AGRA Impact, Learning and Foresight Report 2026

31 August 2026. AFS Kigali. The major AGRA report whose findings were brought into the AFS Forum 2026 discussions in Kigali was the AGRA Impact, Learning and Foresight Report 2026, a 20-year stocktake of AGRA’s work and, more broadly, of Africa’s agricultural transformation since 2006

AGRA (2026) AGRA Impact, Learning and Foresight Report 2026. 180 p.

AGRA (2026) Executive summary AGRA Impact, Learning and Foresight Report 2026.  17 p.

Its central message is that Africa has made substantial agricultural progress, but increased production has not consistently translated into farmer prosperity. The review points to gains such as roughly 40% higher cereal yields, nearly doubled real farm output and increased farmer incomes since 2005, while stressing that these aggregate improvements coexist with persistent food insecurity, low profitability for many smallholders and weak resilience. 

It therefore argues that the next phase of transformation should be judged less by hectares reached, technologies distributed or yields alone, and more by whether farmers earn sustainable incomes and become economically resilient.

A particularly useful contribution of the report is its diagnosis of three interconnected “traps” holding back transformation: 

1. the productivity trap, where farmers cannot consistently achieve sufficient productivity; 
2. the value trap, where farmers and other local actors capture too little value from what they produce; and 
3. the capability trap, where institutions, markets and delivery systems lack the capacity to sustain transformation. 

The implication is that isolated interventions—better seed, fertilizer or training on their own—are insufficient. Productivity needs to be connected to functioning markets, finance, infrastructure, value addition, institutions and demand.