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Agricultural mechanization in Africa south of the Sahara — especially for small farms and businesses — requires a new paradigm to meet the needs of the continent’s evolving farming systems. Can Asia, with its recent success in adopting mechanization, offer a model for Africa? An Evolving Paradigm of Agricultural Mechanization Development analyzes the experiences of eight Asian and five African countries. The authors explore crucial government roles in boosting and supporting mechanization, from import policies to promotion policies to public good policies. Potential approaches presented to facilitating mechanization in Africa include prioritizing market-led hiring services, eliminating distortions, and developing appropriate technologies for the African context. The role of agricultural mechanization within overall agricultural and rural transformation strategies in Africa is also discussed. The book’s recommendations and insights should be useful to national policymakers and the development community, who can adapt this knowledge to local contexts and use it as a foundation for further research.
This book provides a thorough introduction to and examination of agricultural value chains in Sub-Saharan Africa. First, the authors introduce the economic theory of agri-food value chains and value chain governance, focusing on domestic and regional trade in (and consumption of) food crops in a low-income country context. In addition to mainstream and heterodox thinking about value chain development, the book pays attention to political economy considerations. The book also reviews the empirical evidence on value chain development and performance in Africa. It adopts multiple lenses to examine agricultural value chains, zooming out from the micro level (e.g., relational contracting in a context of market imperfections) to the meso level (e.g., distributional implications of various value chain interventions, inclusion of specific social groups) and the macro level (underlying income, population and urbanization trends, volumes and prices, etc.).Furthermore, this book places value chain development in the context of a process the authors refer to as structural transformation 2.0, which refers to a process where production factors (labor, land and capital) move from low-productivity agriculture to high-productivity agriculture. Finally, throughout the book the authors interpret the evidence in light of three important debates: (i) how competitive are rural factor and product markets, and what does this imply for distribution and innovation? (ii) what role do foreign investment and factor proportions play in the development of agri-food value chains in Africa? (iii) what complementary government policies can help facilitate a process of agricultural value chain transformation, towards high-productive activities and enhancing the capacity of value chains to generate employment opportunities and food security for a growing population.
Emerging Development of Agriculture in East Africa offers case studies that find promise in many new innovations. Farmers in Uganda have quickly learned the management of NERICA rice (a new upland rice variety), which is being disseminated in a limited way in the region. Also in Uganda, farmers living in more remote areas have improved access to markets due to the expansion of mobile phones. In Kenya, improved milk marketing systems have increased efficiency and led to tangible increases in the adoption of dairy production technologies. And the adoption of intensive dairy production systems in Kenya and Uganda are providing significant amounts of manure and positively impacting yields of maize and banana.
First Published in 2011. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
This handbook examines agricultural and rural development in Africa from theoretical, empirical and policy stand points. It discusses the challenges of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and assesses how poverty and other development concerns can be addressed in rural communities through agricultural transformation. Additionally, the handbook extends the Post-2015 Development Agenda and it emphasizes the importance of the agricultural sector as it is closely related to the issues of food sustainability, poverty reduction, and employment creation. The contributors suggest multiple evidence-based policies to develop the rural areas through the transformation of the agricultural sector which can significantly benefit the African continent.
Sub—Saharan Africa is one of the poorest regions of the world. Because most Africans work in agriculture, escaping such dire poverty depends on increased agricultural productivity to raise rural incomes, lower food prices, and stimulate growth in other economic sectors. Per capita agricultural production in sub—Saharan Africa has fallen, however, for much of the past half—century. Successes in African Agriculture investigates how to reverse this decline. Instead of cataloging failures, as many past studies have done, this book identifies episodes of successful agricultural growth in Africa and identifies processes, practices, and policies for accelerated growth in the future. The individual studies follow developments in, among other areas, the farming of maize in East and Southern Africa, cassava across the middle belt of Africa, cotton in West Africa, horticulture in Kenya, and dairying in East Africa. Drawing on these case studies and on consultations with agricultural specialists and politicians from across sub—Saharan Africa -- undertaken in collaboration with the African Union's New Partnership for Africa's Development -- the contributors identify two key determinants of positive agricultural performance: agricultural research to provide more productive and sustainable technologies to farmers and a policy framework that fosters market incentives for increasing production. The contributors discuss how the public and private sectors can best coordinate the convergence of both factors. Given current concerns about global food security, this book provides timely and important resources to policymakers and development specialists concerned with reversing the negative trends in food insecurity and poverty in Africa.
