Africa has written its seed laws; the delivery is what lags.
The first Africa Seed Summit opens in Ezulwini, Eswatini, from 5 to 7 October, and the problem waiting for delegates is not a shortage of legislation. Africa’s seed laws, for the most part, already exist. What the continent lacks is a delivery system: markets that move quality seed out of research stations and onto farms. That is the case made by Alice Ruhweza, president of AGRA, and Evelyn Lusenaka, director of the Centre of Excellence for Seed Systems in Africa (CESSA), and it frames the summit as a test of execution rather than of drafting.
The evidence they point to is a two-number contrast. In the African Union’s 2025 Seed Sector Performance Index, member states of the Economic Community of West African States score 8.05 out of 10 for their national seed policy frameworks. On the measure that matters to a rural farmer, whether quality seed actually reaches her farm, the same countries score 2.63. The gap between the law and the field is, in their reading, the story of African seed systems today.
The Index itself is new enough to show movement. It assessed 50 of the African Union’s 55 member states this year, up from 47 in 2023, and the average score of 4.63 out of 10 is fair at best. The leaders demonstrate 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, the authors note, has a monopoly on getting this right.
Why does seed stall? On this account, the answer is operational rather than legal. A seed company will not bet on a new variety unless several conditions hold at once. 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 variety produces. Remove any one link and a promising variety stays at the research station, a public investment quietly written off.
Much of the supply side, though, has been built. When AGRA was founded twenty years ago, 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, backed the release of more than 650 improved varieties, helped establish 118 local seed companies and supported some 25,000 agro-dealers who brought certified seed within reach of farmers. Rwanda tracks that build-out: no private seed companies in 2006, twenty by 2020, reliance on imported seed down from 95% to 54% between 2018 and 2020, and by 2024 a country meeting domestic demand and exporting surplus seed.
Delivery has not kept pace. Use of quality commercial seed averages just 3.06 out of 10 across the continent. Of the 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. Fourteen 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.
Where the links have been treated as a budget question rather than a policy question, results have followed. CESSA 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 the authors draw is blunt: plans that governments own get financed; plans that donors own get filed.
One objection deserves space. 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 these systems are poorly recognised in policy almost everywhere, scoring from 0.83 in the Arab Maghreb Union to 4.96 in the Southern African Development Community. Critics of AGRA have long argued that the commercial seed push overlooked them, and on recognition the data bear them out. The response offered is not to choose between the two. 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.
Meanwhile, regional integration is the other unfinished job. 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 alignment has not become consistent practice at the border. The Common Market leads the regional rankings at 5.36; 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 a seed company, 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 firm 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. The prescription for Ezulwini is a list of commitments that can be counted. Every country with a seed investment plan should write 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 from building supply to helping markets work: 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 that transition is CESSA’s turn towards commercialisation, meant to ensure quality seed moves beyond research stations and production sites through stronger last-mile delivery, stimulates sustained farmer adoption and protects markets from counterfeit seed. The centre is deepening engagement with private-sector actors to develop practical business and financing models, and supporting policy and regulatory frameworks that give seed businesses a predictable environment in which to invest, innovate and thrive.
The verdict on Ezulwini will not be delivered this month or the next. It will come at the next round of the Index, when it becomes clear whether the scores for seed reaching farmers begin to catch up with the scores for laws on paper. As the authors put it, a seed law that never puts seed in a farmer’s hands feeds no one.