Kenya: Lower Nzoia River Irrigation Project Works Begin

The Kenyan authorities have recently started work on the lower Nzoia River irrigation project site after more than a year's delay. The work, costing a total of 7 billion shillings ($70 million), was awarded to China's hydroelectric engineering and construction company, Sinohydro, which was selected in 2017.

The work will consist of the development and rehabilitation of an existing dyke on the Nzoia River, as well as building another 35 km long dyke.

The Lower Nzoia Irrigation Project also includes the construction of a concrete diversion weir, a 135 m connecting channel and a 2.7 km channel. Funding is provided by Kenya’s central government, with the support of the World Bank.

It is a project that will protect the populations of Siaya and Busia counties from “persistent flooding”, and it will be crucial for local agriculture, especially fruit cultivation. The cultivation of cereals such as rice will be the highlight of this agriculture. Farmers in the Rift Valley will be able to alternate this water-intensive crop with soya beans.

The Kenyan government also estimates that the exploitation of the waters of the Nzoia River will be a springboard for the extension of the area of irrigated plantations by more than 4,000 hectares. At present, the irrigated plantations in the project area have an area of less than 1,000 hectares. In the near future, the government also plans to set up a rice-processing plant in the region.

The actual start of work on the Lower Nzoia Irrigation Project, however, is the result of intense negotiations between the central government and the people affected by the project in Trans-Nzoia County, who were claiming 1.2 billion Kenyan shillings (close to $12 million) in compensation. Their opposition to the project caused a delay of more than a year. The government eventually gave in to their demands.

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Giant Dam Project, Irrigated Sugar Plantations Disrupt Ethiopian Communities

A giant dam and irrigated sugar plantations are “wreaking havoc” in southern Ethiopia and threaten to wipe out tens of thousands of indigenous peoples , a US-based thinktank has claimed. The Oakland Institute says that while the Ethiopian government has made considerable progress on human rights under prime minister Abiy Ahmed, it has yet to address the impact of state development plans on indigenous populations in the lower Omo valley, where people face loss of livelihoods, starvation, and violent conflict .

Acute hunger is now widespread, the organisation said in a report, due to blockage of the Omo River by Gibe III, Africa’s tallest dam. Since late 2015, the dam has stopped the river’s annual flood, a natural event that the valley’s inhabitants have relied upon for centuries for farming. As a result, entire communities have been tipped into destitution.

Responding to the report, Seleshi Bekele, Ethiopia’s minister of water, irrigation and electricity , said that while the government accepts there are problems, “the points raised in the paper are not properly documented or balanced.” Seleshi said solutions had been put in place to mitigate the impact of the dam, including small-scale irrigation and outgrower schemes.

According to the report, however, such promises have not materialised. Moreover, said the study, communities claim they were tricked into leaving their ancestral land in order to make way for sugar plantations built by the Ethiopian Sugar Corporation as part of its mammoth Omo-Kuraz sugar development project (OKSDP). The project, a 100,000 hectare (247,000 acre) irrigated agricultural scheme, is fed by the waters of the Omo.

Indigenous populations were told the sugar plantations would bring hundreds of thousands of new jobs to the region. They were pressed to give up nomadic livestock-herding and adopt sedentary lifestyles, as part of the Ethiopian government’s controversial “villagisation” programme, which has since been halted. Some were threatened with having their cattle seized or killed by police.

The report alleges that resettlement sites are not big enough to feed families, and that promised services – schooling, healthcare, grinding mills, food aid, and electricity – either remain undelivered or have been woefully inadequate. Only a small percentage of new jobs have materialised, with a large majority given to migrant workers from other regions of Ethiopia.

Seleshi countered that the Sugar Corporation had spent 79m Ethiopian birr (US$ 2.7m; June 2019) constructing infrastructure and social services in the valley, including schools and health centres.

This is Oakland’s fourth report on South Omo. In 2013 it accused the Ethiopian government of using killings, beatings and rapes in order to force indigenous communities to accept the sugar cane projects. It also accused western aid agencies of covering up evidence of the abuses. Other international groups such as Human Rights Watch and Survival International have also condemned the government for abuses in South Omo in the past.

Yet there are some signs of a change in approach. At an April seminar on South Omo’s livelihood challenges,  government minister Seyoum Mesfin told visiting academics and journalists that the new government recognised certain “development interventions in the pastoralist areas … came with a cost.” The minister ... and added that the government “will not allow a repeat of those situations”.

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Cameroon riot police block farmer protest

May 31 to prevent a march of protest over bad roads and low state support for agriculture.

Frustrations have been on the rise in the central African oil and cocoa producer country ahead of an October presidential election, with critics of long-serving President Paul Biya disappointed by what they call a slow pace of reform.

Thirty-seven farmers were detained by police while several hundred others were blocked from reaching a planned rallying point in Yaounde, said Bernard Njonga, head of Citizens' Association for the Defence of Collective Interests and organiser of the march.

Cameroon officials were not available to comment but a police commander on the scene said his forces had been ordered to prevent the demonstration to ensure public order.

"I am sorry the government does not want to listen to us because we did not come here to create trouble," said Simeon Fandio, who farms near Bafoussam in the West region. "All we wanted was that they should hear our cry."

