widows and single mothers in the rural areas of the countries where organisations like Send A Cow and Heifer International operate. By their nature, these foreign breeds are costly and come with onerous instructions for care, health and reproduction, for which the farmers have to take on debt to purchase costly veterinary products, shelters and artificial insemination.

Although cattle dominate Africa’s dairy sector, sheep, camels and goats are also important to dairy production, especially in certain areas of the continent. Exact figures are hard to come by, it is estimated that Africa is home to 27% of global sheep and 32% of global goat populations, and about 20% of global cattle.[29]

Many herders and farmers in Africa prefer small ruminants because they tend to involve lower costs and to be easier to manage than cattle. This is especially true for goats, known as the “poor person’s cow”, which have long been raised on the continent.[30] [31]

Dairy as a central part of the struggle for food sovereignty

There is no justification for the billions of dollars that exit Africa every year to pay for dairy imports. Dairy can and should be produced locally. As can be seen in Uganda, and neighbouring Kenya, there is one simple, effective measure that can be immediately taken: a stop on imports of powdered milk.

There are several options that African governments can take immediately to put the brakes on imports of powdered milk if there is political will. But many African governments are going in the opposite direction, in negotiations with Europe for the Economic Partnership Agreements or even in Africa’s own Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), which undercut the possibilities their countries have to protect local dairy production. The governments of the big surplus milk-producing countries in Europe, North America and Australia/New Zealand are also maintaining their relentless pressure on Africa to absorb more dairy from their corporations, even as these policies leave their own dairy farmers in crisis.

Ankole Long-horned cattle, indigenous to the Ankole region in Uganda.

When dairy imports are curtailed, smallholder dairies in Africa will step into the void and meet the local demand, as they have wherever such measures are put in place. They can do so without adopting Europe’s industrial dairy farming practices and breeds of livestock. In fact, Africa’s local livestock systems and breeds of animals are highly efficient in securing milk and livelihoods for local communities and much more adapted to the context of climate change than the industrial models.

Donors and governments have to stop pushing industrial dairy, and development banks need to stop financing companies that compete directly with smallholder dairies. What is needed are regulations, policies and programmes that support smallholder dairies, making it easier for them to supply urban markets with fresh milk. Simple measures like the provision of small cooling tanks or efficient pasteurisation burners can make a huge difference. So too can municipal regulations that provide small vendors and traders accessible and safe spaces to bring their dairy products from the countryside to urban consumers. And foreign governments and donors should start by turning their attention back home, where the industrial, corporate-controlled dairy systems are not only killing Africa’s dairies but are causing numerous environmental and social problems at the source. Actions need to be taken to greatly reduce dairy production in these countries while ensuring livelihoods for their dairy farmers.

There are several inspiring initiatives already underway in Senegal, Burkina Faso and other African countries encouraging the consumption of local milk. These need to be ramped up and multiplied, while keeping dairy corporations like FrieslandCampina and supermarkets like Auchan, who are falsely advertising themselves as “local”, out of the picture. It is time that Africa’s diverse smallholder dairies, composed of millions of herders, farmers, vendors, and processors, utilising traditional breeds of cattle, goats and sheep, and making all kinds of yoghurts, cheeses and other healthy dairy products, are finally celebrated and supported.

