A Former U.N. Official Leads a New ‘Green Revolution’

By Caroline Preston

Namanga Ngongi had planned to spend his retirement from the United Nations growing oil-palm trees

on a hillside farm in his hometown of Buea, Cameroon. But then two of the biggest American foundations came calling.

In June, Mr. Ngongi, 62, was asked to consider the top job at the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, a project created by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. The alliance seeks to help small-scale African farmers grow more food by developing new crop varieties, introducing better farming techniques, and improving seed-distribution systems.

An agronomist by training, Mr. Ngongi was at first reluctant to leave his farm. But several visits to Seattle helped sway him, as did the involvement of two of his former colleagues at the United Nations. Kofi Annan, the former secretary general, is the chairman of the organization’s board and Catherine Bertini, former head of the World Food Program, is a senior fellow in agricultural development with the Gates foundation.

Mr. Ngongi was convinced that the two grant makers, which are pouring an initial $150-million into the project, understood just how challenging it would be to expand agricultural production in Africa, the only part of the world where farm production lags behind population growth.

“Having judged that it wasn’t just a passing fad, and that the people behind it were serious, and that it had a fighting chance to do some good, I decided to join,” says Mr. Ngongi, who declines to give his salary.

Mr. Ngongi got his start in agriculture somewhat by chance, as a boy picking fruit and doing other odd jobs at the botanical gardens in Limbe, Cameroon, where his father was a supervisor. Mr. Ngongi’s knowledge of the botanic names of trees helped land him a job after high school at the Ministry of Agriculture. He spent a year there before he won a U.S. Agency for International Development scholarship to study agriculture in California.

After receiving a doctorate in agronomy from Cornell University, Mr. Ngongi returned to Cameroon to help supervise the development of agricultural businesses. But his stint in his native country was short-lived. In 1980, he joined the Cameroon Embassy in Rome.

Four years later, he was tapped to join the World Food Program, where he gained a reputation as a strong manager and a “visionary thinker,” says Ms. Bertini. “He relates as well with heads of state as he does with people who report to him,” she says.

Mr. Ngongi returns to the issue of agricultural development in Africa with some momentum behind him. The Gates foundation’s grant to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa is one of its first through a new program to fight poverty overseas, which it started in April 2006 to help bolster gains the foundation has made in health. Ms. Bertini says the grant maker plans to give several hundred million additional dollars to the organization, which will be based in Nairobi.

For Rockefeller, the alliance represents an attempt to build on some of the success that the foundation had in spurring what became known as the Green Revolution in Latin America and Asia. Beginning in the 1940s, the foundation helped develop new crop varieties that greatly increased agricultural output on those continents.

But encouraging a Green Revolution in Africa will be far more difficult than it was in other regions. Africa’s climates and soils are far more diverse, so farmers must rely on many more types of crops. Irrigation is less widespread, and there are far fewer trained scientists. In addition, the effort aims to avoid some of the negative effects of the past Green Revolution, namely, that it caused pollution and sometimes benefited richer farmers at the expense of the poorest.

Mr. Ngongi discussed his new job in an interview with The Chronicle:

How are you engaging small-scale farmers in the organization’s work?

Grantees have to clearly demonstrate in their discussions and in their presentations that they are actually accessing small farmers. If we’re not convinced they have the capacity to do it, we’re not bound to make the grants. We always have to satisfy ourselves that the structures being supported will actually meet the aspirations and wishes of small farmers.

Do you hope to eventually award grants to organizations that are formed by some of these farmers?

Of course. If we had a farmer-led organization that was able to handle the programs, especially in distributing seeds or in multiplying or improving the varieties of crops, nothing would stop us from working with them directly.

The main problem would be that such requests will be for very small amounts of money, which will increase the administrative costs of such grants. But that’s no excuse not to deal as much as possible with the farmers.

You’ve said that your time as head of the peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was the most rewarding experience you had. Why?

Most people who were looking at Africa used to look at it with very pessimistic eyes. There was a period even during my lifetime when probably almost half the countries were in chaos. Today, there are some intractable problems. But it’s a far cry from, say, 20 years ago when the continent was burning.

I went to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2001 when the country had a cease-fire but it was technically at war. By the day I was leaving, a transitional government was formed. That was very rewarding, to see people overcome their differences in the interest of their nation. Today, most of Congo is at peace. Peace is relative, of course, and there are still problem areas, but hopefully they’ll be able to work this out and bring prospects for development to the vast majority of the population.

What is your view of the federal government’s subsidies for food aid, which have been criticized for hurting African farmers?

Food aid is sometimes needed at whatever the price. If people are going to starve to death, the food should reach them. If it can be obtained locally, so much the better. But if it can’t, it should come from where it can be mobilized and sent. The United States has a wonderful advantage in being able to grow and hold surplus food.

The question is if the food couldn’t have been procured closer to the emergency situation. That’s a different argument. Subsidies that allow food to be exported commercially at much cheaper rates than if they’d not been subsidized are of course harmful to the economies to which the food has been delivered. If the people are producing at $100 a ton, and donor countries are producing at $50 a ton because of subsidies, that’s unfair competition. That’s not fair for resource-poor farmers who can’t sell it because the rich farms have been subsidized.

Is it still your hope to have your second retirement on your own farm?

I do plan not to have a very long-term absence again from my farm. I hope that within five years or so I will have made my own little contribution to starting off AGRA, having it hopefully in the right direction. But the real results are all medium- to long-term. I hope I’ll be able to see the major change in African agriculture during my lifetime, of course, but I also hope to have the time to enjoy the development of my farm and participate in the Green Revolution from my own farm.