Tillage agriculture has led to widespread soil and ecosystem degradation globally, and more particularly in the developing regions. This is especially so in Africa where traditional agricultural practices have become unsustainable due to severe exploitation of natural resources with negative impacts on the environment and food system. In addition, agricultural land use in Africa today faces major challenges including increased costs, climate change and a need to transform to more sustainable production intensification systems. Conservation Agriculture has emerged as a major alternative sustainable climate smart agriculture approach in Africa and has spread to many African countries in the past decade as more development and research, including in sustainable mechanization, has enabled its extension and uptake. It is key to transforming Africa's agriculture and food system given its ability to restore soil health, biodiversity and productivity of millions of smallholder farms as well as larger-scale farms. This book is aimed at all agricultural stakeholders in the public, private and civil sectors in Africa engaged in supporting the transformation of conventional tillage agriculture to Conservation Agriculture. The book will be of interest to: researchers, academics, students, development stakeholders, public and private sector investors and policy makers as well as institutional libraries across the world.
During the 1990s, SSA countries initiated agricultural policy reforms to increase producer incentives and increase growth. Yet, agricultural growth rates after the reforms have been uneven. This has been attributed to lack of supporting infrastructure or the inability to respond to incentives by the smallholders. Based on ten studies, this volume provides a different framework to interpret the outcomes. First, it attributes the success of the reforms to the degree of consensus around the reform programs, which in turn, creates the institutions that can accommodate unexpected shocks. It differentiates between short run growth accelerations and sustained growth episodes. Second, it analyzes the impact of international prices which increased during the early 1990 and collapsed around 2000. Finally, it links the support institutions that evolved after the reforms back to the political economy of the stakeholders and their interests. Aksoy and Anil develop a political economy framework by bringing together the issues of consensus over the distribution of rents, role of unexpected changes, and the capabilities of institutions in handling these changes. Onal tests the of supply responses while Onal and Aksoy analyze international commodity prices and their transmission to the producers. Baffes analyzes impact of the adoption of cotton biotechnology in India and China, and the failure of SSA to also adopt. Baffes and Onal undertake a comparative study of coffee sectors in Uganda, and Vietnam which faced similar shocks. Five case studies cover cashew in Mozambique (Aksoy and Yagci), coffee and tea in Kenya (Mitchell), cashew in Tanzania (Mitchell and Baregu), tobacco in Tanzania (Mitchell and Baregu), and cotton in Zambia (Yagci and Aksoy). Results show that Agricultural policy reforms generated an immediate positive supply response. Real producer prices increased along with output. In unsuccessful cases where the short run supply response petered out, political and social consensus on the reforms was weak, and the ability to redistribute income after a negative shock was not built into the new arrangements. These products had been a major instrument for rent distribution before the reforms. The agencies could not be reformed to give greater non price support. In successful cases, there was greater consensus on the reforms program. The product was not a major rent distribution instrument and the producers were allied with the governments. Lower conflict also led to greater non price support. There was enough political and economic space for the parties to find solutions in case of shocks.
Interestingly, some relief from today's woes may come from ancient human practices. While current agri-food production models rely on abundant supplies of water, energy, and arable land and generate significant greenhouse gas emissions in addition to forest and biodiversity loss, past practices point toward more affordable and sustainable paths. Different forms of insect farming and soilless crop farming, or hydroponics, have existed for centuries. In this report the authors make a persuasive case that frontier agriculture, particularly insect and hydroponic farming, can complement conventional agriculture. Both technologies reuse society's agricultural and organic industrial waste to produce nutritious food and animal feed without continuing to deplete the planet's land and water resources, thereby converting the world's wasteful linear food economy into a sustainable, circular food economy. As the report shows, insect and hydroponic farming can create jobs, diversify livelihoods, improve nutrition, and provide many other benefits in African and fragile, conflict-affected countries. Together with other investments in climate-smart agriculture, such as trees on farms, alternate wetting and drying rice systems, conservation agriculture, and sustainable livestock, these technologies are part of a promising menu of solutions that can help countries move their land, food, water, and agriculture systems toward greater sustainability and reduced emissions. This is a key consideration as the World Bank renews its commitment to support countries' climate action plans. This book is the Bank's first attempt to look at insect and hydroponic farming as possible solutions to the world's climate and food and nutrition security crisis and may represent a new chapter in the Bank's evolving efforts to help feed and sustain the planet.
Whereas there is plenty of work looking at macroeconomic effect of public spending on growth and poverty in Africa as well as studies of the impact of spending or investment in one economic sector on outcomes in that sector or on broader welfare measures, this book fills a much needed gap in the research looking how the composition of public spending affects key development outcomes in the region. The book brings together recent analysis on the trends in, and returns to, public spending for agricultural growth and rural development in Africa. Case studies of selected African countries provide insights on the contributions of different types of public expenditures for poverty, growth and welfare outcomes, as well as insights into the constraints in gaining development mileage from investments in the agricultural sector.