Africa’s food and agribusiness sector stands at a defining crossroads. With the sector projected to reach one trillion dollars by 2030 and 1.2 billion young people set to enter the job market in developing countries over the coming decade, a new wave of institutional investment is now being marshalled to convert that potential into real economic transformation.
The clearest signal of intent came in October 2025, when the World Bank Group launched AgriConnect at its annual meetings in Washington. World Bank Group President Ajay Banga announced plans to double its annual agribusiness investment to nine billion dollars by 2030 while mobilising an additional five billion dollars per year from partners, with the initiative targeting more than 300 million farmers worldwide. Senegal became the first country to sign a national compact under the initiative in February 2026, targeting grains, horticulture, and livestock. Côte d’Ivoire followed days later, with the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the World Bank jointly launching the country’s AgriConnect component in Abidjan on February 5.
The initiative’s architects argue that the continent’s food system already possesses the raw ingredients for transformation. Africa holds more than 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, yet the continent currently imports the majority of its food, with infrastructure bottlenecks, limited finance, and weak digital connectivity identified as the primary barriers to realising the sector’s full potential.
The World Bank’s strategy identifies a paradox at the heart of current agricultural spending. African governments collectively spend around 17 billion dollars annually on agricultural subsidies, yet much of this investment produces limited long-term returns. Blanket fertiliser subsidies frequently encourage monocropping, degrade soil health, and increase greenhouse gas emissions, while also crowding out the private sector investment needed to build competitive rural markets. The World Bank argues that redirecting the same public resources toward improved seeds, mechanisation, and climate-smart practices could triple agricultural productivity and make the sector genuinely attractive to private capital.
Digital tools are already demonstrating what targeted reform can deliver in practice. In Zambia, electronic voucher systems allow farmers to select inputs via smartphones, increasing competition among suppliers. Senegal has pivoted away from short-cycle input subsidies toward longer-term investments in irrigation and cooperative development. Malawi, through a digital farm registry, is now channelling support to one million of its most productive farmers, freeing resources for research and social protection.
At the AgriConnect launch, World Bank Group President Banga framed the central question as how to make agriculture a genuine driver of jobs and income rather than simply a measure of food output, arguing that smallholder farmers must become full participants in a thriving food economy, not merely producers.
Critics note that the announcement raises as many questions as it answers. While the finance target is ambitious, the challenge will be for the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), to shift from large corporate lending toward more catalytic, risk-tolerant investment that reaches smaller actors and strengthens local financial systems.
The World Bank Group has identified agribusiness as one of five priority sectors for job creation, alongside infrastructure and energy, primary healthcare, tourism, and manufacturing, reflecting a broader institutional judgment that no other sector delivers a comparable multiplier effect across an entire economy.