Farmers have long complained about the poor state of Cameroon's roads -- unpaved and deeply pitted by seasonal rains -- as an obstacle to marketing their produce.

"What we want is farm-to-market roads, because much of the food crops we produce are perishable," said Valentin Amba Miasse, who headed a group of 25 demonstrators from Mboma village near Abong-Mbang, 160 km (100 miles) southeast of Yaounde. He added that the farmers were also seeking subsidised fertilizers and access to high-yield seeds.

Cameroon is the world's fifth-largest cocoa grower, and one of Africa's oldest oil producers.

Reuters

Foreign investors discover the potential in African agriculture

by Jackson Mvunganyi

Agriculture is one of the most important economic activities in Africa. In addition to providing employment, agriculture has the potential to transform African societies through the increased export of produce to Western markets.

Many agree that transformation will not take place without increased investment in agriculture, including public or private loans to small farmers. Statistics show that Africa has about 12% of the world’s arable land but 80% of it is not in use. Observers say there are many opportunities to develop land and even make it attractive to agribusinesses.


Among those taking advantage of new opportunities are Kenyan farmers, including some who are now making millions of dollars exporting flowers.

According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, horticulture has become the third largest source of foreign exchange in Kenya after tourism and tea.

But statistics show that farming in Kenya is still typically carried out by small farmers who usually cultivate no more than two hectares.

Adieno Achieng is a small scale farmer in Kisumu. She says government can support farmers like herself by subsidizing farm inputs like fertilizers and seeds. She says that farmers would also benefit from access to agricultural loans.


But in recent years, government assistance to small farmers and to agriculture in general has been in decline.

Mohammed Beavogui is the director of the Western & Central Africa Division of International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome, Italy.

He says even international development aid meant for agriculture “dropped from 20% to 4%...” But he says that there are signs to show that this trend is changing because of the rise in food prices internationally. “People complain of food prices, but for agriculture somewhere, it is an opportunity,” he says.

Leaders from many developing countries are also recognizing the need to invest in their own food security.

At the 2009 G8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy, donors collectively committed $20 billion to agricultural development and a new approach to global food security.

Beavogui says, “The share of agriculture in development is increasing…. For example, my institution, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, got an increase of almost 50 percent of its replenishment to support agricultural projects…. All these are showing that there is an effort to invest in agriculture,” he says.

He says productivity in Africa has a long way to go to catch up with counterparts in developing nations in Asia. “We still have to introduce new seeds…new technology, and fertilizer…”


Also needed, say development specialists are improved ways to take goods to market.

“If you want agriculture to work you need to allow agricultural products to get to the market, and that means you need roads,” Beavogui says.

The decision to invest in local agriculture often depends on a region’s ability to move goods from the farm to the factories or to ports for export.

Statistics indicate that only 34% of sub-Saharan Africa’s rural population lives within two kilometers of a paved road. In most of Africa, poor road infrastructure accounts for investors deciding to look elsewhere. “Every fifth African needs at least five hours to get to the nearest market….” Beavogui says.

Economists point to Malawi, which earns up to 70 percent of its foreign exchange from tobacco. Most of it is grown in the rural areas, where farmers have to transport the crop many miles to the commercial capital, Blantyre.


There are some signs that local and western investors are slowly attracting interest in African agricultural potential. The best example is the African Agricultural Land Fund, a private equity strategy that seeks to invest in food production across sub-Saharan Africa.

EmVest Asset Management is a joint venture between GrainVest South Africa and Emergent Asset Management of Britain. EmVest is managed by people with an active interest in African agriculture. GrainVest is a South African firm that is active throughout the agriculture production chain, including crops, maize milling and futures trading.

Patrick Devenish is the CEO of agro-industrial conglomerate AICO Africa, Ltd., incorporated in Zimbabwe. He says that AICO has invested heavily in African agriculture and the returns have been good. In Zimbabwe, the company is involved in buying and selling cotton, from which it makes and sells cotton lint.

Devenish says the agricultural sector in Africa is a particularly under-targeted area that offers great returns for any western investor. He’d also like to see US companies provide a market for African agricultural exports. “We would like to see a demand pull rather than push,” he says. Government has a role to play in attracting investment, Devenish says.

“We would like to see a government focusing on providing an environment for conducive to business rather than getting directly involved in the business…. There are government interventions that have made life difficult.”

That includes Zimbabwe, he says, where the government confiscated the farms of once-successful farmers.

AICO Africa Ltd. has been providing financing to small-scale cotton farmers, says Devenish, because “the average small farmer in Zimbabwe doesn’t have access to [it]….”

Beavogui of IFAD says another project sponsored by Kofi Annan’s NGO, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), is developing a “breadbasket approach” to coordinate agricultural development efforts in a Ghana. The plan will add up to US $500m to the agricultural component of GDP, create up to 15,000 new jobs and double the household incomes of close to 250,000 smallholders.

Meanwhile, a company called Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), which serves West Africa is helping small farmers. Its CEO, Andrew Ali, says the strategy of investing in small farms is more useful “than replicating the big farms in the midwest of the US….”