Private equity in Africa’s dairy sector

Company	Countries	Private equity/corporations involved	Notes
Société Africaine des Produits Laitiers et Dérivés (SAPLED)	Côte d’Ivoire	Duet Private Equity	In 2015, the UK-based private equity group Duet acquired SAPLED from the Sifaoui Group. In 2019, workers at the company’s factory in Abidjan went on strike over two months of unpaid wages. Thirteen months later, in February 2021, they were back on strike, this time over four months of unpaid wages. The General Director blamed the company’s debts for the unpaid wages.
MB Plc	Ethiopia	Cerberus Capital Management	In 2016, Singapore-based SGI Frontier Capital, which was backed by the UK’s CDC Group, acquired a 45% stake in MB Plc, makers of the Family Milk brand in Ethiopia. In 2018, CSGI Frontier Capital was acquired by Cerberus Capital Management of the US.
Fan Milk	Ghana, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, and Burkina Faso	Danone, Abraaj Group	In 2013, the private equity fund Abraaj Group and Danone acquired Ghana-based Fan Milk, “the leading manufacturer and distributor of frozen dairy products and juices in West Africa”. In 2019, Danone acquired Abraaj’s stake, giving it 100% control of the company. In February 2021, Fan Milk announced an agreement with Nigeria’s Ogun State to build a large-scale dairy farm.
Countryside Dairy	Kenya	DobEquity, Acumen (FMO, Proparco, etc)	In 2016, the Dutch private equity firm DobEquity purchased a stake in newly established dairy processor Countryside Dairy. In 2021, it received further investment from the Acumen Resilient Agriculture Fund, a fund managed by New York-based private equity firm Acumen and backed by the Dutch development bank FMO and the French development bank Proparco, along with the Soros Economic Development Fund.
Brookside Dairy	Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda	Danone, Abraaj Group	Kenya-based Brookside is the largest dairy processor in East Africa, buying milk daily from 200,000 farmers and operating in 12 countries. It was founded and remains majority owned by the family of the Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta. Brookside’s expansion has been aided by foreign investment, first from Abraaj Group of Dubai, which held a 10% stake via a fund partly owned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation before its collapse in 2018, and then the French dairy giant Danone, which now holds a 40% stake.
L&Z	Nigeria	Sahel Capital	In 2015, the Fund for Agricultural Finance in Nigeria acquired a 25% stake in the Nigerian dairy processor L&Z Integrated Farms. The Kano State dairy company was founded by Muhammadu Damakka. The Fund for Agricultural Finance in Nigeria is managed by Nigerian private equity firm Sahel Capital and is backed by Nigeria’s sovereign wealth fund and the development banks of Germany (DEG), the Netherlands (FMO) and the UK (CDC). In June 2021, Sahel disclosed that it was in the midst of an exit from the company.
Sosaco Nigeria	Nigeria	GBfoods Africa Holdco (jointly owned by GB Foods of Spain and Helios)	Sosaco was a subsidiary of the Honk Kong trading company Watanmal, whose main products are tomato paste imported from China and sold under the Gino brand and Jago processed milk. In 2017, GB Foods of Spain and the private equity fund Helios Investors III acquired Watanmal’s African operations, alongside a USD15.5 million investment from the World Bank’s IFC.
Ndoto Farms	Tanzania	AgDevCo	In 2013, Ndoto Farms, a dairy farm in Iringa with a herd of around 350 cattle, received a USD 90,000 investment from the AgDevCo, a UK private equity fund that mainly invests on behalf of the UK’s DFID.
Tanga Fresh	Tanzania	DobEquity	Tanga Fresh operates Tanzania’s largest dairy processing plant in the Tanga region, where the government and foreign donors have been promoting the development of dairy farming. The company received an initial investment from the Dutch private equity firm DOB Equity in 2007 and a further, undisclosed investment in 2020.
Pearl Dairies	Uganda	MIDCOM, TPG Capital	MIDCOM is a Dubai-based company run by Indian businessman Anand Kapoor, with backing from established Indian-Ugandan businessman Bhasker Kotecha, who is the owner of Midland. Pearl received an investment from the World Bank’s IFC of USD 8 million in 2013 towards the construction of the powdered milk plant in Mbarara District. TPG’s Rise Fund now owns 34% of the company, with Kapoor and Kotecha retaining 33% each. While TPG claimed it would help take Pearl international, targeting Algeria, Ethiopia, Malawi and South Sudan, in March 2021, Pearl Dairies shuttered its milk processing plant in Mbarara and announced it was shifting to honey production for export to Europe.
Lakeside Dairies	Uganda, Kenya	Dodla Dairies, TPG Capital	Lakeside is a subsidiary of the Indian dairy company Dodla Dairy, which entered Uganda through a purchase of Hillside Dairy and Agriculture Ltd in 2014-5. Dodla also has a milk trading company in Kenya called Dodla Dairy Kenya. Dodla is 25% owned by TPG’s Rise Fund, and 5% by the World Bank’s IFC.
Dendairy	Zimbabwe		Dendairy is 27% owned by the Norwegian private equity company Spear Capital, which lists Norfund and the Government of the Netherlands among its investors. It was granted lands by the government in the Chiredzi area, where about 12,500 people of the Chilonga Community live and are set to be evicted. The communities have been fighting to stop the eviction.
A fully referenced table is available here

[1] Daily Trust, “Inside The Ultra-Modern Kwara Shonga Farms,” October 2010: https://dailytrust.com/inside-the-ultra-modern-kwara-shonga-farms; https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/9126

[2] See Adekunle E. Ayandele, Dairy Scientist. Christian Albrechts University, Kiel, “Dairy farming in Nigeria: Past, present and future,” July 2020: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/

[3] Fanny Pigeaud, “L’Afrique de l’Ouest consomme de plus en plus de «faux lait» européen,” Mediapart, 3 June 2019: https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/030619/l-afrique-de-l-ouest-consomme-de-plus-en-plus-de-faux-lait-europeen?utm_source=20190603&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=QUOTIDIENNE&utm_content=&utm_term=&xtor=EREC-83-[QUOTIDIENNE]-20190603&M_BT=181851838869 ; Hélène Botreau et Pascal Erard, “Crise laitière, une épreuve commune pour les éleveurs européens et africains,” WikiAgri, 18 May 2020: https://wikiagri.fr/articles/crise-laitiere-une-epreuve-commune-pour-les-eleveurs-europeens-et-africains/20794; https://www.sol-asso.fr/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Protecting-West-African-local-milk-from-EU-dumping-of-milk-powders-June-20-2020.pdf

[4] The farm and the company are owned by Air Vice Marshall Ishaya Shekari, the former military governor of Kano State.

[5] PricewaterhouseCoopers, “Transforming Nigeria’s Agricultural Value Chain,” 2017: https://www.pwc.com/ng/en/assets/pdf/transforming-nigeria-s-agric-value-chain.pdf

[6] “Furore over proposed CBN’s forex restriction for dairy importation,” Daily Trust, August 2019: https://dailytrust.com/amp/furore-over-proposed-cbns-forex-restriction-for-dairy-importation; Oladeinde Olawoyin, “CBN restricts forex on milk importation to FrieslandCampina, 5 others,” Premium Times, February 2020: https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/376870-cbn-restricts-forex-on-milk-importation-to-frieslandcampina-5-others.html

[7] “Le pâturage libre interdit dans une dizaine d’États du sud du Nigeria,” RFI, September 2021: https://www.rfi.fr/fr/afrique/20210923-le-p%C3%A2turage-libre-interdit-dans-une-dizaine-d-%C3%A9tats-du-sud-du-nigeria; “Anti-Open Grazing Law Is Satanic, Empty; Herders Won’t Obey It – Miyetti Allah Dares Southern Governors,” Sahara Reporters, September 2021: http://saharareporters.com/2021/09/07/anti-open-grazing-law-satanic-empty-herders-won%E2%80%99t-obey-it-%E2%80%93-miyetti-allah-dares-southern

[8] “AfDB makes USD 9 million equity investment in Fund for Agricultural Finance in Nigeria,” AfDB, August 2016: https://www.afdb.org/fr/news-and-events/afdb-makes-usd-9-million-equity-investment-in-fund-for-agricultural-finance-in-nigeria-15998

[9] The companies are Arla, Integrated Dairies Limited (owned by Air Vice Marshall Ishaya Shekari, the former military governor of Kano State), L&Z Integrated Farms Limited (owned by Sahel Capital’s private equity fund), Saj Foods Limited (owned by the brother of Kaduna State politician Aminu_Abdullahi_Shagali), Sebore Farms Limited (connected to the former governor of Adamawa State, Murtala Nyako) and Majestic Farms (whose CEO is the journalist and businessman Al Humphrey Onyanabo).

