Africa’s own seed performance data show strong policies and weak delivery. The Africa Seed Summit in Eswatini must close that gap.

A farmer in rural West Africa could be forgiven for assuming her government has done little about seeds. In fact, on paper, her region has done more than almost any other.

Member states of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) score 8.05 out of 10 for their national seed policy frameworks in the African Union’s 2025 Seed Sector Performance Index. On the measure that matters to the rural farmer, whether quality seed actually reaches farms like hers, the same countries score 2.63.

That gap between the law and the field is the story of African seed systems today. It is also why the African Union is convening the first Africa Seed Summit in Ezulwini, Eswatini, from 5 to 7 October. Africa does not, on the whole, lack seed policies. What it lacks are seed markets that work, and the next decade of agricultural transformation will be won or lost on whether we build them.

The evidence for that claim is now unusually strong, because for the first time we can measure it over time. The 2025 Index assessed 50 of the African Union’s 55 member states, up from 47 in 2023; the average score is 4.63 out of 10, which is fair at best. Yet the leaders show what is possible in very different settings. South Africa scores 8.64, Egypt 8.13, Zambia 7.83, Kenya 7.64 and Zimbabwe 7.62. No country has a monopoly on getting this right.

The twenty-year jump

Many of the foundations beneath those scores were laid over the past two decades. Twenty years ago, when AGRA was founded, most African farmers planted varieties bred 20 to 30 years earlier, and more than eight in 10 replanted grains saved from the previous harvest.

Working with national research systems, universities and regulators, AGRA helped train a generation of plant breeders, supported the release of more than 650 improved varieties, helped establish 118 local seed companies and backed some 25,000 agro-dealers who brought certified seed within reach of farmers.

Rwanda had no private seed companies in 2006, but by 2020 it had 20. The country’s reliance on imported seed fell from 95% to 54% between 2018 and 2020, and by 2024 it was meeting domestic demand and exporting surplus seed.

But a variety released is not a variety planted. Across the continent, the use of quality commercial seed averages just 3.06 out of 10. Of 46 countries with data, none met all of their seed needs for their four priority crops, and 14 met less than a quarter of what they required for every one of them. Worse still, 14 countries released no new varieties of their priority crops at all between 2022 and 2024, held back by thin funding, too few breeders and poor research facilities.

To see why seed stalls, consider what a seed company needs before it will bet on a new variety. It needs a license it can obtain quickly from the public institute that bred it. It needs early generation seed, the small foundation stock from which certified seed is multiplied, in reliable volumes. Only seven countries rate as excellent on that measure, led by Tunisia, Egypt and Zimbabwe.

It needs inspectors who keep counterfeits off the shelves, credit a seasonal business can carry and, above all, farmers willing to buy because traders and processors will pay for what the new variety produces. Remove any one link and a promising variety stays at the research station, a public investment quietly written off.

Where governments have treated these links as a budget question rather than a policy question, results have followed. AGRA’s Centre of Excellence for Seed Systems in Africa used a diagnostic tool, SeedSAT, to assess national seed systems in 20 countries, and the findings became national Seed Sector Investment Plans. Countries that adopted the plans and wrote them into their budgets moved fastest.

Nigeria established a ₦ 50 billion (US$37.66 million) Presidential Catalytic Seed Fund, Malawi committed US$1 million of public money, and Ethiopia mobilised US$5 million with the Gates Foundation and its Agricultural Transformation Institute. By July 2026, Ethiopia had carried out about 87% of its priority actions and Nigeria about 77%. The lesson is plain. Plans that governments own get financed. Plans that donors own get filed.

Still, a serious objection deserves a serious answer. Most of the seed Africa’s smallholders plant does not come from companies at all. It comes from farmer-managed systems, the saving, swapping and selling of seed between neighbours and in local markets. The Index shows that these systems are poorly recognised in policy almost everywhere, with scores ranging from 0.83 in the Arab Maghreb Union to 4.96 in the Southern African Development Community.

Healthy seed systems

Critics of AGRA have long argued that the push for commercial seed overlooked these systems, and on recognition, the data bear them out. But the answer is not to choose between them. Community seed banks and local varieties belong inside national seed strategies, while a farmer who wants a drought-tolerant maize or a faster-maturing bean should be able to buy it, genuine and affordable, close to home. A healthy seed system offers both.

Regional integration is the other test. Seed harmonisation frameworks have existed in ECOWAS since 2008, in the Southern African Development Community since 2013 and in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa since 2014. Yet policy alignment has not become a consistent practice at the border.

The Common Market leads the regional rankings at 5.36, while the Economic Community of Central African States trails at 3.41 with no member above 5.0. A variety approved in one country should not need years of fresh trials to cross into the next. For seed companies, a regional market is the difference between a niche business and a viable one, and the African Continental Free Trade Area means little to a seed company that cannot move its product.

Under the Kampala CAADP Strategy and Action Plan for 2026 to 2035, seed is where Africa’s agrifood ambitions will first be tested. Ezulwini should therefore commit to things that can be counted. Every country with a seed investment plan should put it into its national agricultural investment plan and its budget. Public research institutes should license their varieties to seed companies on clear and predictable terms, and early generation seed should be produced on models that pay their own way.

Regional economic communities should turn harmonised rules into mutual recognition of variety releases. Farmer-managed seed systems should be written into national strategies. And the Seed Sector Performance Index, now a recognised measure of government accountability, should be reported every year.

For AGRA, entering its third decade, the role shifts accordingly, from building supply to helping markets work. That means connecting seed enterprises to finance, using market intelligence so that companies grow what farmers and buyers want, and carrying evidence of what works from one country to the next.

At the heart of this transition is CESSA’s shift towards commercialisation: ensuring that quality seed moves beyond research stations and production sites to reach farmers through stronger last-mile delivery, while stimulating sustained farmer adoption and protecting markets from counterfeit seed.

CESSA is deepening engagement with private-sector actors to develop practical business and financing models that can strengthen market-led seed systems, expand viable seed enterprises and improve access to genuine, affordable seed. At the same time, CESSA is supporting the development of policy and regulatory frameworks that create a predictable, enabling environment in which seed businesses can invest, innovate and thrive.

Ultimately, the real verdict on Ezulwini will not be delivered this month or the next. It will come at the next round of the Index, when we see whether the scores for seed reaching farmers begin to catch up with the scores for laws on paper. Because a seed law that never puts seed in a farmer’s hands feeds no one.

Alice Ruhweza is President of AGRA; Evelyn Lusenaka is the Director Center of Excellence for Seed Systems in Africa

The post Africa has written its seed laws, it now needs seed markets appeared first on New African Magazine .