Agriculture accounts for the biggest
share of most African economies, yet despite some improvements, it remains
in crisis. Production lags behind population growth, fostering food insecurity
and widespread rural poverty. Policy reforms have so far brought only mixed
results, while measures to boost output have been undermined by declining
aid and low world prices for Africa's key agricultural exports. In this
special dossier, Africa Recovery
looks at some of the challenges facing a sector that could be Africa's 'engine
of economic growth.'
This has been proclaimed the "Year of Agriculture" in Senegal, just one of many African countries striving to place the predominant sector of its economy on a sounder footing. By allocating more resources to both food and export crop production, says Senegalese Minister of Agriculture Robert Sagna, the government hopes to stimulate economic activity more generally. "The national economy must rest on the development of agriculture," Mr. Sagna explained in June, at the start of the 1997/98 farming season, noting that greater agricultural surpluses will better supply the country's agro-industries, improve nutrition levels, increase exports and reduce the need for food imports. Moreover, he said, higher rural incomes can help combat poverty, since "poverty is most severe" in the countryside, home to three-quarters of the population.
Similarly across Africa, governments are seeking to unlock the enormous potential of the continent's agricultural sector, "the engine of economic growth," as a conference of agriculture ministers in East and Southern Africa put it. Yet many are also driven by a sense of urgency. Although food supplies in sub-Saharan Africa improved during the 1996/97 season, some 40 per cent of the population remains chronically undernourished and 17 countries, as of August, were confronting serious food emergencies, mainly due to drought and civil conflict. "Hunger and poverty are a serious threat to the peace and security of the continent," notes Mr. Idris Nur at the Department of Natural Resources of the Organization of African Unity.
To overcome the legacy of past neglect of agriculture, many governments have raised producer prices, liberalized marketing, and carried out other policy reforms in recent years, as part of broader adjustment programmes. But the results so far have been mixed. And with only a few exceptions, financially strapped African governments have not been able to devote significantly greater budgetary resources to agriculture. Meanwhile, donor assistance for the sector has tended to stagnate or decline, and the downward trend of world market prices for many of Africa's key agricultural exports has frustrated efforts to earn more from increased output.
Photo: World Bank
Agriculture's impressive 5.2 per cent growth in 1996 was "the major factor behind the strong economic recovery in the region," said the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in its annual report on Africa's overall economic and social situation. The sector contributed significantly to the 3.9 per cent growth in the continent's gross domestic product (GDP). But at the same time, African exporters of agricultural raw materials saw a 3 per cent decline in world prices, while those that exported cocoa, coffee and tea were hit by a 17 per cent decline.
The ECA also emphasized that while policy reforms were a positive factor in "the vigorous rebound in agricultural growth" in Africa, the upturn was "basically due to the conducive weather." Agriculture's dependence on favourable rains highlights a vulnerable spot in many of Africa's economies: when the rains fail, farm output drops.
The problem, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni noted at a meeting on agricultural research last year, is that agricultural productivity in Africa is very low, with most farmers still relying on traditional practices and using few inputs, such as fertilizer, improved seeds or irrigation. "If our countries are to achieve higher economic growth rates," he said, "then we must increase agricultural productivity and overall production. This can only occur if we transform our agriculture from the traditional type to a more scientific and technology-based one," while also placing a high priority on "conserving natural resources such as land and water."
Even with the prevalence of low-input, traditional farming practices in Africa, overall agricultural production rose by an annual average of 2 per cent between 1965 and 1980, and has continued to climb about 1.8 per cent per year since then. But this has been far from sufficient. With Africa's population growing rapidly (averaging 2.9 per cent a year), agricultural production, including of food, has declined steadily in per capita terms (see graph below).
Together with periodic drought and the devastations of war, this decline has meant that hunger and poverty are increasing. According to a major study by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Agriculture: Towards 2010, the amount of food available per person in sub-Saharan Africa, measured in daily calories, declined from 2,140 in 1969-71 to 2,100 in 1988-90, increasing the number of undernourished people from 94 million to 175 million over the same period.
FAO projections indicate that even with an improvement in overall daily consumption levels, the numbers of chronically undernourished people in sub-Saharan Africa will rise to nearly 300 million by the year 2010, about one-third the projected population. And even if agricultural production is able to grow 3 per cent a year between 1988-90 and 2010, estimates the FAO, this will scarcely keep pace with the needs of a growing population. Sub-Saharan Africa's food import requirements may more than double to 20 mn tonnes a year by then, a prospect the FAO says "may be viewed with alarm," given the region's poor financial position.
