Photo courtesy: Business daily.
At the height of the Covid-19 induced lockdowns in 2020, Dr Apollos Nwafor was coordinating the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)’s work with governments to keep food production going and markets for the same open on the continent.
But there was one hitch; most governments had omitted agriculture from their lists of essential services, meaning people in villages could not go to farms and food traders could not access markets.
“We wondered how that was possible when people had to eat, and for people to eat farmers had to go to the farm and produce the food and markets must function. We realised that there was a gap in implementation and inclusive leadership. We needed leaders who could think innovatively,” says Dr Nwafor, who is AGRA’s vice president for policy and state capability.