By Ian Scoones, Stephen Devereux and Lawrence Hadda

This year’s UN Millennium Report highlights the lack of progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in sub-Saharan Africa.The Commission for Africa report (2005) similarly highlights the major challenges of poverty reduction on the continent.What role should agriculture have in this challenge? Most of Africa’s poor are rural, and most rely largely on agriculture for their livelihoods. Inevitably, “getting agriculture moving” must be part of the solution to the seemingly intractable problem of African poverty. The standard storyline about African agriculture is not positive. In most countries, the sector is slow-growing or stagnant, held back by negligible yield growth, poor infrastructure, degrading environmental resources, erratic weather, HIV/AIDS and civil conflict.