With many rural producers earning incomes barely at the subsistence level, poverty is also widespread in the African countryside. Out of an estimated 250 million people in sub-Saharan Africa living on less than $1 per day, about 200 million are in the rural areas, according to estimates by the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development.
Spurred by such worrying trends, as well as by the continent's broader
economic crisis, many African countries embarked 
upon
sweeping policy changes during the late 1980s and early 1990s, pursuing
structural adjustment programmes prescribed by the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund (IMF).
In agriculture, the measures included freeing market prices from most state controls, dismantling or ending the monopolies previously enjoyed by state marketing boards, and eliminating state subsidies on fertilizer and other inputs. In theory, giving more play to market forces would raise producer prices and thus benefit rural incomes and spur greater production. Evidence from numerous African countries indicates that while some farmers have indeed received higher prices for their crops, the overall results have been inconsistent.
According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in its Trade and Development Report, released in September 1997, the domestic terms of trade for agricultural products in 13 sub-Saharan African countries improved from the 1970s through the 1990s. The greatest gain came in the 1985-95 period, when the domestic value of agricultural products increased, in relation to manufactured goods, by 30.6 per cent.
However, UNCTAD pointed out, this increase could not be attributed to liberalization as such, since four countries that deregulated the marketing of export crops saw a slight worsening in their agricultural terms of trade, while five that retained centralized price-setting saw an above-average improvement. Moreover, observed UNCTAD, the price increases did not necessarily benefit the producers themselves. In several countries implementing structural adjustment programmes, liberalization was marked by "growing profit margins for private traders at the expense of farmers."
Even where producers have gained, the effects have been felt unequally. Poor farmers, because they often have only very small or no surpluses to market, have tended to benefit far less than large-scale producers, while also facing prohibitively high prices for fertilizer and other inputs. Since many poor farming families must buy food to supplement their own meagre production, the general rise in food prices has often hurt them more than it has helped. Women farmers, who account for a majority of food producers and usually farm on a very small scale, are at a particular disadvantage (see article:Women farmers, the 'invisible' producers).
Those farmers who are near markets and roads, have access to inexpensive transport or can store their crops for prolonged periods are in a better position to obtain higher prices; those in remote or inaccessible regions continue to get little for their crops. "You can get your prices right, but you can't get very far if infrastructure is not there," Mr. Samir Radwan, then chief of development policies for the UN's International Labour Organization, said in a 1994 interview.
Meanwhile, the dismantling of inefficient government marketing boards has not always led to more competitive or effective markets. Few private operators are able or willing to fill the gap. UNCTAD notes that the often sudden demise of agricultural parastatals has deprived many African farmers not only of important marketing services, but also inputs, research and extension facilities. Africa's experience with agricultural reform, said the agency, "is yet another example of a 'big bang' liberalization without preparing the institutions and infrastructure needed for markets to perform effectively."
Gradually over the past decade, agricultural reform programmes in Africa have been modified. From an initially narrow focus on raising producer prices and dismantling marketing boards, they have been increasingly broadened to address a range of other problems: the poor state of rural infrastructure, inadequate crop storage capacity, the supply of affordable inputs, research, access to credit and effective extension services, as well as the availability of social services such as health and education, which greatly affect the quality of life and productivity of Africa's villagers.
This shift has also highlighted the continuing importance of government institutions and investments. A 1994 World Bank study on agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa by Kevin Cleaver and Götz Schreiber acknowledged that private investment can supply only part of the capital needed to transform African agriculture. "Much of it, however," they wrote, "will need to be public capital for rural roads and markets, water supply, investment in education, etc." In particular, the authors stressed, for conserving forests, soils, pastures and water, "there is no alternative to planning, orchestrated by governments."
Increasingly, it has been recognized that environmental deterioration in Africa is a central factor holding back agriculture. The disappearance of forest areas accelerates land degradation. Even on gently sloping cropland, topsoil losses have been reported to range from 25 tonnes to 250 tonnes per hectare, across the region. One study has estimated that soil degradation and erosion in Africa reduces the productivity of land about 1 per cent a year.
