The lack of political will to invest in agriculture has affected the chances of halving poverty and hunger in Africa by 2015, a senior United Nations official has said.
“Investment in agriculture, more than other sectors, provides four times the returns,” said Kanayo Nwanze, vice-president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, a UN agency working to end rural poverty.
“There are some countries, like Ghana and Uganda, that have made tremendous progress in the seven last years, and are likely to reach the Millenium Development Goal to halve poverty and hunger.”
“Most people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, directly or indirectly, so a more dynamic and inclusive industry could dramatically reduce rural poverty, helping to meet the MDG on poverty and hunger,” said the Bank’s first analysis of agriculture since 1982, citing several success stories to illustrate its point that investing in food production can reduce poverty.
Africa has had some success, particularly in Ghana, where agriculture drove the poverty rate down from 51.7 per cent in 1991 to 39.5 per cent in 1998, and then to 28.5 per cent.
Between 2001 and 2005, agriculture grew at 5.7 per cent a year, faster than the overall gross domestic product of 5.2 per cent. Since 2001, smallholder-based cocoa production has contributed about 30 per cent of agricultural expansion.
“Ghana has also enjoyed strong growth in horticulture driven mostly by pineapples,” the World Bank report noted.
Uganda adopted economic policies that have resulted in a boom in coffee production.
Asia provides many more examples of effective policy decisions by goverments boosting agricultural growth: in Vietnam, land reform, and trade and price liberalisation were implemented; in Bangladesh, new technologies have brought rising rural farm and non-farm earnings, with lower prices for rice, the staple food.
“Agriculture was also the key to China’s massive and unprecedented reduction in rural poverty, and to India’s slower but still substantial long-term decline ,” the World Bank report pointed out.
Asia is reaping the fruits of the green revolution in the 1970s, while African leaders failed to tap into that momentum,” Mr Nwanze said. “Look at India – in the 1960s it was listed as a hopeless case, while in the same period not a single African country was listed as food- insecure.
Thirty years later, India became a food exporter — and look at Africa.” Asian governments provided farmers with credit, price support, and input subsidies.
Although Kenya, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe initiated maize-based revolutions using hybrid seed and fertiliser, the programmes have been difficult to sustain due to high marketing costs, fiscal drain and frequent weather shocks.
Besides reducing poverty, Africa needs to invest in agriculture, as demand for food is expected to reach $100 billion by 2015, double the level in 2000.
The report suggested improved price incentives, increasing the quality and quantity of public investment; greater efficiency in product markets; effective access to financial services, with reduced exposure to uninsured risks; enhancing the performance of producer organisations; and promoting innovation through science and technology. Agriculture should be made more sustainable and a provider of environmental services.
A recent joint report by the US-based Michigan State University and the US Agency for International Development attempted to take a closer look at the challenges faced by smallholder farmers in Africa and why an “African green revolution” has not happened.
“While many farms in Asia were similarly very small at the time of their green revolutions, many of them enjoyed irrigation, higher returns to fertiliser that could be achieved with water control, and more than one cropping season,” said the report. These factors substantially improved Asian land productivity, and partially relieved the severity of the land constraint among small farms.
“By contrast, the vast majority of African farms are dependent on rain and one crop season per year,”Mr Nwanze said that “In Africa, unlike Asia, you have a very patchy farming system – it is not homogenous, like Asia.”
The colonial legacy left much of Africa with severe land inequalities between smallholders, large-scale or state-owned farms, highlighting the need for land reform. A lack of investment in research and development is another obstacle. The main green revolution cereals in Asia were wheat and rice, largely irrigated crops.
The World Bank report also listed the need for infrastructure development, the lack of which has increased transaction costs and market risks, and investment in fertilisers and irrigation.
Technologies developed in other parts of the world were often not directly transferable, and Africa-specific technologies would be required to improve the region’s agricultural productivity.The East African