Beavogui says it’s similar to the model used by Asian nations like Singapore where small farms are the cornerstone of the country’s relatively successfully agricultural export strategy.

VOA News

African Development Bank signs Liberia agricultural recovery grant

by Edwin Fayia, III

Following an extensive discussion with senior Government officials in late August, visiting African Development Bank (ADB) vice president Dr. Kamal El Kheshen and party signed a US$18.24 million grant for the agriculture sector of Southeastern Liberia. The signing was done in Monrovia.

This agriculture grant, according to the Ministry of Finance (MOF) officials and ADB executives, is intended to support the 'Agriculture Sector Rehabilitation Project' (ASRP) in Southeastern Liberia.

Speaking after the signing ceremony held at the MOF, the ADB vice president said: “This constitutes 78 percent of the total cost of the program which is co-financed with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Liberian Government.”

Dr. Kheshen also extolled the excellent relations between the Bank and government owing to sound economic policies and progress made across the country. He added: “This was the first operation which the Bank provided to post-conflict development efforts, directed at Liberia's agriculture sector.”

The ADB top official noted that about 9,600 rural households are expected to directly benefit from the program. “The key benefits,” Dr. Kheshen intimated, “include 100 kilometers of feeder road, improved water management infrastructure for 1,600 hectares, 16 multifunctional facilities within the four-project counties in the Southeast of the country.”

In addition to rehabilitated office premises and agricultural extension delivery capacity, “the project compliments other ongoing projects and its design fully recognizes and responds to gender, environment and climate change issues,”  Kheshen indicated.

Liberian Observer

Egypt becomes biggest commercial land investor in Ethiopia

by Desalegn Sisay

Ethiopia is set to grant 20,000 hectares of land to Egypt, making the latter the biggest foreign investor of agricultural land in Ethiopia.

A branch of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoARD), in charge of commercial farming, has agreed to accept Egypt’s proposal. "We are in the process of providing the farm land," said a source who demanded anonymity. The land is in the Afar Regional State. Egypt’s request was submitted through its National Bank which is expected to sign the deal by the end of the month.

Ethiopia’s policy shift made last year, allowing foreign entities to grab huge commercial farmlands, has attracted a lot of attention from both foreign companies and countries.

The Government of Djibouti was the first to obtain 3,000 hectares of farmland in Bale, a suitable agricultural zone in the Oromia region located some 400 kilometers south of Addis Ababa.

Karaturi, an Indian company, and Saudi Star, established by Sheik Mohamed Al Amudi, a Saudi national billionaire, have also obtained land with the aim of growing export crops for their respective countries. The land deals were made directly with the central government.

Ethiopia has no specialised institutions charged with the promotion of commercial farming despite the country’s new land policies.

But with a growing demand from many foreign entities, the Ethiopian "Government is in the process of establishing a federal body under MoARD" to handle such demands, the source said.

Recently, an Egyptian delegation headed by their Prime Minister, Ahmed Nazif, visited Ethiopia. The 26 member delegation made up of Ministers and heads of agricultural companies met with Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi and expressed both the Egyptian government’s and private companies’ interest to invest in Ethiopia.

According to Ahmed Nazif, the National Bank of Egypt will invest at least 40 million in the agricultural sector. He also said that five Egyptian drug companies were also preparing to invest in the Ethiopian health sector.

Afrik

Norwegian company to build fertiliser port terminals in Mozambique, Tanzania

A $60m investment by Yara International to build fertiliser terminals in two African ports in Tanzania and Mozambique, aims to significantly improve port efficiencies for agricultural commodities and act as a catalyst for wider agricultural growth across the region.

Improving the ports in Beira and Dar es Salaam will make fertiliser imports and infrastructure management more cost effective, efficient and competitive. Tanzania has one of the lowest uses of fertiliser in sub-Saharan Africa.

The plan is for the ports to act as regional hubs, triggering new investments along the value chain. These regional corridors will link up government, multilaterals and private sector partners to invest in broader social and economic issues including: improved rail & road networks servicing rural areas; increased agro dealer development, enhanced rural agricultural credit and greater farmer field school promotion.

Yara’s CEO Thorleif Enger said, “At the current pace, it is estimated that Africa will be able to feed less than half of its population by 2015. Business can be a principal motor for development in the agricultural sector and Yara is focused on making new investments that have the potential to catalyse growth for years to come.”

New port cold storage terminal to spur Ghanaian exports

Ghana is expected to fetch over $1.2 billion in foreign exchange annually. This follows the inauguration of a-300,000-metric-ton capacity world class fruit terminal facility at Tema for the storage of horticultural produce annually.

The US$5million facility is part of a three-phase programme aimed at upgrading the cold chain infrastructure of the maritime and airport as well as the construction of farm pack houses, with the view to opening up the horticultural sector of the economy. The facility which began in 2006 under the Agricultural Services Sub-Sector Investment Programme (AgSSIP), through a World Bank facility, also included the conversion of an old open shed occupying some 4,400-square-metres into eight fully refrigerated chambers completed with cold store facilities.