[10] “Fulani herders seek to tap into Nigeria’s booming meat market,” AFP, June 2019: https://sg.news.yahoo.com/fulani-herders-seek-tap-nigerias-190029495.html

[11] “Hausse des résultats du laitier FrieslandCampina WAMCO au Nigeria,” Commodafrica, June 2020: http://www.commodafrica.com/30-06-2020-hausse-des-resultats-du-laitier-frieslandcampina-wamco-au-nigeria

[12] “Roger Adou, FrieslandCampina West Africa, ‘nous sommes en partenariat avec le gouvernement ivoirien pour former un écosystème de fermiers laitiers’,” Commodafrica, September 2021: https://www.commodafrica.com/23-09-2021-roger-adou-frieslandcampina-west-africa-nous-sommes-en-partenariat-avec-le-gouvernement

[13] “African Dairy Market Report 2021 – A €4.8 Billion Market,” Research and Markets, May 2021: https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2021/05/17/2230691/28124/en/African-Dairy-Market-Report-2021-A-4-8-Billion-Market.html

[14] See p. 83 onwards: https://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/object/uuid:d1094eb2-49c0-4e07-8900-bb97719c51a6/datastream/OBJ/download

[15] GRAIN, “Barbarians at the barn: private equity sinks its teeth into agriculture,” 29 September 2020: https://grain.org/e/6533

[16] “Brookside buys Sameer’s Uganda dairy operations,” The Star, May 2015: https://www.the-star.co.ke/counties/2015-05-01-brookside-buys-sameers-uganda-dairy-operations/; Thomas Mwebaze and Anne Mette Kjaer, “Growth and Performance of the Ugandan Dairy Sector: Elites, Conflict, and Bargaining,” International Journal of Agriculture Innovations and Research, 2013: https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/71178513/mwebaze_and_kjaer_article.pdf

[17] Adela Suliman, ‘“Super’ crops and cows – Bill Gates, UK inject cash into farm science,” Reuters, January 2018: https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-aid-agriculture-idAFL8N1PL2T3; Mark Astley, “Bill Gates charity to fund East African dairy project expansion,” Dairy Reporter, January 2014: https://www.dairyreporter.com/Article/2014/01/17/Bill-Gates-charity-to-fund-East-African-dairy-project-expansion

[18] Netherlands East Africa Dairy Partnership: https://www.nlfoodpartnership.com/impact_coalitions/neadap/; “Nariindu 2 : Promouvoir le lait local au Sahel,” AFD: https://www.afd.fr/fr/carte-des-projets/nariindu-2-promouvoir-le-lait-local-au-sahel; Arla, “Arla scales up its commitment to develop a sustainable dairy sector in Nigeria,” September 2019: https://www.arla.com/company/news-and-press/2019/pressrelease/arla-scales-up-its-commitment-to-develop-a-sustainable-dairy-sector-in-nigeria-2918204/

[19] Cécile Broutin, Laurent Levard, Marie-Christine Goudiaby, 2018, “Quelles politiques commerciales pour la promotion de la filière « lait local »,” Gret, January 2018: https://www.gret.org/wp-content/uploads/rapport-synthese-etude-lait-afouest-VF2.pdf

[20] “Mbarara-based Pearl Dairy Farm lays off 1500 workers”, Independent, March 2021: https://www.independent.co.ug/mbarara-based-pearl-dairy-farm-lays-off-1500-workers/; “Dairy Farmers in Mbarara Turn to Beekeeping over Ban on Milk Imports,” News Day, March 2021: https://newsday.co.ug/2021/03/24/dairy-farmers-in-mbarara-turn-to-beekeeping-over-ban-on-milk-imports/

[21] Simon Marks and Emmett Livingstone, “The EU milk lookalike that is devastating West Africa’s dairy sector,” Politico, August 2020: https://www.politico.eu/interactive/the-eu-milk-lookalike-that-is-devastating-west-africas-dairy-sector/

[22] A 60% tariff on dairy products is imposed as an East African Community Single Customs Territory Common External Tariff.

[23] Indigenous cattle make up 90% of the national herd. Anne Mette Kjær, Fred Muhumuza and Tom Mwebaze, “Coalition-driven initiatives in the Ugandan dairy sector: Elites, conflict, and bargaining,” DIIS Working Paper, February 2012: files.ethz.ch/isn/140699/WP2012-02_Mette%20Kjaer-EPP-Dairy_web.pdf

[24] “Dealers strike over govt ban on sale of raw milk”, Monitor, April 2014: https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/dealers-strike-over-govt-ban-on-sale-of-raw-milk-1570354

[25] Margaret Ngigi, “The Case of Smallholder Dairying in Eastern Africa,” February 2005: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6288909.pdf

[26] Asian-Australas J Anim Sci, “African Indigenous Cattle: Unique Genetic Resources in a Rapidly Changing World,” July 2015: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4478499/

[27] Jean Boutrais, “The Fulani and Cattle Breeds: Crossbreeding and Heritage Strategies,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 77, no. 1 (2007): 18–36. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40026696.

