Seattle – The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said Tuesday that it is joining with the Rockefeller Foundation to fight hunger in Africa, beginning with a $100 million pledge to improve agricultural productivity.
The Rockefeller Foundation pledged its own $50 million donation.
Officials at the two foundations said the money was just the beginning of a much bigger effort to bring the “green revolution” to Africa.
In the original green revolution, the Rockefeller and Ford foundations led an effort to spread new farming technology and bring increased productivity to Latin America and Asia in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.
The Gates Foundation announced in May that it would spend more to combat poverty and hunger, and Tuesday’s announcement is its first big grant in those areas.
The two foundations will carefully track results and will change course if things aren’t working, said Rajiv Shah, director for financial services and agriculture for the Gates Foundation, founded by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda.
Africa needs better seed varieties, more trained crop scientists, seed distribution methods, help for farmers to get their crops to market, and ways to distribute fertilizer, said Shah and Gary Toenniessen, director of the food security program for the New York-based Rockefeller Foundation.