Inaugurating the fruit depot at shed nine at the Tema Harbour, Vice President Alhaji Aliu Mahama, said the facility marks the successful completion of the first phase of the government’s programme of diversifying agriculture through non-traditional trade improvement as part of the development of the horticultural industry. Government, he hinted, was constructing a similar facility at the Kotoka International Airport by tapping into the Millennium Challenged Account (MCA) as the second phase of the programme, while the third phase would visit and address the issue of infrastructure both at the farm site and roads leading to the farms where actual production took place.

These developments, the Vice President observed, would facilitate both internal and external trade as the country take advantage of supportive weather and better proximity in the export market. According to Aliu Mahama, “here in Ghana, it is ‘summer’ all year round; a situation which enhances and supports organic production of horticultural products. As of now the European Union alone imported 90,000 tons of fresh produce from Ghana since 2007 which earned us some 80 million Euros.” He therefore expressed hope that the converted facility would play a special role in contributing to the transformation of the Tema Port to be seen as the port of choice serving the West African sub-region.

Peace FM

Botswana to invest $1.5 billion in agriculture over next seven years

Botswana will invest 10 billion pula ($1.5 billion) in its agriculture industry over the next seven years to secure food supplies and boost farming's contribution to the economy, Agriculture Minister Christian De Graaf said.

The money will be spent on improving farm infrastructure and securing water supplies for irrigation, De Graaf said in an interview in the capital, Gaborone, today.

"The underlying principle is that we want to produce enough crops for the nation,'' he said. "We want to steer the agricultural sector, but we don't want this to be government driven.''

The contribution of agriculture to Botswana's gross domestic product has fallen from more than 80 percent when the southern African nation gained independence in 1966 to just 2 percent today. The country produces just 15 percent of its national cereal requirement, De Graaf said, and the government wants to increase this to more than 50 percent.

As much as 400,000 hectares of new or underutilized land will be brought into production between April next year and March 2016, the minister said. Subsidies will be introduced to encourage farmers to take part.

Under the plan, known as Integrated Support for Arable Agricultural Development, De Graaf said the government will also ensure water for irrigation.

One of the major water projects being undertaken is the Zambezi river project, which aims to construct a 3 billion pula ($442.5 million) pipeline from the Chobe River to the Pandamatenga district in northwestern Botswana. The pipeline will irrigate as much as 40,000 hectares of land, De Graaf said.

"Another 2 billion pula will be used on the development of infrastructure,'' he added.

Botswana wants to source 2.8 million cubic liters a year from the Chobe for the project, and is in discussions with neighboring Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe about securing water rights, De Graaf said.

Bloomberg

Support for infrastructure may be more important than subsidies: study

Zambia's Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives has found that there is need to direct resources at improving infrastructure rather than subsidy schemes for the country's agriculture to be efficient.

This is according to a policy synthesis funded by the United States Agency for International Development and the Swedish International Development Agency. The report was published last month by the Food Security Research Project under the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, in collaboration with Agriculture Consultative Forum, Zambian stakeholders and Michigan State University of the USA.

The report says although 70 per cent of the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives budget went into fertiliser subsidies, maize marketing and stockholding programmes, only 20 per cent of small-scale farmers in Zambia used fertiliser. It says improvement of infrastructure like roads, electricity and programmes like extension services and education were important if Zambia was to make agriculture more efficient.

It also supports the notion that market access was a key determinant of smallholder’s income diversification and growth, adding that for peripheral regions, improvements in market access required investment in infrastructure.

"The introduction of a complex set of subsidy programmes via local governments and cooperatives does not seem to be the most efficient route to develop agriculture,” the report says. The brief notes that introduction of these subsidy schemes was problematic, not only from an efficiency perspective but also from a distribution point of view.

Daily Mail

Angola invests 'billions' in agriculture-related infrastructure

Angola, with plentiful water and fertile soils, can re-establish itself as one of the world's richest farming nations as it recovers from a civil war that devastated the sector, the country's prime minister said.

"We have the potential to become one of the world's richest agricultural countries," said Prime Minister Fernando Dias dos Santos on August 14.

Angola was the world's fourth biggest coffee producer and a top exporter of sugarcane, bananas, sisal and cotton before a 27-year civil war on independence from Portugal in 1975 led to a mass exodus of farmers to the cities and halted production.

Dias dos Santos said Angola, which now imports over half of its food, has invested billions of dollars to rebuild roads, energy and water supply networks to revive the industry and link the capital Luanda to the countryside.

"We have been creating infrastructures that are necessary to increase internal production. We are completing roads for the transportation of goods and people and building energy and water supply networks that are also important," he said.

He said growing state and private investment in the sector will make Angola less dependent on oil, which accounts for almost 90 percent of the country's exports.

"We are creating areas of investment in several provinces in the rural areas. Some projects will be financed by the state but there has to be more private investment. I think that in the next two to three years there will be visible changes in production."

Angola is also trying to revive its once prosperous coffee and banana industry, Dias dos Santos said.

"There are old coffee plantations being revived in the centre and south of the country and rising investments in banana plantations like in Benguela, Luanda and Luanda Sul," he said. "Our goal today is not the same as in the 1970s, we have to surpass those goals. The situation is different and the population has increased."

