African economies are firing. Thanks to rapid growth and
investment in the continent’s banking, telecommunication and extractive
sectors. The growing ranks of a nascent consumer class are also driving cheap
imports and retail. But Africa’s agricultural sector is comatose. African workers
are hungry and their children suffer chronic malnutrition.
Even before the last world food crisis, one in three people
and more than 30 percent of Africa’s children were malnourished. It is
estimated that the number of hungry grew from 175 million in 1992 to 239
million in 2012. Undernutrition is
directly or indirectly responsible for 3.5 million child deaths every year, and
malnutrition is the cause of least 35 percent of the disease burden in children
under 5 years old.
Africa has the lowest levels of land and labor
productivity in the world. Africa’s agricultural output is about 50 percent of
the world average. Agricultural productivity per capita has not kept pace with
population growth. More than 80 percent of output growth since 1980 has come
from the expansion of cropped areas, rather than from improved land
productivity on existing agricultural land. Moreover, climate change could exacerbate
the decline of Africa’s agricultural sector.
FAO estimates that Africa’s food import bill increased to
$39.6 billion in 2012, a 30 percent increase from 2011. Without a 40 percent
growth in domestic production, Africa is likely to spend about $ 150 billion on food imports by 2030. Compared to Asia and
Latin America, Africa has seen a sharp decline in its share of agricultural
export markets. The value of agricultural exports from Thailand, which has less
than 10 per cent of Africa’s population, is now greater than the volume of
exports from all of Sub-Saharan Africa.
A doubling of Africa’s average cereal yield to 2 tons per
hectare would produce an extra 100 million tons of cereals per year. Such a
bump in yield would offset Africa’s overburdening cereal imports estimated at
66 million tons in 2010. Poor soils, dependence on rainfall, dilapidated
infrastructure, weak markets, insufficient access to technology, advisory and
financial services constrain the growth of Africa’s agricultural sector.
The plight of Africa’s agriculture has moved the
international community to act to save a wretched continent. Although the heart
of the international community is often in the right place, their head seldom
is. This is understandable because the scale and urgency of Africa’s hunger
problem invariably demands action, not deliberate reflection and search for
appropriate solutions.
Does Africa need an Asian style Green Revolution?
Motivated by the power and example of the Asian Green
Revolution the global development community is absolutely confident that the
Africa’s hunger could be solved with hybrid seed, fertilizer and pesticides
alone. But we know that the Green Revolution is economically and ecologically
unsustainable.
The one-size-fits-all simple technological package that
utilizes high yielding variety seeds with a high response to big doses of subsidized
inorganic fertilizers and chemical pesticides will not work for Africa’s complex
mosaic of smallholder crop, livestock, and tree-based systems. That is why
despite the huge investment by the Consultative Group on International
Agricultural Research (CGIAR) failed to promote a Green Revolution in Africa.
Africa’s context is complex and defies the simple
solutions of the Asian Green Revolution. Africa’s irrigation potential is low, soils
are highly variable and inherently nutrient poor. Moreover, Africa’s
infrastructure challenge is huge. Africa has the lowest number of kilometers of
road and railway per hectare of agricultural land in the world. Advances in
biotechnology must be applied to improve fish, livestock as well as a large
variety of vegetables, multipurpose trees, tuber crops, legumes and traditional
cereals like sorghum and millet. Rice or wheat or maize alone won’t do.
Undoubtedly, Africa’s agriculture can learn from the
Asian Green Revolution. Unfortunately, the
new excitement around an African Green Revolution is not based lessons from the
failures of its predecessor. The most important lesson
must come through understanding local agro-ecosystems, their potential and
constraints. Africa’s farming context faces multiple crises of natural resource
degradation, climate change and globalization.
Ecologically sound, biotechnology driven, climate
smart and a farmer centred approach is needed to revamp agriculture and deliver
food security for African households. An agro-ecological approach, which taps
local knowledge of biodiversity and ecosystem services, promotes farmer
experimentation, and innovation for adaptive solutions, may be more sustainable
than an Asian style Green Revolution underwritten by experts, whether “new” or “doubly
green”.
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