[28] Okeyo Mwai, Olivier Hanotte, Young-Jun Kwon, and Seoae Cho, “African Indigenous Cattle: Unique Genetic Resources in a Rapidly Changing World,” Asian-Australas J Anim Sci, July 2015: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4478499/

[29] Ella Houzer and Ian Scoones, “Are Livestock Always Bad for the Planet? Rethinking the Protein Transition and Climate Change Debate,” PASTRES, 2021: https://pastres.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/climate-livestock-full-report-en-web.pdf

[30] FAO, 2021, Gateway to dairy production and products. https://www.fao.org/dairy-production-products/production/dairy-animals/small-ruminants/en/

[31] Alexander Kahi and Chrilukovian Wasike, “Dairy goat production in sub-Saharan Africa: current status, constraints and prospects for research and development,” Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences, 2019: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31357267/

Original Source: grain.org

FARM NEWS

Rising demand for cow dung pushes prices up

Published

1 week ago

August 7, 2026

witnessradio.org

Several years ago, cow dung was seen as simply animal excreta among cattle keepers, who did not value it as an organic source of manure. Some farmers could give it away as they heavily relied on chemical fertilisers to improve yields. Only a few livestock farmers who integrate cattle rearing with growing bananas were using it in their plantations as organic fertiliser.

However, today, this durable natural fertiliser has become a valuable resource with more Ugandans venturing into coffee farming where it (cow dung) complements artificial fertilisers to achieve better yields.

Today, many coffee farmers use cow dung, especially for soil preparation and fertility enhancement, alongside other organic materials.

This practice, which is gaining traction, helps to create a nutrient-rich environment that supports the growth of coffee plants. In Mpigi District, one coffee farmer, Mr Moses Ssendiwala is among a growing number of farmers who have embraced the use of animal manure as a cornerstone of their farming system.

From pig and goat dung to cattle manure, he believes organic fertilisers are helping farmers build healthier soils while reducing dependence on costly chemical inputs.

Cow dung is rich in minerals and nutrients and a good source of manure. Photo | Michael J Ssali

Standing in his coffee plantation in Bulerejje Parish, Muduuma Sub-county, Mr Ssendiwala points to the dark, fertile soil beneath his coffee trees as evidence of years of organic soil management.

“The strength and performance of a coffee plantation begins with the soil. When the soil is healthy, the coffee trees become stronger and more productive,” he told Monitor on Wednesday.

For Mr Ssendiwala, the journey towards organic farming was driven by concerns about declining soil quality and increasing production costs. Like many farmers, he once depended heavily on inorganic fertilisers.

However, over time, he noticed that maintaining soil fertility required increasingly higher quantities of chemical inputs. “I realised that chemicals alone could not sustain the soil for many years. Organic manure improves the soil structure and continues benefiting the crops for a long time,” he added.

Today, his coffee plantation depends largely on manure collected from pigs, goats and other livestock raised on the farm. According to him, goat manure is particularly valuable because of its long-lasting impact on soil fertility.

“Goat manure remains active in the soil for many years and continues nourishing plants. It is one of the best organic fertilisers a coffee farmer can use,” he said.

He added that pig manure is equally beneficial because it decomposes quickly and releases nutrients needed by crops. However, he cautions that farmers must apply it carefully. “If too much pig manure is applied in one area, it can damage crops. Farmers should use the correct quantities and ensure proper decomposition before application,” he explained.

One of the key lessons from Mr Ssendiwala’s farming model is the importance of integrating livestock and crop enterprises. His farm combines coffee, bananas and livestock production, creating a cycle in which waste from one enterprise becomes an input for another. Animal manure collected from pigsties and livestock shelters is processed and applied to coffee and banana gardens, reducing expenditure on purchased fertilisers.

Mr Ssendiwala estimates that manure from 10 pigs can adequately support one acre of farmland, while larger piggery enterprises can generate enough manure for extensive coffee plantations.

“If someone keeps 100 pigs on a 10-acre farm, there may be little need to buy manure from outside,” he said. The integrated approach is becoming increasingly popular among farmers seeking to lower production costs while improving environmental sustainability.

Agricultural experts say combining livestock and crop farming helps recycle nutrients, minimise waste and improve overall farm productivity. But in addition to manure, Mr Ssendiwala applies mulch around coffee trees to conserve soil moisture and suppress weed growth.

The combination of manure and mulching has helped his plantation remain productive even during periods of prolonged dry weather.

“When moisture is retained in the soil, coffee trees continue growing well even when rainfall reduces,” he said. Farmers in several coffee-growing districts report similar experiences. Many say trees grown in soils enriched with organic manure develop stronger root systems and maintain healthier foliage than those grown in depleted soils.

Various studies also report that earthworms are able to convert barren land into fertile land and increase the agriculture output. PHOTO | LOMINDA AFEDRARU

Agronomists explain that organic manure supports beneficial microorganisms that improve nutrient availability and overall soil biological activity. These organisms play a critical role in maintaining healthy ecosystems that support crop growth. Over the past few years, high coffee prices have encouraged thousands of farmers to establish new plantations or expand existing gardens.

As a result, manure has become an increasingly valuable commodity. In livestock-keeping areas, traders now purchase truckloads of cow dung and transport them to coffee-growing districts where demand remains high throughout the year. What was once considered waste is now generating additional income for livestock farmers.

Many cattle keepers say manure sales have become an important supplementary enterprise.

“People used to collect manure for free. Today, buyers come looking for it and are willing to pay cash,” Mr Moses Kafeero, a livestock farmer at Kasubikamu Cell, Bongole Ward in Buwama Town Council, said.

The demand typically rises during planting seasons and periods of prolonged dry spells when farmers seek to improve moisture retention in their gardens. But while organic manure offers numerous benefits, increasing demand has also pushed prices upwards.