Angola recently surpassed Nigeria as Africa's biggest oil producer and has experienced double-digit growth in both the oil and non-oil sectors. But ordinary Angolans have so far failed to tap into such growth -- almost two-thirds live on less than $2 a day and unemployment hovers around 40 percent. Some see agriculture as the only way to improve the lives of the people amid rising food prices and inflation.

The World Bank recently urged the Angolan government to bolster investment in agriculture and offered $30 million to fund an agricultural project geared toward market production. But in the traditional farming provinces of Benguela, Bie, Huambo and Malange, local farmers still work on small plots of land to grow just enough to feed their families.

Dias dos Santos said efforts were underway to allow big companies to develop Angola's vast agricultural resources.

"We are pushing for more companies to invest in the sector. We will protect the self-sufficient agriculture but we are also going to bet on big companies that introduce new technology," he said.

Angolan farmers cultivate less than 10 percent of an estimated 35 million hectares of arable land due to lack of technology and financing, making Angola one of the most promising agricultural nations.

"With these investments we will surely do better than before," he said.

Reuters

Ghana, Madagascar, Mali to receive agricultural infrastructure support

Small-scale farmers in Ghana, Madagascar and Mali are the first beneficiaries of a multibillion-dollar project to rehabilitate African agricultural infrastructure.

The project, part of the efforts to reach the United Nations's Millennium Development Goals, tackling poverty in time for 2014, will be expanded to other developing countries later.

Kofi Annan, of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra), signed a memorandum of understanding earlier this month with the United States government's Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).

Under the agreement much transport infrastructure will be established or improved, agricultural research will be strengthened and seeds and other technologies will be distributed to small-scale farmers.

Mosa Justin of Madagascar's Millennium Challenge Account, which administers MCC money, says the joint project will work with researchers to better distribute seeds in three different zones: maize in Antsiranana, rice and butter beans in Menabe and maize and rice in Boeny.

The Malagasy agriculture ministry has also signed a partnership with private fertiliser companies to increase production. "There is a need to create a fertiliser map according to the type and variety of soils as well as a blending plant to make the most appropriate fertiliser," says Justin. Fertiliser use in Madagascar is one-twelfth of the African average.

In landlocked Mali the Millennium Challenge Account has begun a massive rice irrigation project in the central Alatona region, which is reliant on water from the vast inland Niger River delta.

Project director Tidiani Traoré says work will begin on extending the Sahel Canal by 23km, building a new 63km canal and boosting the banks of the Malado Fala -- a Fala is an ancient dry stream bed used as a natural canal -- by December.

About 16 000ha of farmland -- roughly half the Alatona region -- will receive improved irrigation, Traoré says.

Plans also include formalising land titles, education about land tenure rights, increasing farmers' access to agricultural advice and training in fish, livestock and financial management.

The Mali project also aims to construct a bridge and tar the first 81km of road from the rice paddies in the Niono inland delta, which floods annually, by October this year.

Ghanaian plans include starting a dialogue between the private and public sector on how best to work together to get seeds of new crop varieties to farmers' fields.

SciDev

Mozambique awards Indian company fertilizer plant contract

Mozambique said on May 8 it had awarded India's Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers (RCF) a contract to set up a $1.9 billion fertiliser plant as soon as local gas deposits can be used to power the project.

Agriculture Minister Soares Nhaca said the ammonia urea and phosphates plant would be funded by state-run RCF and South Africa's Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), who would also seek bank loans to supplement financing.

RCF and IDC will build and operate the factory, which will be jointly owned by them and the government of Mozambique, the minister said. "We have authorised RCF to build a $1.9 billion fertiliser plant as soon as possible in the southern province of Inhambane, but we need to discover gas first because this is a high energy consumption project," he said.

"The present gas availability in Mozambique is 3.5 trillion cubic feet, with more potential in Inhambane, and there are prospects for further exploration in central Mozambique, but we need to discover it (gas) first then we'll immediately implement the fertilizer factory," Nhaca said.

Mozambique is one of the world's poorest countries but has been one of the fastest growing economies in southern Africa in the last decade since the end of a 17-year civil war in 1992. Its energy resources include natural gas and coal reserves.

In June 2005, South Africa's fuels and petro-chemical group Sasol won an eight-year contract to prospect for oil and natural gas off the coast of Inhambane.

Nhaca said fertiliser production would increase Mozambique's crop yields and cut imports.

Mozambique wants to boost its agriculture output to avoid being hit hard by global food price rises which have triggered sometimes violent protests across the globe -- including in Africa.

Mozambique will need to import at least 1.25 million tonnes of maize, wheat and rice by August to cover food shortages caused by floods and cyclones this year, which have left at least 150,000 people in urgent need of food aid.

Reuters

African infrastructural development is lagging, says FAO's Diouf

In an exclusive interview with the German weekly, Die Zeit, Jacques Diouf, the Senegal-born general secretary of the FAO, calls for a look behind the scene, which despite all the talk about "aid" is characterized by the fact that aid programs for agriculture in developing countries were cut by 50 percent between 1992 and 2000. Even the most-recent, 9th development fund of the EU for the ACP countries (about 100 countries in Africa, the Carribbean and the Pacific region), only grants 6.5 percent to the farming sector.

