By Abbas Nazil
The Executive Secretary of the National Agricultural Development Fund (NADF), Mohammed Ibrahim, has called for a coordinated financing architecture that brings together public, private and concessional capital to unlock Africa’s agricultural potential and deliver faster transformation of the continent’s food systems.
Ibrahim made the demand at the Policy and State Capability Thematic Plenary, “Aligning Investment to Fast-Track CAADP Objectives,” held during the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, Rwanda.
He said Africa’s agricultural financing problem was not merely about a lack of money but also about the fragmentation of available capital and the absence of structures capable of directing resources towards credible and commercially viable opportunities.
According to him, African countries need to abandon fragmented financing approaches and establish systems that connect national agricultural priorities with investment opportunities while reducing risks for private-sector investors.
Ibrahim said NADF’s approach was centred on identifying national priorities, developing credible projects and using public and concessional resources strategically to attract additional private financing.
He said the fund was also working to develop bankable agricultural project pipelines that could give investors greater confidence to commit capital to the sector.
The NADF boss argued that public money should be deployed to unlock private investment rather than displace it, stressing that the absence of commercially viable projects remained a major barrier to attracting private capital into agriculture.
He said governments and development partners could have greater impact by using limited public resources to reduce risks and create conditions that encourage commercial investors to participate in agricultural development.
Ibrahim also called for stronger data systems, saying reliable information was essential for determining where investments should go and assessing whether they were producing the desired results.
He said the focus of agricultural financing must shift from simply tracking how much money was spent to determining what the investment changed for farmers and communities.
According to him, agricultural interventions should be judged by their ability to improve farmer profitability, increase participation in value chains, strengthen resilience and improve livelihoods, rather than by expenditure figures or yield increases alone.
He also advocated independent monitoring, evaluation and learning systems to identify successful interventions, expose weaknesses and provide evidence for scaling effective programmes.
Ibrahim said such systems would help governments and investors understand which agricultural investments were delivering results and where resources were being wasted or underutilised.
He stressed that the continent could not achieve the objectives of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme without a financial system capable of coordinating different sources of capital and directing them towards projects with clear development and commercial potential.
Also contributing to the discussion, Ana Maria Loboguerrero, Director of Adaptive and Equitable Food Systems at the Gates Foundation, said philanthropic capital could help unlock private investment by financing innovative agricultural solutions that commercial investors might initially consider too risky.
She explained that patient and higher-risk philanthropic funding could generate evidence, strengthen public-sector capacity and reduce risks before commercial capital entered the market.
Participants at the forum agreed that increasing agricultural funding alone would not be enough to achieve Africa’s food-system transformation goals.
They stressed that the continent needed better coordination of financial resources, credible investment pipelines, reliable data, stronger accountability and effective mechanisms for ensuring that capital reaches farmers and productive agricultural enterprises.
The discussions also reinforced the importance of partnerships between governments, private investors, development institutions, research organisations and farmer groups in building stronger and more resilient agricultural value chains.
Ibrahim’s call comes as African countries seek to increase food production, strengthen rural livelihoods, attract investment and improve the resilience of their food systems amid economic, demographic and climate pressures.
He maintained that Africa’s agricultural potential could only be fully realised when available capital was better coordinated, investments were guided by credible data and financing was tied to measurable outcomes for farmers and the wider economy.
