African leaders have taken a bold step at encouraging innovation in farming to ensure food safety.

They are partnering the African Green Revolution Forum and the Alliance for Green Revolution to launch a 100,000 Dollar prize for agriculture.

The winners will receive funding to use innovation in boosting the cultivating and marketing of agric produce.

Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo who launched the initiative is hopeful that this will eliminate hunger on the continent, “We want to encourage, reward and celebrate our hard-working people and to make agriculture attractive enough for more people, especially the teeming youth, to come on board,” Obasanjo told journalists.

He added that, the price is primarily aimed at achieving food security on the continent;
“It is meant to first of all achieve food security. I believe that there should be no part of Africa [where] there should be scarcity of food for any reason what so ever.”

The Africa Food Prize is a successor of the Yara Prize, which was established by Yara International ASA in 2005 in response to a call for action by former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, challenging the world to create an African Green Revolution.

Past winners include Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, the former Nigerian Agriculture Minister who now heads the African Development Bank (AfDB); Agnes Kalibata, the former Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources in Rwanda who now serves as AGRA’s President; and Ousmane Badiane, Africa Director for the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

AGRA and Yara have established a secretariat for the prize, and will continue to fund and support it.