FAO Calls for Focused Action
Africa Holds Immense Potential
to Boost Food Output

Africa has a better chance of feeding its people with improved governance, more effective agricultural policies, training and other measures, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Africa holds enormous potential for boosting the yield of food crops and other agricultural commodities, but continued, focused action is necessary, the FAO says.
Africa's agriculture sector grew more than 3.5 percent in 2008, compared to a population growth on the continent of 2 percent. However, several factors stand in the way of increased and sustainable food production in Africa. Eighty percent of the continent's farms are less than two hectares. Irrigation is scant - only three percent of land in sub-Saharan Africa is irrigated, compared to more than 20 percent globally. Fertilizer use is far less in sub-Saharan Africa than it is in the rest of the world. For example, in 2002 it was only 13kg per hectare, compared to 190kg in East Asia and the Pacific, according to the FAO.
Some 218 million people in Africa struggle with hunger daily about 30 percent of the continent's total population. Most of those suffering from hunger are the rural poor, urban poor and victims of natural disasters.
If little or no progress is made in improving Africa's agriculture sector, the FAO says that the continent's hungry will be among the estimated 370 million people worldwide who could face famine by 2050. Net investments of U.S. $83 billion a year an increase of about 50 percent - must be made in agriculture in developing countries for there to be enough food to feed 9.1 billion people in 40 years, the FAO says.
Higher world prices for food commodities such as wheat and rice, a generally more favorable agriculture policy environment, and growth of a drought-resistant rice variety NERICA - have contributed to Africa's agricultural growth, says the FAO.
Some factors that stand in the way of greater growth are:
• Slow progress in regional integration
• Diseases such as HIV / Aids
• Poor access to markets
• Inadequate training
• The global economic crisis
• Climate change
• Gender disparities
• Lack of land tenure rights, and
• Governance and institutional shortcomings
Agriculture experts say that one of the most economical ways to diminish rural poverty and hunger is through the support of smallholder farmers. The FAO says that about 85 percent of the world's farms are smaller than two hectares and smallholder farmers and their families represent one-third of the world's population, or two billion people.
Africans, on their own and with the support of global organizations, are coming up with innovative ways to boost sustainable food production. Many say a Green Revolution is possible, with the right support.
“Eighty percent of farmers in Africa are smallholder farmers. The majority of them are women,” says Kanayo F. Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad). “They produce 80 percent of the food that is consumed by Africans. Obviously, if these are the people that produce the food that we eat, we must invest in smallholder agriculture.”
Both international and domestic investments in agriculture waned in the 1980s and 1990s, when the sector was seriously eroded during the structural adjustment policies imposed by donor nations and international financial institutions. But there appears to be a growing interest in agriculture and food security. The G8 meeting of leaders of eight industrialized nations, gathered in Italy in July 2009, pledged $20 billion to support agriculture in the developing world.
At the FAO's 2009 World Security Summit held in Rome in November, world leaders pledged to renew and intensify their efforts to wipe out hunger. They acknowledged that the global community has neglected and under-invested in agricultural especially in producing food to feed the world's poorest. They promised to reverse the decline in both domestic and international spending for agriculture and to promote new investment and better policies in the sector, as well as to proactively attack climate change as a threat to food security.
Governments in developed countries and private donors around the world are also critiquing their own past lack of attention to food security issues. A day before World Food Day, observed on 16 October every year, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a total of $120 million in grants for nine agricultural projects. African initiatives were the major beneficiaries. The Foundation has committed some US$1.4 billion to agricultural development efforts, making it one of the largest donors in the sector.
There are many contentious issues to be resolved, as nations individually and collectively work to produce enough food to feed the world's people. Debates will rage over genetically modified seeds and crops, over intensive use of herbicides and fertilizers versus more organic methods, over the sale of large swaths of African farmland to countries like China, India and Saudi Arabia, and over the role of climate change in the droughts and floods and other weather extremes that Africa is already experiencing. But the shift towards paying new attention to food production and to the plight of those who go to bed hungry every night is unmistakable.
As Tanzania's President Jakaya Kikwete says, “Agriculture is everything.”
Although its contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) is declining, agriculture remains an important economic sector in Africa, contributing around 25 per cent of GDP, compared with the world average of less than seven per cent.
