Accra, Ghana. As the gap widens between the yields of African farms and
those in the rest of the world, leading experts and policymakers in Accra
today warned that weak government support and lack of private capital is
stifling farm research innovations that are vital if the African continent
is to achieve its ambitious economic growth and development targets.
‘Africa’s crop production is lagging behind the rest of the world, and the
gap is widening,’ said Monty Jones, World Food Prize Laureate and Executive
Director of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA). ‘At the
same time, we’re seeing a steep decline in global agricultural exports and
steep increase in African food imports. It’s a crime that the world’s
poorest continent is spending billions of dollars on food imports.’
Today, about one third of the world’s one billion malnourished people live
in sub-Saharan Africa, said Jones.
Hosted by FARA, the Second Ministerial Dialogue on Increasing Agricultural
Productivity in Africa brings together African ministers of agriculture,
science and technology as well as agricultural experts from all over Africa
to discuss the status of continent-wide efforts to transform African
agriculture and increase farm productivity and how to mobilise the
resources needed to support research, extension and education institutions
related to agriculture.
‘The continent has great potential and immense natural resources,’ said His
Excellency John Kufuor, former President of Ghana, and like Jones, a World
Food Prize Laureate. ‘We need policies to transform this sector that holds
most of the population to break the logjam of poverty, while engendering
growth of the economy. With the right policies in place, Africa has the
potential to be the breadbasket of the world, starting with Africa itself.’
Participants raised concerns over the lack of progress by African
governments in meeting their commitments to allocate at least 10 percent of
their budgets to agriculture, particularly in the areas of research,
extension and education.
‘Africa’s sun is rising. Over a dozen countries have maintained strong
economic growth over the last few years. National governments are
committing more to agriculture,’ said Adewale Adekunle of FARA. ‘But
poverty is still a challenge, and the head count for hunger and
malnutrition is still the highest in the world.’
Adekunle and other participants noted that an increase in investments in
agricultural research, extension and education are critical to turning
around the continent’s chronic food insecurity.
‘Transforming African agriculture will require increased support for farm
research and agricultural lending at a rate that will promote
competitiveness, increase food and nutrition security, reduce poverty, and
increase socio-economic development,’ added Adekunle.
The agricultural development framework established by the African Union,
known as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme
(CAADP), is the ideal vehicle for transforming Africa’s agriculture by
making it productive and competitive.
‘This will not be possible if governments do not increase investments in
line with the 10 percent budget allocation that African heads of state
committed to in 2001,’ said Emmanuel Tambi, head of Policy and Advocacy at
FARA.
To date, less than a handful of countries in sub-Saharan have reached or
exceeded the promise made over a decade ago to allocate at least 10 percent
of annual budgets to agriculture.
‘Ministers and parliamentarians are vital to getting this process moving,’
added Tambi.
After a decade of stagnation during the 1990s, investments and human
capacity in public agricultural research and development averaged more than
20 percent growth in sub-Saharan Africa between 2001 and 2008, according to
the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). In 2008, the
region spent $1.7 billion on agricultural research—and employed more than
12,000 full-time agricultural researchers.
Most of this growth, however, occurred in only a handful of countries and
was largely the result of increased government commitments to augment
incommensurately low salary levels and to rehabilitate neglected
infrastructure, often after years of underinvestment.
‘If this trend continues, we will have a hard time finding people with
technical expertise in agriculture. This silent brain drain is quietly
going on without anyone noticing,’ said Honourable Ernest Debra, Ghana’s
former Minister of Agriculture. ‘Countries must prioritise agriculture.’
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FARA is an umbrella organisation that brings together and forms coalitions
of major stakeholders in agricultural research and development in Africa.
FARA complements the innovative activities of national, international and
sub-regional research institutions to deliver more responsive and effective
services to its stakeholders. It plays advocacy and coordination roles for
agricultural research for development, while national and international
research centres develop improved technologies along the
research-to-development continuum in their respective countries and
coverage areas. For more information, visit www.fara-africa.org. *
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