At the African Union Assembly in Maputo in
2003, African heads of state were concerned that 30 percent of Africans were severely
undernourished and that the continent was the largest recipient of food aid. And
they pledged to act.
In what is now known as the Maputo declaration,
African heads of state agreed to allocate at least 10 percent of national
budgetary resources to support sound policies for agricultural and rural
development.
10 years
after the audacious declaration in Maputo, one out of every four Africans still
lacks adequate food for a healthy and active life and recent surges in food
prices and frequent drought are pushing more people in hunger. In 2012, Africa received 63 percent of global
food deliveries, compared to 22 percent for Asia and 4 percent for Latin
America and the Caribbean.
The average
fertilizer application rate in Sub-Saharan Africa is estimated at 8 kilograms
per hectare of cultivated land, compared to 78 kilograms in Latin America, 96
kilograms in East and Southeast Asia and 101 kilograms in South Asia. Between
2000 and 2010, the average grain yield in
Africa was about 1-1.5 metric tons per hectare, compared to the global average
of 3.2 metric tons per hectare. It is not surprising that while it
accounts for 60 percent of the world’s arable land, Africa’s agriculture only
generates 10 percent of global agricultural output.
Only seven
countries have consistently met the Maputo mandate – Ethiopia, Niger, Mali,
Malawi, Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Guinea. The average agricultural budget
allocation for Africa is about 5 percent. Such low level of spending fails to
meet the needs of the continent’s overwhelmingly small farms. The typical
African farmer is a woman with no rights to land, no fertilizer, no improved
seeds, no access to reliable water, and no access to veterinary services for
her animals.
At the just
concluded 23rd Assembly of African heads of state, have yet again, recognized
that a significant proportion of Africans remains vulnerable to hunger and
malnutrition and called for an absolute transformation of agriculture. The
heads of state re-committed to the pursuit of agriculture-led growth as the
main strategy to achieve targets on food and nutrition security and shared
growth and prosperity. African leaders pledged to uphold the commitment to
allocate at least 10 percent of public expenditure to agriculture, and to
enhance appropriate policy and institutional conditions to facilitate private
investment in agriculture, agribusiness and agro-industries.
In 2024,
African another crop of African leaders will be back in Malabo, Equatorial
Guinea, to reaffirm and re-commit to transforming Africa’s agriculture. Similarly,
the aims of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development (CAADP) remain diffuse
and lofty, and it is highly likely that the next decade will be lost. CAADP
must move away from an uncritical promotion of the Asian Green Revolution model,
and focus on smallholder-led, pro women and youth agricultural investments. We
are tied of innocuous declarations and inappropriate models.
Over 70
percent of Africa’s population is engaged in agriculture and their labor yet hard
work accounts for less than 10 percent of national GDP. This is unconscionable.
Inclusive economic growth and economic transformation will not happen until Africa’s
marginalized majorities; women and youth are included and integrated into the
formal economy through agriculture.
Agricultural
growth influences growth in other sectors in three ways: production linkages
back to supply sectors and forward to agro-processing; consumption linkages due
to increased demand; and wage-good effects, whereby decreased food prices lower
the real product wage, stimulating investment and profitability in other sectors.
The
multiplier effect of agricultural spending ranges from 1.3 to 1.5 in Africa. Studies
have shown that agriculture is 3.2 times better at reducing $1-day headcount
poverty than non-agricultural sectors. This large multiplier effect is driven
by the much larger participation of poor households in growth from agriculture.
Africa’s
women and youth are not looking for handouts. Neither are they ready to provide
cheap unskilled labor to large agri-business multinationals. They need policies
and institutions that support smallholder farm households to take advantage of
the rise of the super market and Africa’s expanding urban consumer market. What
they need is secure land tenure, appropriate technology, inputs, information,
and access to finance services.
Moreover, Africa’s
youth and women are yearning to create innovative solutions to support agriculture
and agribusiness with information, technology, soil testing, input supply, processing,
packaging, logistics, marketing, finance and insurance.
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