A farmer picks coffee from a garden in Kyotera District in May 2024. PHOTO/MICHAEL KAKUMIRIZI

Coffee farmers who do not own livestock are often forced to purchase manure from external suppliers, adding to production costs. Mr John Ssekindi, a coffee farmer at Wassozi Cell, Nabusanke Ward in Kayabwe Town Council, said acquiring sufficient manure is exceedingly expensive.

“Buying the cow dung is one thing, but transporting it to the farm and paying labourers to apply it adds significant costs,” he said.

According to him, a two-acre coffee plantation may require several truckloads of well-decomposed manure depending on soil conditions and the age of the coffee trees. Despite these costs, many farmers continue investing in organic fertilisers because of the long-term benefits. They argue that healthier soils ultimately lead to improved yields and higher profits.

Mad rush for cow dung in Ankole

Cow dung is becoming an unusual item that has recently attracted a lot of demand in the sub-region. In September 2024, Kiruhura District instructed its sub-county chiefs and town clerks to start collecting cow dung loading fees. The then chief administrative officer, Mr Charles Kiberu, argued that the move was intended to enhance local revenue.

“It is good that the Kiruhura leadership has identified this source of revenue, there are many lorries that are taking cow dung from the district. There is nothing special with taxing cow dung, we are doing this like we are doing with other identified sources of revenue like cattle loading,” Mr Kiberu said then.

In Mbarara City, Mr Vincent Mugabe, the city’s agricultural officer, said farmers are rushing for cow dung because it’s organic and convenient in application.

“Farmers are using cow dung, even goats and sheep droppings because they see it as purely organic. There are no chemicals, which at times they doubt of its possible negative effects to the soils. But it is also more convenient to apply than fertilisers that require lots of precautions like measurements and safety,” added Mr Mugabe.

But he warned that as farmers rush for cow dung they have to be cautious because the application of it randomly has negative effects on soils.

“With the increasing demand, extension workers need to come in and offer guidance because cow dung may affect the soil PH, also some cow dung has no nutrients required because it is mishandled at the source. For example, it should be covered as it decomposes to stop it from losing some nutrients like nitrogen,” advised Mr Mugabe.

Mr Suleiman Muhoozi , a farmer in Ibanda District, said animal droppings do not have the same prices, indicating that goat’s droppings are more expensive than for cows. He said a Forward truck of cow dung goes for Shs270,000, while an Elf tipper costs Shs170,000. For goat/sheep dung, it is Shs290,000(a Forward truck) and Shs200,000 for a (Elf tipper), he said.

Mr Muhoozi explained that these costs do not cover transportation, a farmer has to meet those costs separately. According to our findings, to have a truckload of cow dung delivered at your farm, one has to part with between Shs500,000 to Shs700,000 in Isingiro District, while in Mbarara, it costs Shs400, 000.

Agricultural experts such as Mr Valentine Ssekivuuvu, the Mpigi District senior agriculture officer, and Mr Emmanuel Mutebi Jjuuko, the Mpigi District agriculture officer, support this integrated approach. They say organic manure enhances soil structure, water retention and microbial activity, while inorganic fertilisers supply readily available nutrients required for rapid plant growth.

Goat dung versus cow dung

Among coffee farmers, discussions frequently arise about which type of manure offers the greatest benefits. Agronomists note that different manures possess varying nutrient compositions. Goat manure is generally regarded as nutrient-rich because of its relatively high concentrations of nitrogen and potassium. It is also less bulky and decomposes relatively quickly.

Cow dung, however, remains the most widely available organic fertiliser in Uganda. Its abundance makes it easier to obtain in large quantities, particularly in livestock-keeping areas. Agricultural extension officers say cow dung contributes substantial amounts of organic matter that improve soil texture and water-holding capacity.

“Each type of manure has strengths. The most important factor is ensuring that the manure is properly decomposed before application,” Mr Ssekivuuvu said.

With Uganda’s coffee industry continuing to expand, demand for sustainable soil fertility management practices is expected to grow. Government agencies, researchers and agricultural extension workers continue encouraging farmers to adopt methods such as composting, mulching and manure application. These practices are seen as critical for maintaining long-term productivity in coffee-growing regions.

For livestock farmers, the growing demand has created a new income stream. For coffee growers, it has become an important tool in the quest for sustainable productivity.

A farmer in his cabbage garden. Photo | File

While agriculture is the backbone of Uganda’s economy and employs more than 65 percent of Ugandans and feeds more than 80 percent of the country’s industries with raw materials, most farmers practice it without any training, something that has limited their opportunities of transiting from subsistence farming to large scale merchandised commercial agriculture.

Compiled by Al Mahdi Ssenkabirwa, Sadat Mbogo, Rajab Mukombozi & Jovita Kyarisiima

Source: monitor.co.ug

FARM NEWS

Africa’s El Niño Economic Impact: $20B at Risk in 2026

Published

2 weeks ago

July 31, 2026

witnessradio.org

The Hidden Cost of a Pacific Ocean Anomaly: Why Africa Bears a Disproportionate Climate Burden

Every decade or so, a warming of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean quietly reshapes weather systems across the entire planet. For most advanced economies, the resulting shifts in rainfall and temperature are inconvenient at worst. For large parts of Africa, the same atmospheric disruption can unravel years of economic progress, push tens of millions of people into food insecurity, and force governments into a fiscal spiral that proves far harder to escape than the weather event itself.

This is the structural reality that makes the El Niño economic impact in Africa so consequential, and so poorly understood outside development finance circles. The 2026 episode now taking shape is not a distant weather forecast. It is a measurable, quantifiable economic risk that the African Development Bank (AfDB) has placed at the centre of its near-term policy warnings, with loss estimates ranging from $10 billion to $20 billion across the continent and GDP contractions of 1% to 2% in the hardest-hit nations.

To understand why those numbers carry such outsized consequences, it helps to first understand what makes African economies structurally different from other regions facing the same climatic event.