According to World Bank figures, some 2.9 mn hectares of forest were lost each year in sub-Saharan Africa during the 1980s, mainly due to clearing by farmers and loggers. The Soil Reference and Information Centre in the Netherlands estimates that 321 mn hectares of African land are moderately to extremely degraded. Since 1950, the amount of water available per person in Africa has fallen by more than half -- and may plummet further to half its current level within the next 25 years.
While African governments have become more aware of the relationship between the environment and agricultural productivity, much of the impetus for concrete and more integrated action has come from the grassroots. Confronted with deteriorating environmental conditions, villagers across the continent, often with support from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), have taken the initiative to set up woodlots, terrace hillsides, conserve threatened water sources and adopt more environmentally sustainable farming methods.
There are now thousands of environment-related women's organizations, says Ms. Maria da Graça de Amorim, the Africa regional director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). "Women throughout Africa are on the front lines of rural development, as well as environmental protection and improvement," she says.
In a number of countries, such as Burkina Faso (see article: Burkina Faso protects its fragile soils), governments have begun adopting policies and programmes that promote higher agricultural productivity while safeguarding the environment. The ECA is urging African governments and donor agencies to integrate food security strategies with environmental and population considerations (see box in article:Women farmers, the 'invisible' producers ).
Most of the increase in agricultural production in Africa over the past several decades has been achieved by bringing more land under cultivation. Even today, only 7 per cent of sub-Saharan Africa's total land area, or about 150 mn hectares, is devoted to crops. But given the often difficult climatic conditions, poor soils and very uneven distribution of water sources, only another 30 mn hectares of unused land can easily be brought under cultivation without further jeopardizing the environment.
Significantly increasing Africa's output of food and other crops, therefore, will have to come from intensifying production -- getting higher yields per hectare. This will require much greater use of irrigation, fertilizer and other inputs, as well as the development and application of new and appropriate technologies.
Currently, only about 2 per cent of sub-Saharan Africa's arable land benefits from irrigation, compared with one-third in South Asia. And unlike some regions where excessive use of chemical fertilizer is raising environmental concerns, Africa suffers from the opposite problem. Only an average of 11 kilograms (kgs) of fertilizer are applied per hectare of farmland in sub-Saharan Africa, compared with 69 kgs in South Asia, 71 kgs in Latin America and well over 100 kgs in the developed countries. With fallow periods getting shorter in many African countries, the absence of fertilizer has meant that soils are being leached of essential minerals.
During the 1960s and 1970s, government subsidies in numerous countries
spurred greater fertilizer use, but with the elimination of subsidies under
structural adjustment programmes, few farmers could afford 
it.
In Senegal, for example, fertilizer use increased from 13,000 to 96,000
tonnes between 1970 and 1976, but has since all but collapsed, hovering
around 1,500 tonnes. In many countries, food farmers are often the most
severely affected, since their lower earnings have placed higher-priced
fertilizer virtually beyond reach. According to the FAO, while export crop
farmers in Africa use an average of 30 kgs of chemical fertilizer per hectare,
for food farmers the average falls to just 5 kgs.
In some countries, this problem is being addressed through a variety of means: encouraging farmers to rely more extensively on organic fertilizer (which is much less costly), promoting mixed cropping (which helps preserve soil fertility), and in some cases through renewed government intervention to better regulate fertilizer markets to ensure supply, quality and affordable prices.
Better access to credit is also recognized as an effective tool, especially for improving the productivity of the poor. Small, short-term loans, often of just $100-200, enable farmers to get new hoes or high-yielding seeds, or to set up food-processing enterprises to increase their incomes. A wide variety of formal and informal "micro-credit" associations are springing up across the continent, many of them relying primarily on the mobilized savings of local communities.
In July, in the Saint-Louis region of northern Senegal, the Federation of Women Producers' Groups and Associations of the Delta launched a new savings and credit fund for its 5,000 members. The group was already the main provider of seeds to the country's rice farmers, and according to Ms. Penda Guèye Cissé, "We produce quality rice that is very competitive with imported rice." With its new credit facility, the federation hopes to expand such activities as growing tomatoes, onions, fruit and other produce for small-scale agro-industries, raising livestock, and more tree-planting.
The ability of farmers' associations such as the one in Saint-Louis to do so much with so little money points to the crucial role of grassroots organizations in helping to overcome Africa's agricultural crisis. And increasingly, governments and international development institutions alike are coming to recognize their potential (see article: Farmers organize to promote interests).