Beyond the immediate emergency aid for the poorest developing nations, Diouf said, programs for the real development of water resources and of transportation infrastructure is urgent. "In the African countries south of the Sahara, only about 4 percent of the arable land is irrigated, in contrast to Asia, where it is 38 percent, and that is because there is no sufficient supply of water. The countries in Africa south of the Sahara only use 3 percent of their renewable water resources, in contrast to 14 percent in Asia. The prime problem is that there is too little irrigation in agriculture. If 98 percent of the arable land depends on rainfalls which cannot be steered, it comes as no surprise if there are ups and down of production which can also cause famines."

"There are also too few roads," Diouf continued. "How can you expect the production to find its way to the markets, or modern technology to the farmers? Storage is a problem. Many developing countries lose 40 to 60 percent of their production, because there is a lack of appropriate cooling equipment and of conservation methods. That is a lack of investments. But there is also a shortfall of seeds, fertilizers, feed grains and the like."

All the talk about open markets in the context of the WTO is good and fine, but as long as the basic infrastructure is not there for the farmers in the developing sector to get their products to the markets, it will not work, and it will not work on the basis of private initiative — this is an area where the state has to intervene, Diouf stresses.

The food crisis is a serious threat not only to the stability of the immediately-concerned countries; it does affect the stability of the whole world, Diouf adds, and he calls for a "Second Green Revolution," —which wil be on the agenda of the next big FAO conference.

LaRouche

Maize pesticide tolerance, poor storage reduce Tanzania's food security

Tanzania`s food security is partly getting worse thanks to vanishing of indigenous varieties of pest resistant maize and to poor storage technologies.

This trend goes on unabated because of lack of national farm policy that emphasises the cultivation and storage of home-grown pest resistant varieties of maize and other crops, complicated as well by there not being collaboration between farmers, entomologists and farm field school trainers through agricultural extension services.

These remarks were raised Dr. Constancia Rugumamu, an expert in entomology-pest management at the Faculty of Science of the University of Dar es Salaam at a workshop on held at the college.

In her view, lack of collaboration between the mentioned stakeholders was a serious blow to national efforts for achieving food security because about 90 percent of the seeds used by farmers are of local varieties. This weakness is now raising even more grave concerns because of the rising food shortages which in turn heighten food prices.

Food shortages in part arise from the fact that between 35-40 percent of the nation`s annual food harvests are damaged by pests. This situation is exacerbated by poor storage facilities in rural areas. But this unfortunate trend, she said, could be reversed by adopting farm policies that seek to help smallholder farmers increase maize productivity through proper storage of pest resistant varieties, in addition to promoting biodiversity by limiting hazardous industrial pesticides in their ecosystems.

In practical terms, ongoing scarcity of indigenous maize seeds has increased insect pest infestations across the country, ultimately threatening local gene pool for the perpetuation and production of more resistant local varieties, hence a great setback to the smallholders farmers in this country.

As one way of sensitising the public about the need to conserve local maize seed varieties, the Science Department would soon be conducting countrywide campaigns to educate maize farmers and others about new techniques for controlling post harvest loses. "Crop pest infestations deprive farmers of significant part of their production yearly and they are among the major cause of food loses in many productive areas in Tanzania," she said.

Prostephanus truncatus was named as the most destructive insect pest as of now, though extension officers could easily help maize farmers fight it.

Maize is now both staple and cash crop, and different varieties are being grown in almost all regions.

IPP Media

Zambia receives Chinese loan to construct grain silos

The Food Reserve Agency (FRA) of Zambia has received a concessional loan facility of US$ 11.6 million from the Chinese Government for the construction of grain storage facilities throughout the country. And the agency has signed a contract of $2 million with a Zimbabwean firm, Grain Marketing Board (GMB) for the rehabilitation of the Lusaka Province grain silos.

Speaking at the signing ceremony in Lusaka yesterday, FRA vice- chairperson, Charity Mwansa said the $ 11.6 million was for the construction of silos to add the capacity to 98,000 tonnes of covered storage space for grains across the country. Ms Mwansa said the country had currently 458 units of storage facilities whose total capacity was 2 million tonnes but only 1.1 million tonnes was serviceable.

“It is against this background that the FRA with support of the Zambian Government has been mobilising funds to implement a programme to construct and upgrade some of the storage facilities across the nation,” Ms Mwansa said.

Zambia has had good harvests in the last two farming seasons and the need for appropriate storage facilities had become more important as evidenced by the maize stored in various FRA depots across the country. Ms Mwansa said the rehabilitation of the Lusaka silos that would be undertaken by GMB was expected to be completed by September adding that the funds for upgrading these silos were from FRA’s own resources which was aimed at providing quality grain storage.

Agricultural and Co-operatives Permanent Secretary, Bernard Namachila said the issue of grain storage was paramount, as it prevented the rotting of grain that was stored. “It is gratifying to note that rehabilitation works will be done by GMB this is because Zambia and Zimbabwe share a cordial and warm relationship. The FRA should therefore work to ensure that the project is successfully implemented,” he said.

