This paper examines how the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition seeks to combine country ownership and public-private partnerships in order to accelerate agriculture development in Africa and push the frontier of enlightened capitalism. The stage has been set for the New Alliance to achieve this. Since 2000, the continent has made unprecedented progress on both increasing macroeconomic stability and investments and making strong policy commitments by African leaders under the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme. Africa is moving beyond the perception that it will be stuck forever in permanent crisis. There is no doubt that Africa has taken a substantial turn in a new direction, particularly in a few countries. But these positive trends have not translated into the expected reductions in poverty. Recognizing that growth in the agriculture sector can reduce poverty at least twice as fast as other sectors, the New Alliance provides well-structured frameworks for governments, the private sector, and donors but also civil society to concentrate their efforts in a systematic way on agriculture.