* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
If the challenges facing African farmers could be overcome, they could do great things, new infographic shows
I am a Malawian smallholder farmer, and I also often represent my fellow African farmers at policy conferences around the globe.
These two worlds I occupy often leave me searching for explanations about the differences I see in the current reality of African agriculture and the sector’s vast potential which I know it could have in the future.
Research has shown that the average African farm performs at only about 40 percent of its potential, and on present trends, the continent will only produce 13 percent of its food needs by 2050.
Today, around 380 million women, children and men in sub-Saharan Africa live on less than $1.25 a day, and 230 million Africans are chronically malnourished.
Yet African agriculture has perhaps the greatest promise of any region: a growing young population, vibrant markets and half the world’s uncultivated arable land.
So how can these farms bridge the gap, and address hunger and malnutrition while boosting the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of Africans?
The great paradoxes of African agriculture have been highlighted in a new infographic produced jointly by the agricultural coalition Farming First and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
Below is a selection of facts that show the challenges facing African agriculture, and also the huge potential that could be unlocked if they are overcome.
1. 75 percent of Africa’s cultivated soil is degraded, costing African countries up to 10 percent of their GDP, and cereal crop yields in Africa are only one tenth of those in the United States.
Intensification of farming is expected to produce 80 percent of the necessary increase in food production, yet African farmers have little access to the inputs they need to achieve this. For example, they apply only 10-13 kilogrammes (kg) of fertiliser per hectare (compared to more than 100 kg in South Asia), despite the fact that 1 kg of fertiliser could triple yields.
2. Only around 5 percent of cultivated land in Africa is irrigated (compared with 41 percent in Asia), yet irrigation alone could increase African output by up to 50 percent. This is partly because so much of Africa’s rural land – 90 percent, in fact – is undocumented, reducing the incentive to invest in farm infrastructure.
3. Only 16 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s roads are paved and only 25 percent of rural people have access to market within two hours. In 2012, sub-Saharan African countries spent $37.7 billion on food imports, with trade mispricing and other illicit outflows costing some $63 billion more. Yet upgrading sub-Saharan Africa’s roads could boost yearly trade by $250 billion per year (while costing only $38 billion) and help Africa’s farmers tap into a market that could be worth $1 trillion by 2030.
4. Only 3 to 6 percent of global public spending on agricultural research and development (R&D) comes from sub-Saharan Africa (as of 2008), despite the region accounting for 10 percent of global population (and rising to 25 percent by 2050). In many parts of Africa, there is only one extension agent per 3,000 farmers, meaning that even existing knowledge is left untapped. This is despite the fact that public investments in research and extension have been estimated to have a rate of return of 35 to 70 percent.
5. Women farmers in Africa typically achieve yields 20 to 30 percent lower than men due to unequal access to productive resources and services. They own only 1 percent of the land and represent only 15 percent of extension workers. Yet closing this gender gap could reduce the number of malnourished people by 12 to 17 percent.
It has been estimated that GDP growth in the agricultural sector in Africa is 11 times more effective in reducing poverty than growth from any other sector.
So why is it that only one seventh of the national governments in sub-Saharan Africa have consistently met their pledge to spend 10 percent of national budgets on agriculture as agreed in the Maputo Declaration of 2003?
Ghana - one country that has met this commitment - has succeeded in reducing hunger by nearly three quarters - from 34 percent to nine percent between 1990 and 2004 as a result.
As Kanayo F. Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, put it, “African small farmers do not need pity or handouts to thrive; instead, they need access to markets and finance, land tenure security, knowledge and technology, and the right policies to run profitable businesses.”
Dyborn Chibonga is a Farming First spokesperson and Chief Executive Officer of the National Smallholder Farmers' Association of Malawi (NASFAM).
