Billions of dollars intended to help Africa adapt to climate change could become a new source of funding for the input-intensive agricultural model blamed for degrading soils, reducing crop diversity and expanding cultivation onto more land, a new report warns.
The report, The Green Revolution Has Failed Africa, argues that climate finance is becoming increasingly important to agricultural programmes as traditional bilateral support declines. But without stricter tests, it says, projects built around commercial seeds, synthetic fertiliser and large-scale production could be labelled climate adaptation even when there is little evidence that they make farmers more resilient.
Published by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), the report examines 18 years of agricultural data from 13 countries prioritised by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
Its warning centres partly on the Green Climate Fund’s US$105 million RE-GAIN programme, implemented with AGRA to reduce post-harvest food losses. The report acknowledges that preventing such losses can support adaptation, but calls for clear criteria to ensure climate funding does not sustain input-intensive production without demonstrating gains in resilience.
It also points to the African Development Bank, which reported US$5.9 billion, or 54 percent of its 2025 approvals, as climate finance. AFSA wants the bank to disclose how much climate-labelled agricultural funding supports fertiliser-dependent systems and to redirect a growing share towards diversified, low-input and agroecological farming.
The report’s concern is that a change in funding language may not amount to a change in the underlying agricultural model. For instance, programmes once justified by the need to raise yields and modernise farming can now be presented as climate-smart or adaptive, even where their environmental and livelihood outcomes remain uncertain.
Across the 13 AGRA focus countries, fertiliser use more than doubled between 2006 and 2024, but weighted staple-crop yields grew by an average of 1.2 percent annually. That was slightly below the 1.3 percent annual growth recorded during the 12 years preceding AGRA’s launch, according to the report.
Cropped land, meanwhile, expanded by 46 percent. The authors argue that this shows production increases came partly from putting more land under cultivation rather than achieving the promised gains in productivity on existing farms.
Such expansion carries direct environmental costs where it involves forests, grazing areas, wetlands or already degraded land. It can also increase pressure on water and expose soils to erosion, particularly where the new cultivation is dominated by a small number of crops.
The changing crop mix is another concern. The report says millet and sorghum declined from 26 percent to 16 percent of cultivated land across the focus countries as maize production expanded by 71 percent while yields rose by 40 percent.
Millet and sorghum are generally more tolerant of dry conditions than maize. Their decline could therefore leave farmers more exposed to drought and erratic rainfall, the very risks that climate-adaptation finance is intended to address. It may also narrow diets, local food cultures and the genetic diversity available to farmers as weather conditions change.
The report further associates continuous use of synthetic fertiliser with soil acidification, especially when fertiliser is applied without sufficient organic matter or appropriate soil management. Degraded soil retains less water, supports fewer organisms and can become increasingly expensive to farm as producers depend on repeated external inputs.
Synthetic fertiliser can raise yields where soils are nutrient-deficient, and the report does not call for an immediate ban. It argues that fertiliser should not remain the organising principle of African agricultural investment while longer-term soil health and farmer dependence receive inadequate attention.
AFSA advocates diversified agroecological systems that integrate crops, trees and livestock; maintain ground cover; rebuild soil organic matter; and support locally adapted, farmer-managed seed. According to the report, these practices can improve water retention and give farmers more options when rainfall, pests, markets or input prices fail.
