*  *  Introduction  All the countries of East Africa share the long term vision of transforming the structure of their economies to attain middle income status and eradicate mass poverty. Structural transformation, which is the essence of economic development, will not be achieved without the modernisation of the agricultural sector.
The lessons of successful development around the world demonstrate that agricultural modernisation, involving the transformation of low productivity subsistence farming into high productivity commercial farming, is almost always a precondition of industrialisation. In this address I want to set out what I believe should be the key elements of a feasible strategy for agricultural modernisation in East Africa.