The sector provides jobs for 70 percent of the labour force as well as a livelihood for more than 65 per cent of the population. Apart from which, it is a major source of raw materials as well as a market for finished products.
The population of the sub-Saharan Africa region is projected to grow from some 770 million in 2005 to about two billion in 2050. Despite urban migration, the absolute number of rural dwellers will continue to grow. Producing more food for a growing population while at the same time combating poverty and hunger are the main challenges facing African agriculture in the coming decades. The risks that come with climate change make this task even more daunting.
The dominance of smallholder agriculture on the continent means that short- and medium-term agricultural growth and poverty reduction prospects will be closely linked with successful transformation of this sector.
Given the urgent need to transform African agriculture, the sluggish performance of the sector over the past few decades is disconcerting.
Growth rates in the sector across sub-Saharan Africa have been a modest 3.3 percent a year since 2000. Only a handful of countries Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal and The Gambia have surpassed the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) threshold of 6 percent agricultural growth in recent years.
Crop output has been increasing, but this is largely driven by the expansion of cultivated land rather than productivity gains. For instance, between 1990 and 2006 the area under cultivation increased by more than 10 percent annually while cereal yields over the same period were largely stagnant, averaging around 1.2 tonnes per hectare in the region, compared to three tonnes per hectare in the developing world as a whole.
Foremost amongst the factors that undermine smallholder agriculture is the gross undercapitalization of the sector. Investment in key areas such as research, infrastructure development, mechanization, irrigation, value chain development and human capital development lags behind that in other developing regions and has actually declined over the past decade.
For instance public spending on agricultural research and development in the region between 1981 and 2000 grew at only 0.6 percent a year on average, and actually fell during the 1990s. At the same time, donor support for agricultural research declined from U.S. $6 billion in 1980 to $3 billion in 2006 and World Bank lending to agriculture in general decreased from $8 billion in 1980 to $2 billion in 2004.
Governments have had to rely more on domestic sources Botswana, Burundi, Ethiopia, Gabon, Malawi and the Sudan already fund more than 60 per cent of agricultural research from domestic sources. But the private sector contributes only two per cent of total agricultural research funding in Africa, ranging from 1.6 per cent in East Africa to about 4.3 per cent in South Africa.
Expenditure on agricultural research as a percentage of agricultural GDP worldwide is more than 2.5 per cent in developed countries but only 0.6 per cent in developing countries and 0.7 per cent in Africa.
The lack of adequate investment in agriculture has persisted despite numerous continent-wide and regional protocols by African governments and their development partners.
For instance, at the recent Maputo Summit, African leaders agreed to devote at least 10 percent of their public expenditure to agriculture, with the aim of attaining agricultural growth rates of about six percent annually. But according to NEPAD, only 19 percent of African countries have reached the target.
While Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, and Mali have surpassed the 10 percent threshold of budgetary spending on agriculture in recent years, nearly of African countries reduced their spending on the sector. As a percentage of agricultural gross domestic product, African agricultural spending was only half that of Asia in 2005.
The benefits of agricultural investments have been well documented. They can have significant positive effects on growth and poverty reduction, given the sector's strong linkages with other sectors. In many cases government agricultural spending has contributed substantially to agricultural productivity and rural household income, household consumption and poverty reduction. For instance, for each unit of local currency spent on the agricultural sector, on average 10 local currency units are earned by increased agricultural productivity or income, according to studies conducted in several African countries.
In countries such as India and Thailand, public investments in agriculture have substantially reduced rural poverty by stimulating agricultural growth and reducing food prices. Investments in other key facets of the rural economy such as road infrastructure and education have also been shown to have large positive outcomes. These findings suggest that the "how" of agricultural spending can be as important as the "how much".
Changing the face of African agriculture will require a change in mindset, not only on the part of political leadership but also among farmers and civil society in general.
Most African governments have clearly not prioritized agricultural transformation and continue to treat smallholder agriculture as just a way of life for a peasant population, with little to contribute towards economic growth and poverty alleviation. The farmers have also remained poorly organized, and fail to lobby for an adequate share of public resources.
Purposeful and sustained engagement of these stakeholders is required to unlock the potential of smallholder agriculture as the best option for transforming the lives of large numbers of poor households in rural communities across Africa.