While the involvement of farmers' groups can be central in ensuring that agricultural programmes better address the real needs of rural communities, their resources remain limited. They cannot substitute for government agricultural research or extension services, which remain grossly underfunded.
Despite official pronouncements about the importance of agriculture for broader African economic development goals, the overall share of government spending on agriculture does not seem to be increasing. In 12 African countries for which comparable budget data is available,* agriculture's share of total budgetary expenditures fell from an average of 8.4 per cent during 1984-89 to 6.5 per cent during 1990-94. Part of that decline seems due to the increasing budgetary burden of external debt service payments.
As a percentage of government spending on economic sectors, agriculture's overall share fell only slightly between the two periods, from 39.0 per cent to 38.8 per cent. But this average masks a difference in trends between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. For the three North African countries in the sample, agriculture's share increased from 36.5 per cent to 42.7 per cent, while for the nine countries in sub-Saharan Africa, it fell more clearly, from 39.9 per cent to 37.5 per cent.
According to Mr. Baba Dioum, coordinator-general of the Conference of Ministers of Agriculture of West and Central Africa, such budgetary constraints are "less a question of capacity than of political will." Governments, he says, have it in their power to improve policies, allocate a greater share of public investments to agriculture and initiate programmes to combat malnutrition and rural poverty. Nevertheless, he adds, another crucial factor is "whether Africa's outside partners are ready to support its priorities."
*Based on data for Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Morocco, Tunisia and Zambia in the IMF's 1996 Government Financial Statistics Yearbook
Photo: World Bank / Yosef Hadar
One international trend that has hit Africa especially hard has been the long-term decline in world market prices for many of the continent's key agricultural exports. From a peak in the mid-1980s, the prices for coffee, cocoa, tea, cotton, and palm oil have slumped considerably, although coffee and cotton prices had a slight rally in 1994-95 (see graph above).
In an effort to lessen their dependence on just a few traditional agricultural commodities, a number of African countries have sought to diversify their agricultural exports. For example, Uganda, which has long relied on coffee, cotton and tea, has in recent years increased exports of fish, maize and beans, largely to neighbouring markets. "Uganda's food producers appeared to have benefitted considerably from favourable regional trade arrangements, especially the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa," observes UNCTAD's Least Development Countries 1997 Report.
However, such efforts have been hampered to some extent by the subsidies a number of developed countries provide their agricultural exports, thereby competing unfairly with African producers. Ugandan Vice-President Specioza Wandira Kazibwe has noted that after her country started trying to market significant maize surpluses in neighbouring Kenya, "tonnes and tonnes of yellow maize, very cheap, were dumped into Kenya by the United States.... Where is the equity in this issue of global liberalization?"
Meanwhile, international development assistance to agriculture has been declining. According to the most recent aid report of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the industrialized donor countries, "Aid to agriculture, which typically accounted for close to 20 per cent of bilateral sector commitments in the 1970s and 1980s, has fallen to 12 per cent in 1993 and 1994." The DAC gave no specific breakdown on aid to African agriculture, but did report that total assistance to sub-Saharan Africa declined from $19.5 bn in 1992 to $16.8 bn in 1995 (in constant dollars).
According to the World Bank's 1997 Annual Report, its own lending to African agriculture has fallen considerably, from an annual average of $658 mn during 1988-92 to $247 mn during 1993-97. This drop was due partly to a 32 per cent decline in overall Bank lending to Africa, but also to an erosion of agriculture's share, from 18 per cent to 10 per cent.
The Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in a 1994 report, charged that the sharp drop in aid for African agriculture was one factor in the poor economic performance over the previous decade. "We may see more of the same in the future if agricultural development continues to be neglected," commented IFPRI Director-General Per Pinstrup-Andersen.
A conference on food security in Africa held in Addis Ababa this August heard similar warnings. Former US President Jimmy Carter, speaking for the Global 2000 NGO, which is active in several African countries, emphasized that "the global community needs to move forward in helping these nations invest in infrastructure, agricultural research and development, and financial markets. Without these core elements, sub-Saharan Africa will not be able to feed its people."
Stronger economic growth in least developed countries (LDCs) will depend above all on more resolute steps to promote agricultural development, argues the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in its Least Developed Countries 1997 Report, released on 24 September. Of the 48 countries classified as LDCs in the world, 33 are in Africa.