Why African Economies Convert Weather Into Economic Crises

The Architecture of Vulnerability

Rain-fed agriculture remains the foundation of food production across most of Sub-Saharan Africa. Unlike irrigated farming systems common in parts of Asia and the Americas, rain-fed systems carry no mechanical buffer against rainfall deficits. When rainfall fails, yields collapse almost immediately, and the effects radiate outward through household income, rural consumption, and national output.

The energy dimension adds a second layer of fragility that is often underappreciated. Several of Africa’s largest economies depend on hydropower for the majority of their electricity generation. Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo each rely heavily on reservoir-based hydroelectric capacity. When drought drains those reservoirs, electricity generation falls, load-shedding intensifies, manufacturing slows, and mining productivity drops.

A rainfall deficit in the Zambezi basin is not simply an agricultural problem. It is an industrial problem, an investment climate problem, and ultimately a fiscal problem. Furthermore, the energy transition challenges facing resource-dependent economies compound these vulnerabilities significantly.

Infrastructure deficits compound both dynamics. Roads, drainage systems, and irrigation networks in many African countries remain inadequate to absorb either prolonged drought or acute flooding. The same infrastructure gap that amplifies drought damage also amplifies flood damage, meaning El Niño’s geographically inverted impacts across the continent both translate into disproportionate economic harm.

El Niño’s Asymmetric Geography Across Africa

A critical but underappreciated feature of El Niño is that it does not impose a uniform shock across Africa. Its effects are almost geographically inverted between the continent’s sub-regions, which complicates both economic forecasting and policy response.

Southern Africa experiences drought, harvest contraction, livestock stress, and hydropower shortfalls during El Niño years
East Africa typically faces excess rainfall, flooding, infrastructure destruction, and population displacement
West Africa and the Sahel face secondary but real exposure through rainfall variability and commodity market disruptions
Fragile and conflict-affected states experience the same physical shocks but with far less institutional and fiscal capacity to absorb them

The 2023-2024 El Niño episode illustrated this geographic divergence with unusual severity. Southern African countries reported harvest losses exceeding 50% of annual production in the worst-affected areas, while East Africa simultaneously faced destructive flooding that damaged transport corridors and urban markets. According to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Southern African impact was characterised as among the most severe in over a century.

Quantifying the 2026 Threat: What the Numbers Actually Mean

AfDB Loss Projections in Context

The AfDB’s estimate of $10 billion to $20 billion in aggregate economic losses deserves careful interpretation rather than simple citation. African economic growth is projected at 4.2% in 2026 and 4.4% in 2027, representing one of the continent’s more promising growth windows in recent years. A climate shock that strips 1% to 2% from the GDP of multiple countries simultaneously does not merely slow growth; it disrupts the compounding dynamic that allows development gains to build on each other over time.

A 2% GDP loss in a high-exposure economy is not a one-year setback. It triggers chain reactions across fiscal balances, debt servicing capacity, and social spending programmes that compress development gains accumulated over several years.

The AfDB has estimated that African agricultural producers could lose approximately $327 million to $330 million in income from the anticipated disruptions. The fisheries sector faces additional pressure, with rising sea temperatures and storm events projected to reduce productivity by 1% to 4%.

Sector	Estimated Economic Impact	Primary Driver
Agricultural producer income	~$327-$330 million in losses	Drought-driven crop failure and flood damage
Maize prices	2%-20% increase in strong El Niño years	Supply contraction in Southern Africa
Fisheries productivity	1%-4% reduction	Sea temperature rise and storm disruption
GDP contraction (worst-affected countries)	1%-2%	Multiple transmission channels
Aggregate continental losses	$10B-$20B	Combined agricultural, energy, and fiscal impacts

The 2026 Probability Assessment

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has assigned an 80% probability to El Niño developing between June and August 2026, with the likelihood of the event persisting through November approaching or exceeding 90%. The anticipated intensity is classified as moderate-to-strong. The WMO has explicitly noted that the term super El Niño, which circulates widely in public discourse, does not represent an official scientific classification and should not be used as a technical benchmark.

A moderate-to-strong event is sufficient to activate the full range of agricultural, hydrological, and fiscal transmission channels documented in previous episodes. The 2023-2024 episode, which serves as the most recent empirical reference point, demonstrated that even a single El Niño cycle can push 61 million people across Southern Africa alone into requiring humanitarian assistance.

The AfDB has scheduled a formal portfolio impact assessment for September 2026 to evaluate exposure across its active investment operations and identify necessary adjustments.

Five Transmission Channels: How Weather Becomes a Fiscal Crisis

Channel 1: Agricultural Output Collapse

Rain-fed farming systems that dominate food production across Sub-Saharan Africa have no mechanical buffer against rainfall deficits. Drought reduces yields, destroys livestock, and eliminates the seasonal income that rural households rely on for a significant portion of their annual consumption. Flooding in East Africa simultaneously destroys standing crops, degrades soil quality, and disrupts planting cycles for subsequent growing seasons.

Channel 2: Food Price Inflation and Urban Purchasing Power Erosion

As agricultural supply contracts, staple food prices rise. This dynamic disproportionately affects urban low-income households that spend the highest share of their income on food. Maize price increases of 2% to 20% in strong El Niño years have been documented across Southern African markets. Food inflation reduces real household incomes, suppresses consumer spending, and can contribute to social instability in urban centres already under economic pressure.

Channel 3: Hydropower Shortages and Industrial Disruption

Drought reduces reservoir levels, cutting electricity generation capacity and forcing load-shedding that affects manufacturing, mining, and services simultaneously. Businesses dependent on continuous power face higher operating costs as they switch to backup generation. The energy transition in mining and related industries is consequently further complicated by climate-driven energy instability. Persistent power instability deters investment and reduces the competitiveness of export-oriented industries.

