A Green Revolution in Africa?

In today's New York Times 2004 MacArthur Fellow Pedro Sanchez, who runs the Tropical Agriculture Program of the Earth Institute at Columbia, does that rarest of things. He presents an article about Africa that proposes solutions without obsessing on problems. Sanchez advocates something akin to the"Green revolution" of the 1960s-1980s in Asia and Latin America that greatly expanded the agricultural capacity of countries in those regions. (In August the folks at America's Future Foundation somewhat surprisingly addressed this topic as well, see this blog entry. See also this piece from Tom Paine.

One of the problems with commentary on Africa today is that it is either purely reactive (ie: dealing with the crisis du jour -- the Sudan now, Liberia last year) or else largely self interested. Sanchez instead primarily proposes a solution. Would that there were more of this (including, I'm afraid to say, from yours truly) among those of us who consider ourselves to be astute observers and critics of the world.