Mr Namachila said the disbursed funds to the FRA from the Chinese loan facility for construction of grain storages by CAMCO, a Chinese company demonstrated the importance that the Government attached to agriculture. He said it would be pointless for the Government to continue encouraging farmers to produce more food each year that would go to waste due to lack of proper storage facility hence getting a loan.

CAMCO chairperson, Li Tie assured the FRA that his company would construct standard grain silos to meet the high demand of storage facilities across Zambia.“We are here to build proper grain storage facilities according to FRA recommendations. I thank the Zambian Government for awarding CAMCO to carry out the construction of these facilities. This is because of the cordial relationship between the Chinese and Zambians,” Mr Tie said.

Times of Zambia

Africa has biofuels potential, but new infrastructure required

Africa has potential to become a major exporter of biofuels, but investors must factor in a need for costly new infrastructure and overcome red tape before the sector takes off, a biofuels expert has said.

Meghan Sapp, MD of Brussels-based HG Consulting, told a conference that southern Africa, Kenya and Nigeria were among countries with potential to produce sugarcane- and cassava-based ethanol biofuel for export.

"Biofuel production on a commercial scale in Africa is a fairly new idea but one that opens a lot of opportunities for both investment and local economic development," said Sapp.

Europe was likely to become the main market for African ethanol exports because of Africa's preferential trade agreements with the European Union.

Investors are looking for cheap sustainable forms of energy, such as ethanol, to respond to persistent high oil prices.

Sapp said that Africa was well-suited to biofuel production because it has plenty of available land, many climates fit for different biofuel feedstocks, and low labour costs. However, she said poor infrastructure, under-developed legislation and a loose regulatory framework would hamper biofuel investments in Africa.

New biofuel plants will need good roads connecting to ports, and schools and clinics to serve the families of local workforces, such as sugarcane growers.

Sapp said it could take at least 10 years before biofuel production achieves critical mass in Africa. "Several ethanol projects are under way in a number of African countries which could be onstream before 2010," she said, referring to Mozambique, Nigeria and Sudan among others.

Africa is currently a marginal biofuel producer with an ageing vehicle fleet largely run on diesel, ill-adapted for conversion to biofuel use. However, some countries like Malawi have been producing sugarcane-based ethanol for more than 30 years.

Early potential in biofuels is seen mainly in exports, although domestic sales to new vehicle fleets would help reduce reliance on fossil fuel imports. A handful of countries including Ethiopia, Uganda and Nigeria are already developing biofuel blending policies for their domestic vehicle fleets.

Some African countries are also researching new applications for biofuels, for example cooking fuel that could be used to replace fire wood.

Sapp, whose consultancy focuses on EU and African biofuel policy and project development, was a keynote speaker at the two-day Sugaronline conference.

Engineering News

South African agriculture adjusts to electricity shortages

Millions of dollars worth of agricultural produce have been lost due to the electricity crisis in South Africa, which has seen rolling power cuts -- referred to locally as "load shedding" -- across the country over the past few months.

Yet industry players who spoke about the crisis seemed positive about their ability to weather the storm. "This is a time of great challenges, but it is also an opportunity for individuals and groups to come forward with revolutionary plans," said Carl Opperman, chief executive at Agri Western Cape, an organisation that represents a number of commercial agricultural producers in the Western Cape Province.

"There is an old Afrikaans expression ''n Boer maak 'n plan', which means that a farmer always makes a plan. The shock of the power cuts and load shedding is over. We are now in a phase where we are looking for solutions to the problem."

An example of forward thinking is found amongst dairy farmers who, through the national Milk Producers' Association (MPA), are looking for foreign investors to help them establish a biofuel plant that will use the gas produced by cattle manure.

Using methane gas in this way "is an extremely attractive proposition," Koos Coetzee, a member of the MPA, told IPS. "Not only will we be able to generate power, we will also be able to sell carbon credits, offsetting our costs."

Under the Clean Development Mechanism of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, industrialised countries can buy credits to offset their carbon emissions by investing in environmentally friendly projects in developing countries.

The envisaged methane gas project in South Africa will take a while to be established, though. "It will take months to erect a biofuel plant where we can convert manure, and it will certainly not address all of the power needs of the country," said Coetzee.

He estimates that the power shortages have cost dairy farmers some 13 million dollars in loss of income and lost produce. Whenever the power was cut, cows could not be milked and milk could not be refrigerated. Thousands of litres of milk were lost.

Dairy farmers have spent about 32.5 million dollars on buying emergency generators. And, certain farmers have been looking at solar panels and wind technology as alternative sources of energy, said Agri Western Cape's Opperman.

But, "These are extremely expensive options. The huge generators needed for agriculture cost a lot of money -- the equivalent of at least 130,000 dollars -- not to speak of the diesel needed to run them."

According to Lindie Botha, an economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber, South African farmers are ready and willing to invest in alternative fuel sources. "We will not immediately see huge changes, but this crisis is the kick that was needed to really start investigations into alternative sources. We will see great changes within the next three to five years," she said.

"There will be investments in solar and wind energy, not only because it makes electricity users less dependent on electricity, but because it is cost effective. It is interesting that dairy producers -- who are more dependent on technology than, say, cattle farmers -- are those that for a long time have been more open to alternative power sources."

