Ghana this week hosted the inaugural African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF), whose focus was on promoting investments and policy support for driving agricultural productivity in the continent.

The gathering, which was attended by Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda, also looked at ways of boosting incomes of African farmers in an environmentally sustainable way.

The three-day forum, which ended yesterday, was expected develop concrete investment plans for achieving the green revolution in Africa.

Transforming Africa's farming activities is strategically vital in the growth of the continent and improvement of its people's welfare. The transformation, which is long overdue, is expected to enable Africa to become a breadbasket for itself and the rest of the world.

Despite the abundant agricultural development potential, facts on the ground and prevailing farming realities are still very grim in Africa.

Most of the continent, including Tanzania, despite the fact that it is blessed with massive tracts of arable land, still has 300 million inhabitants who go to bed hungry every day.

Less than five per cent of agricultural land is irrigated, and the farming sector is still struggling to attract significant investment from private businesses.

Africa's population is expected to top 1.8 billion in 2050 and this combined with possibly devastating consequences of climate change, the need for a green revolution has become even more imperative.

Like PM Pinda told the Accra forum, our countries must come up with policies that suit our circumstances, entailing support for the private sector and make agriculture a business.

That is the surest way to transform farming so that it plays its due role in national development and poverty alleviation.

To better drive that point home, Tanzania must have showcased its Kilimo Kwanza initiative at the AGRF, which was attended by nearly a 1,000 delegates from across the globe.

Our country's green revolution initiative, among other things, calls for modernisation and commercialisation of agriculture at all levels.

Attaining Kilimo Kwanza's goals will not only make the country self sufficient in food; it will also help to make the sector a good source of income for households and national coffers.

Agriculture plays an important role in poverty reduction, particularly in poorer countries such as Tanzania where the majority people depend on the sector for their livelihood. Growth in agricultural value added had the largest impact on poverty reduction in Asia in the 1970s and 1980s.

However, left alone, agriculture could also become a poverty trap and that is what had happened here and in the rest of many poor countries in Africa, where the sector had been largely neglected.

Apart from alienating the private sector in agricultural development, our governments also invested very little to boost the sector and its productivity.

For many years, there have been inadequate investments in rural infrastructure, agricultural technology, equipment or basic inputs. Consequently, agricultural productivity either stagnated or increased at a very slow rate, if at all it did.

Official statistics show that value-added agricultural products in the country grew by four per cent a year during the last decade.

That growth rate does not augur well with national poverty reduction efforts when the annual population growth rate of between three and four per cent is taken into account.

This explains why there has not been any significant improvement in the incomes of the majority of the people in this country since agriculture is the source of income for 80 per cent of the country's population.

Some observers view this as one of the reasons behind the stubbornly high poverty rates in Tanzania.

Agriculture can only become a driver in the poverty reduction efforts if deliberate efforts are made to put more investment the sector.

Adequate financing of rural infrastructure projects is vital in connecting rural economies with national, regional and international markets.

Although several countries have put in place plans to accelerate their annual agricultural growth by six per cent, experts at the AGRF estimated that Africa will need $32 billion to $39 billion annually to achieve the full economic potential of its farm sector.

That is about Sh44.8 trillion and Sh54.6 trillion respectively, which is a lot of money for poor economies like ours.

Under the current circumstances, there is no way our governments can raise such kind of money, and hence, the need for strategic partnerships with the private sector in developing agriculture.