Channel 4: Infrastructure Damage and Emergency Fiscal Pressure

Flooding in East Africa and storm events along coastal regions damage roads, bridges, drainage infrastructure, and urban markets. Reconstruction costs divert government capital budgets away from planned development expenditure. Emergency response requirements force fiscal reallocation that crowds out health, education, and productive infrastructure investment.

Channel 5: The Climate Finance Trap

Anthony Nyong, Director of the AfDB’s Climate Change and Green Growth Department, has identified a structural dynamic that explains why El Niño’s fiscal consequences often exceed its direct physical damage. When governments are forced to redirect pre-allocated development budgets toward disaster response, they erode the long-term fiscal architecture of planned growth.

Countries without adequate insurance instruments or contingency reserves face the hardest trade-offs between immediate relief and sustained development investment. This pattern compounds across multiple El Niño cycles, progressively narrowing fiscal space.

The Countries Facing the Greatest Exposure

A Regional Risk Framework

Southern Africa: Drought, Harvest Collapse, and Energy Shortfalls

Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, and Madagascar face the most consistent drought exposure during El Niño years. Hydropower dependency amplifies the economic impact beyond agriculture into energy and industrial sectors. The 2023-2024 episode produced harvest losses exceeding 50% of annual production in the worst-affected areas.

East Africa: Flooding, Infrastructure Destruction, and MSME Disruption

Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Uganda face elevated flood risk during El Niño years. Flooding damages transport networks, disrupts urban commerce, and creates displacement that reduces labour market participation. Micro, small, and medium enterprises, which form the backbone of urban economic activity across East Africa, face acute disruption from flooding and market closures.

Fragile and Conflict-Affected States: Compounded Vulnerability

The AfDB has specifically identified Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Burundi, and Nigeria as among the countries most exposed to the anticipated impacts. In fragile states, climate shocks interact with pre-existing governance deficits, displacement crises, and food insecurity to produce disproportionately severe outcomes. These countries also have the least fiscal capacity to self-finance recovery and the most constrained access to international capital markets.

Africa’s Climate Finance Gap: A Structural Inequity

The Numbers That Reveal a Systemic Failure

Financing Metric	Figure
UN estimated annual climate finance need for developing countries by 2035	~$365 billion
International public climate adaptation finance delivered in 2023	~$26 billion
AfDB estimate of Africa’s climate financing need in 2026	~$100 billion
Previous AfDB climate financing estimates for Africa	~$50 billion
UN CERF preventive mobilisation for highest-risk countries	Up to $100 million

The gap between what is needed and what is being delivered is not a marginal shortfall. International public adaptation finance of $26 billion delivered in 2023 represents less than 7% of the $365 billion annual requirement projected for 2035. Africa’s estimated 2026 climate financing need of $100 billion represents a doubling of previous estimates, reflecting both escalating climate risk and the accumulated deficit of underinvestment in adaptation infrastructure.

Why Adaptation Financing Consistently Lags Behind Mitigation

A less commonly understood dynamic within climate finance is the persistent structural imbalance between mitigation spending and adaptation spending. Global climate finance flows have historically favoured mitigation projects, which reduce greenhouse gas emissions, over adaptation projects, which build resilience to the climate change already locked in.

The reasons are partly financial. Mitigation projects such as solar farms and wind energy installations generate revenue streams, attract private co-investment, and can be structured for commercial returns. Adaptation investments such as flood barriers, drought-resistant crop varieties, and early warning systems generate economic value by preventing losses rather than creating new income streams.

This distinction makes adaptation harder to monetise and less attractive to private capital. However, the El Niño economic impact in Africa demonstrates precisely why sustained adaptation investment is essential. For a continent that contributes a small fraction of global emissions yet absorbs a disproportionate share of climate impacts, this imbalance represents a fundamental equity failure in the international climate finance architecture.

In addition, the growing importance of critical minerals and energy security means that climate disruptions increasingly threaten strategic supply chains that extend well beyond Africa’s own borders. Furthermore, renewable energy solutions designed to reduce hydropower dependency are increasingly being considered as a structural hedge against El Niño-driven energy instability.

Mechanisms Being Mobilised Ahead of the 2026 Peak

The AfDB is facilitating access to several international financing instruments for affected member states:

Green Climate Fund targeting both adaptation and mitigation in vulnerable developing nations
Adaptation Fund focused specifically on countries with the least capacity to self-finance resilience building
Climate Investment Funds providing multi-donor capital for low-carbon and climate-resilient development
Loss and Damage Mechanisms offering compensation for climate impacts beyond adaptive capacity
UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) mobilising up to $100 million for preventive measures in the highest-risk countries

Embedding Climate Risk Into African Development Planning

The Case for Treating El Niño as a Fiscal Variable, Not an Exceptional Event

One of the least-discussed but most consequential shifts in African public finance management concerns how climate risk is categorised within government planning frameworks. Treating El Niño as a recurring fiscal variable rather than an unpredictable exceptional event changes everything from budget reserve requirements to debt sustainability assessments.

Countries that establish contingency reserves, parametric insurance instruments, and pre-arranged emergency credit lines are measurably better positioned to absorb climate shocks without derailing multi-year development trajectories. Parametric insurance, which triggers automatic payouts when pre-defined weather thresholds are crossed rather than requiring lengthy loss assessments, is particularly relevant for African economies because it delivers capital precisely when it is needed most.

Preparedness Investment as a Fiscal Efficiency Measure

Evidence from disaster risk economics consistently demonstrates that pre-event investment in preparedness generates substantially higher returns than post-event reconstruction spending. Irrigation infrastructure, drought-resistant crop varieties, early warning systems, and flood-resilient road construction each reduce the economic cost of El Niño events in ways that reconstruction spending cannot replicate after the fact.

