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AFRICA should abandon the notion of fighting famine through an agricultural “green revolution” like those that filled bellies in Europe and Asia. What is needed is a series of “rainbow evolutions” that will upgrade the continent’s diverse agricultural systems.

So says an international panel of scientists who have devised a major new strategy for improving African agriculture. Their report was launched on 25 June in New York by the UN secretary-general Kofi Annan. “It’s not possible to repeat the green revolution in Africa,” says Rudy Rabbinge of Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands, co-chair of the panel. The report is published by the InterAcademy Council (IAC), an alliance of 90 scientific academies worldwide.

The green revolutions relied mainly on improvements to yields in rice and wheat, two crops that were already widely grown in the areas that benefited. But in Africa, rice, wheat and maize account for just 20 per cent of food production, so no one technology will provide the answers. “We are trying to make clear there is no single magic bullet,” Rabbinge says.

The IAC report, unlike most others on African agriculture, has been written mainly by African scientists. The report also addresses wider issues affecting agriculture, such as economic, infrastructural and political constraints. Uniquely, it recommends that Africa’s farmers be closely involved in deciding which projects to pursue.

Annan, who commissioned the report two years ago, will formally present it to African heads of state on Monday 5 July, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at the annual summit of the African Union.