Botha echoes Opperman's sentiment that a farmer always makes a plan. "There will always be the lone individual who comes up with a brand new invention, like the person I read about on one of the industry websites...This farmer has invented some kind of contraption with which he taps the energy generated by the flow of the river on his farm."

Johan Willemse, a professor in agricultural economics, says that generators are not cost effective. Even the large 130,000 dollar generators can only provide enough power for one centre-pivot sprayer. Nonetheless, generators of this size were sold out after the first wave of power cuts. It takes about four weeks for a new generator to arrive from abroad -- and in that time the irrigation farmer stands to lose thousands of dollars daily.

"Farmers have two alternatives. They either have to invest in generators, or they have to stop producing and find alternative sources of income," noted Willemse.

While the energy crisis has undoubtedly resulted in substantial losses, the exact extent of these losses is difficult to determine, he says. "We will only see the full effect in the next season."

However, Willemse does not see farmers losing their farms due to the power cuts. "A farmer does not simply stop working when he hits a snag. He carries on regardless."

Botha voices similar views. "If there is a farmer who has to leave his farm, the power crisis will not be solely to blame. It may be the final straw in a situation where other factors have already caused a shaky situation."

However, she warns that although the majority of farmers could weather the crisis in the short term, they may not be able to survive huge losses for three or four consecutive seasons.
"The crisis is definitely a threat to food security. When a farmer has to invest in expensive equipment he eventually passes on this loss, and eventually the consumer has to pay in the form of rising food prices."

IPS

Kenyan tea estate vandalised in post-election violence

Looters in one of Kenya's major tea-growing areas in the Rift Valley struck Unilever's Chebown tea estate in a bout of post-election violence, causing workers at it and all the surrounding farms to flee.

A photographer at the tea estate said looters torched the farm's tractors and trucks, looted and burned its storage facility and tried to burn the tea plants, but were foiled by cold, moist weather. The attacks were on January 2 and 3, as the country was plunged into a bout of post-election violence after a disputed result announced on Dec. 30.

All of the labourers, who come from the Kisii people, had fled that farm and others nearby after attacks by members of the local Kalenjin people targeting them, the photographer said. Kisiis are seen as supporting President Mwai Kibaki, whom the opposition accuses of rigging a hotly contested election, which plunged the country into a week of violence. Some Kalenjins support the opposition, and mobs of young Kalenjin men went on a rampage across the Rift Valley, targeting tribes seen as pro-government.

Previous elections in the Rift Valley have seen ethnic clashes ignited by politicians keen to shore up their support.

Reuters

Niger, Mali source $400 million for dams

Niger and Mali have secured more than $400 million from mainly Islamic donors to build dams on West Africa's Niger river to generate power and help grow food for the largely desert countries, officials said.

Donors at a summit organised by the Islamic Development Bank last week in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, pledged $236 million to build a dam in Niger, and nearly $200 million for a similar project in neighbouring Mali, the two countries' governments said.

Home to one of the world's poorest and fastest-growing populations, Niger stretches deep into the Sahara desert.

It suffers frequent hunger crises exacerbated by widespread poverty and desert encroachment onto traditional farmland, and its economy depends largely on uranium mined in the arid north by former colonial power France.

"Funding for building the Kandadji dam and associated projects has been secured," Prime Minister Seyni Oumarou said after returning from Jeddah.

The government has been talking about building the Kandadji dam upstream from the capital Niamey for nearly four decades, but the Islamic donor funds should allow the first phase of the huge development project to begin in mid-2008.

The Niger river, crossing the extreme southwestern corner of the country on its way to Nigeria and the Atlantic, has a fertile flood plain ripe for irrigated agriculture and potential to reduce the country's huge dependence on imported electricity.

"Building the dam will allow us to solve at least three problems: firstly regenerating the natural environment, secondly improving food security through water-based agriculture or irrigation, and thirdly to provide electricity," Oumarou said.

However, the donor funding will cover barely a third of the projected 300 billion CFA franc ($670 million) cost of the broader Kandadji project, and Oumarou said the hydropower station itself would be financed through a public-private partnership. He said a dozen potential investors had expressed interest in the project, which would reduce Niger's dependence on neighbouring Nigeria's National Electric Power Authority, from which it imports much of its electricity needs.

Niger's economy depends heavily on uranium mined in the north, where Tuareg nomads have rebelled against government forces this year, killing dozens of soldiers. The government dismisses the rebels as drug traffickers and bandits. The dam site at Kandadji around 180 km (110 miles) northwest of Niamey, near Niger's borders with Mali and Burkina Faso, has not been affected by the rebellion.

Mali, whose economy is in better shape than Niger thanks to significant gold reserves and greater stability in recent years, plans to start work in 2008 on access roads and the following year on building a dam at Taoussa on the Niger river between the ancient Saharan trading cities of Timbuktu and Gao.

It too will provide hydropower and irrigation.

"In the first place, the Taoussa dam was a dream, but we have entered an era of ambition and today it is becoming a reality," President Amadou Toumani Toure said on Malian radio on Monday.

Reuters