Rain clouds over a farming village near Iringa, Tanzania. (Photo Courtesy Wolff)

African heads of state, private sector leaders and agricultural experts are meeting in Accra, Ghana today to inaugurate the African Green Revolution Forum.

The Forum promotes new investments and policy support to increase agricultural productivity and income growth for African farmers.

Kenneth Quinn, former US ambassador to Cambodia and President of the World Food Prize Foundation, is attending the meeting. He told RFI the focus was on developing an action plan to bring about a "green revolution" in Africa.

Quinn said there were numerous reasons the green revolution had been less successful in Africa than in Asia or Latin America. First, he said the soil in Africa is badly in need of nutrients.

He cited lack of infrastructure as another impediment. "A third has been the absence of markets from which crops in the field can be bought and sold, as well as absence of credit," he said.

Finally, Quinn mentioned the need for "research to come up with a seed that can be beneficial."

"The 2009 Food Prize Laureate, Dr. Gebisa Ejeta from Ethiopia, made one of those breakthroughs when he developed a new sorghum that could double [or even] triple the yields and also defeat the killer weed Striga," said Quinn. "And that impacted half a billion people in eastern Africa."