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Agriculture as the Fulcrum of Inclusive Development in Africa

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Africa's Agricultural Renaissance

Abstract

Odusola examines Africa’s untapped comparative advantages in agriculture, presenting why Africa must invest heavily in this sector, and surmises agriculture as an instrument to bring development to the doorstep of a majority of Africans by engendering food security, reducing poverty and inequality, and expanding job opportunities. He proposes options to rethink agriculture’s role as a multiplier for rural and national development and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in a way that fosters people-prosperity-planet linkages. The chapter, however, notes that this link is not automatic but complex and multidimensional with productivity as the transmission mechanism. Odusola concludes that despite a high potential for food sufficiency, the current reality where food imports disproportionately drain scarce foreign reserves and outpaces ODA in Africa is synonymous with economic recklessness.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This is based on evidence from FAO’s online database (FAOSTAT).

  2. 2.

    This is estimated to be over 200 million hectares in SSA compared to less than 130 million hectares in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and less than 60 million hectares in the rest of the world (World Bank 2010, 2011).

  3. 3.

    This is estimated to be 0.228 per hectare compared to 0.281 (Latin America), 0.126 (South Asia), and 0.106 (East Asia and the Pacific). Countries like Niger, Central African Republic, Mali, Namibia, Chad, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Zimbabwe recorded more than 0.310 per hectare. This is based on author’s computation, based on 2005–2016 average from the WDI (accessed 2020).

  4. 4.

    Africa is next to Asia, which accounts for 29.1 percent of the earth’s total landmass. https://www.livescience.com/34303-worlds-largest-continent.html.

  5. 5.

    For more information on Africa’s ecological vegetation, see McNaughton and Georgiadis (1986).

  6. 6.

    Raffety (2011) and Atkins (2010) provide additional illumination of the significance of these water bodies and their contributions to the global water bodies.

  7. 7.

    Such scholars include Johnson and Mellor (1961), Schultz (1964), Byerlee et al. (2009a), and Odusola (2017).

  8. 8.

    This represents the average between 2011 and 2017. It was 54.2 percent of economically active population in 2015.

  9. 9.

    Public expenditure support to cocoa increased by more than 200 percent between 2000 and 2012 compared to less than 50 percent to non-cocoa crops (see Diao et al. 2019 for more illumination on public support to agriculture in Ghana).

  10. 10.

    The neglect is manifested in inadequate infrastructure, insecure land tenure system, lack of mechanization, and poor financial allocation including ODA to the sector. For instance, the share of ODA to agriculture relative to total ODA fell from over 15.0 percent between 1980 and 1985 to about 5.0 percent in 2000–2008. Others include market failures in the form of poor access to credit, insurance, and markets for agriculture produce as well as lack of sustainable, affordable access to inputs such as improved seeds, tools, and fertilizers (Odusola 2017).

  11. 11.

    For more illumination on the linkage between agriculture and development, see World Bank (2007), Byerlee et al. (2009b), Juma (2011), and Odusola (2017).

  12. 12.

    See the World Development Indicators for more information http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.RUR.TOTL.ZS.

  13. 13.

    Other countries are Sierra Leone, Chad, Burundi, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Mali, Togo, Sudan, Niger, Burkina Faso, Comoros, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania.

  14. 14.

    This is main conclusion of Dercon (2009), Byerlee et al. (2009b), and World Bank (2013).

  15. 15.

    This translates to 10,330 metric tonnes of CO2: the United States (5300 mt), European Union (3740 mt), and India (2070 mt). http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/news_docs/jrc-2014-trends-in-global-co2-emissions-2014-report-93171.pdf.

  16. 16.

    See Turner et al. (2016) for more illumination of agricultural system dynamics and its implications on results.

  17. 17.

    These countries are—in ascending order—Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, Chad, Sierra Leone, Niger, Malawi, Zambia, Burkina Faso, Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Guinea, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Nigeria, Mali, Benin, and Rwanda.

  18. 18.

    Viewing food security from a complex lens perspective, as opposed to the traditional silo approach, is well captured in May (2017) and IFPRI (2020).

  19. 19.

    A child is considered wasting if he/she is too thin for their height and considered stunting if they are too short for their age. See https://data.unicef.org/resources/joint-child-malnutrition-estimates-2017-edition/.

  20. 20.

    The number of under-nourished adults was estimated at 795 million compared to 2.0 billion adults that were overweighed in the first decade of 2000 (May 2017).

  21. 21.

    Ng et al. (2014) provide cross-country, cross-regional, and global perspectives of this issue.

  22. 22.

    See https://www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/development-finance-data/Africa-Development-Aid-at-a-Glance-2019.pdf.

  23. 23.

    This is inexplicable in a country like Nigeria where arable land is 7.3 percent of the total land area in 2018 compared to 10.3 percent in South Africa, 3.1 percent in Algeria, and 2.7 percent in Egypt.

  24. 24.

    This terminology means different things in different context. As defined by FAO, it refers to professionals that offer advice and information to help farmers solve agricultural problems they are facing. The aim of any extension service is to increase the efficiency of the family farm, increase production, and generally increase farmers’ standard of living. http://www.fao.org/docrep/t0060e/T0060E03.htm.

  25. 25.

    These are South Africa, Botswana, Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria. For more information on the 2017 Food Security Index, see http://foodsecurityindex.eiu.com/Index.

  26. 26.

    Amounting to about $4.0 billion annually (see Dubois et al. 2017).

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    Ayodele Odusola

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Odusola, A. (2021). Agriculture as the Fulcrum of Inclusive Development in Africa. In: Africa's Agricultural Renaissance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65748-2_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65748-2_2

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