"Agriculture is the single most important sector in LDCs' economies," notes UNCTAD Secretary-General Rubens Ricupero. "Development of the agricultural sector offers most LDCs their best prospects for accelerating GDP growth rates and for boosting and diversifying their exports. Also, it can give a crucial boost to the nascent manufacturing sector, by expanding the internal market for consumer goods and providing raw materials for processing industries."
The report notes that Africa has made significant progress in reforming its agricultural pricing mechanisms since 1991, but emphasizes that pricing reforms by themselves are not sufficient to attain high and sustainable agricultural growth rates. For that, a range of other factors must also be assured, including appropriate agricultural technologies, efficient marketing systems, expanded access to credit, strengthened extension services and research facilities, and improved soil and water management. While the private sector may be able to play a key role in marketing and credit, the report adds, in other areas "governments must take the lead."
For the second year in a row, according to UNCTAD estimates, African LDCs registered relatively strong GDP growth rate, averaging 4.6 per cent in 1996. This was down from 5.4 per cent in 1995, but still well above the 1990-94 average of 2.9 per cent. Among the factors behind the high growth rate in 1996, according to the report, were "the positive impact of economic reforms, the devaluation of the CFA franc [in 1994] and more favourable weather for agriculture, especially in East and Southern Africa."
Chronic food insecurity and poverty are "virtually the same," says the World Bank, noting that 50-70 per cent of poor people in sub-Saharan Africa live in rural areas. This population lacks "income, assets, or entitlements with which to produce, buy, or exchange for sufficient food," the Bank says in a 1996 report, Taking Action for Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa. Strong rural growth is "clearly vital" for raising rural incomes, the Bank says, adding that a "resurgence of growth in agriculture must be a top priority for Africa's poverty reduction strategy."
Noting that agriculture typically employs up to 70 per cent of the working population, the Bank says labour-intensive agricultural growth is very important for poverty reduction. Women, it says, are "particularly vulnerable" to poverty and are "already overburdened with household and other tasks." The Bank recommends specific measures to help increase women's incomes, including greater access to land, credit and technologies to raise their productivity. Calling for adequate support from donor countries and institutions, the Bank urges African governments to take the lead in helping raise agricultural productivity through better provision of credit and extension services, improved road and marketing infrastructure, and applied research.
To combat hunger on the continent more effectively, African governments, donor agencies and other development actors need to better understand how food security is interlinked with population growth and the environment, says Mrs. Paulina Makinwa-Adebusoye, head of the new Food Security and Sustainable Development Division of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). The ECA believes that Africa's past efforts were too narrowly focused on individual sectors, and that these three areas should be treated as elements of an integrated "nexus." "Nowhere in the African continent is the intermix of the fundamental issues involved in the nexus receiving the integrated attention which ECA will give it," says Mr. K.Y. Amoako, the ECA's Executive Secretary.
During the last 15 years, many African countries were "preoccupied with the removal of inappropriate policies involving internal market decontrol, better management of extension and credit systems, and the restructuring and reorientation of agricultural institutions and infrastructures," says Mrs. Makinwa-Adebusoye. Although these initiatives led to "pockets of good performance," in per capita terms, food production in Africa declined by 23 per cent over the last quarter-century, as Africa's population has been growing rapidly. "With the existing traditional low-input levels of production," she emphasizes, "many African countries now find it difficult to feed this growing population." While shifting and long-fallow cultivation practices and seasonal pastoralism were appropriate under conditions of slow population growth, abundant land and limited capital and technical knowledge, such methods are "no longer adequate."
Previously, the ECA had separate divisions on agriculture (jointly operated with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization), population and natural resources. But following wide-ranging discussions with other UN agencies, government experts, non-governmental organizations and the private sector, the ECA decided to bring together into one division its staff from the three old divisions. This was approved by African ministers responsible for economic and social development and planning meeting in Addis Ababa, the ECA's headquarters, in May 1996, and Mrs. Makinwa-Adebusoye, a Harvard Ph.D graduate in population science with considerable experience in food security and the environment, was named to head the new division.
The division, says Mrs. Makinwa-Adebusoye, is "focusing its energies on information collection and dissemination, the identification of best practices now emerging in some food security and sustainable development initiatives in Africa, as well as on advocacy of sound policy with the Commission's member states." The aim is to facilitate "three essential transitions in Africa: the transition to more effective and sustainable land use; the demographic transition; and the transition to environmental conservation." She adds that "partnership and collaboration with all stakeholders in these transitions will be essential and networking will be encouraged, with appropriate emphasis on capacity building."