For African governments, the structural challenge is financing preparedness during periods of fiscal constraint. This is precisely the window before an El Niño peak when investment would generate the greatest returns. Bridging this timing gap requires concessional pre-event financing that existing multilateral instruments have not consistently delivered at scale.

Research on El Niño’s economic devastation further confirms that the El Niño economic impact in Africa is not simply a humanitarian concern but a macroeconomic one, with effects that reverberate through fiscal systems for years after the weather event subsides. Consequently, the critical minerals demand picture is also affected, as climate disruptions to mining and energy infrastructure interrupt the supply of materials essential to the global clean energy transition.

The AfDB’s planned September 2026 portfolio review signals an institutional shift toward treating climate risk as a standing variable in development finance planning, rather than a one-off emergency to be managed after impact.

Key Statistics at a Glance

$10B-$20B in projected aggregate economic losses across Africa
1%-2% GDP contraction in the hardest-hit countries, against a continental growth projection of 4.2% for 2026
$327-$330 million in estimated agricultural income losses for African producers
61 million people required humanitarian assistance during the 2023-2024 El Niño across Southern Africa
80% probability assigned by the WMO to El Niño developing between June and August 2026
$26 billion in international public adaptation finance delivered in 2023, against a $365 billion annual need by 2035
$100 billion in climate financing estimated as Africa’s requirement for 2026, double previous estimates
Up to $100 million being mobilised through the UN CERF for preventive measures in the highest-risk countries

Disclaimer: All loss projections, GDP impact estimates, and probability assessments referenced in this article reflect forward-looking forecasts from multilateral institutions including the AfDB and WMO. Actual outcomes will depend on the intensity, duration, and geographic distribution of any El Niño event, as well as the policy and financing responses mobilised before and during the episode. This article does not constitute financial or investment advice.

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Source: discoveryalert.com.au

FARM NEWS

Five counties roll out agroecology policies to boost climate resilience

Published

3 weeks ago

July 29, 2026

witnessradio.org

At least five counties have adopted agroecology policies as Kenya accelerates efforts to promote climate-resilient and sustainable farming.

Murang’a, Makueni, Nakuru, West Pokot and Kiambu have already developed county agroecology policies, while Trans Nzoia, Turkana, Laikipia, Kirinyaga and Machakos are drafting similar frameworks.

Stakeholders are urging more devolved governments to fast-track implementation to strengthen food security.

Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (Pelum) Kenya country coordinator Rosinah Mbeya said counties must move beyond policy development by allocating adequate budgets and implementing programmes that directly support farmers. She spoke during the Third Agroecology Symposium.

Mbeya said although agroecology is gaining momentum in Kenya, greater political commitment, increased financing and faster implementation are needed to help farmers cope with climate change, rising production costs and declining soil health.

Kenya continues to grapple with multiple agricultural challenges, including climate change, emerging crop pests and diseases and increasing input costs driven by global economic disruptions.

“These challenges are making farming increasingly difficult, particularly for smallholder farmers. However, they also present an opportunity to transform our food systems and build farming systems that are more resilient and less dependent on external inputs,” Mbeya said.

Agriculture& Forestry

She described agroecology as an environmentally sustainable approach that restores ecosystems while improving agricultural productivity, conserving biodiversity and protecting human health and the environment.

Mbeya said the focus should now shift from developing strategies to implementing them through adequate funding and practical support for farmers.

“The discussion is no longer about developing strategies. It is now about implementation, budgeting and ensuring these policies benefit farmers on the ground,” she said.

Mbeya said agroecology continues to attract support from development partners, researchers and policymakers.

However, only a small proportion of Kenya’s estimated 7.5 million smallholder farmers practise agroecology through organised networks.

She said Pelum works with about 1.5 million farmers but said wider adoption is needed to transform the country’s food systems.

Farms& Ranches

Agriculture secretary in the State Department for Agriculture Peter Aoko said crop diversification remains one of the government’s key strategies for strengthening climate resilience and improving household nutrition.

“Different crops perform differently under different ecological conditions. Diversification ensures that if one crop fails because of weather or pests, another succeeds while also providing better nutrition,” he said.

Aoko said the government is strengthening farmers’ capacity through agricultural extension services and knowledge sharing while working with county governments to domesticate the National Agroecology Strategy.

He acknowledged that implementation has progressed slowly because agriculture is a devolved function but expressed confidence that momentum would increase as more counties adopt the strategy.

“Agroecology is about producing food sustainably while protecting the environment, particularly soil health. Without healthy soils, agricultural production cannot be sustained over the long term,” he said.

Dr Lisa Fuchs, a scientist with the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, said agroecology extends beyond environmentally friendly farming by integrating ecological sustainability, economic viability and social equity.

She said the approach promotes crop diversity, healthy soils, circular farming systems and locally adapted food production to improve food security and nutrition.

Agriculture& Forestry

Fuchs encouraged farmers to recognise the value of indigenous knowledge and work collectively to develop solutions suited to local conditions.

“Agroecology is a science, a practice and a movement. Farmers should organise, share knowledge, work with their neighbours and partner with government, researchers and other stakeholders to strengthen local food systems,” she said.

She said agricultural research institutions are increasingly embracing participatory approaches that involve farmers and communities in developing, testing and scaling innovations to ensure solutions respond to local needs.

Source: the-star.co.ke/

NGO WORK2 weeks ago

The Great “Green” Heist: When Artificial Intelligence and Arms Dealers Seize the Minerals of the South

MEDIA FOR CHANGE NETWORK1 week ago

Communities once resettled by President Museveni in Kiryandongo now find themselves losing their land to a sugarcane investor, accusing the Uganda Land Commission of granting a leasehold behind their backs.