The focus is all wrong if the green revolution in Africa only consists of agriculture.  Instead, the focus should be on silviculture -- planting trees to develop forests -- and forest farming -- crops in a forest setting.  These trees should consist of sources for food, fuel (dead limbs made into charcoal), fiber (to make cloth and ropes, etc.) and fodder (animal feed).  This will make Africa more self-sufficient.  It is like the old addage: "Feed a person with a fish and you feed them for a day.  Teach them to fish and you feed them for a lifetime."  Moreover, when trees are esatablished they require less water, as their roots run deep -- this is especially true of desert and arid species.  In addition, along with these forests will be an increase in biodiversity, and hence, stability, leading to potential ecotourism.  Again, more self-sufficiency.  Yet another benefit would be water purification, as forest soils are the best water filters on the planet.  This is more important than usual, as Africa has a great deal of unclean water.

The real problem why Africa is starving and disease ridden is that US Libs erroneously banned the miracle product that spawned it: DDT.

DDT extremists threw the baby out with the bath water and changed us from using a very simple, inexpensive and available insecticide to using ridiculously overpriced and energy intensive proprietary products.

Did I say proprietary with regard to an article about Bill Gates?  Oh, excuse me, but a lot of what the Gates Foundation does looks a lot like what Microsoft does -- apply patches and fixes to a problem rather than swapping out the underlying architecture.

Good thing the United Nations has recently asked to be allowed to use DDT in Africa to eliminate household pests.

Oh, BTW -- sometime look at the total amount of charity worldwide given by all people, especially the average American, and the Gates Foundation will look a like a pipsqueak in a crowd.   It's a nice attempt for the largest stockholder of Microsoft to keep his public image while charging usurious fees for unneeded software.

DDT may have seemed cheap at the time, but it was no bargain.  Its widespread agricultural use lead to serious ecological consequences,  and once it gets into the environment, it does not readily go away.  The WHO has endorsed limited indoor use of DDT to control mosquitoes in certain areas, and I certainly hope it stays limited, with an eye to developing alternatives, and phasing it out in the near future.  I would hate to see it brought back for agricultural use. Granted, the proprietary chemicals that replaced it have problems of their own, and I'm sure that they are ridiculously overpriced, but reviving DDT is not the answer. We will have to be more creative than that.