Africa’s Green Revolution Underway At Last?
1 October 2012 By Dr. Richard Orendo Smith
Contributor
A couple of decades ago, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) was known as the only region in the world where per capita food production remained stagnant. An estimated 180 million Africans were believed to have no access to adequate daily quantity of food to lead healthy and productive lives. Yet, 70% of all Africans were involved in subsistence agriculture either as producers or laborers.
However, the continent’s food insecurity is intimately linked to insufficient food production as opposed to poor distribution and lack of purchasing power for the case of South Asia and other regions. Part of the lack of insufficient food production in Africa is to be blamed on the severity of soil degradation. But problems such as weeds, pests and diseases also represent significant physical hindrances to the low per capita food production in Africa.
It is fair to say that the “Green Revolution Movement” that changed the sector in terms of increased level of production per hectare of land cultivated, in response to the need to produce sufficient quantity of food to meet the need of the growing population at the time, didn’t benefit African agriculture.
It is equally reasonable to assume that this may have been caused by a breakdown of traditional practices as indicated previously by mainly scholars, coupled with the low priority given to the sector by African governments.
In simplest terms, the Green Revolution was coined in Mexico in the 1940s and consisted mainly of the introduction and promotion of a package made up of mineral fertilizers, high-yielding crop varieties and mechanization.
Looking forward, SSA is home to an estimated 60% of the world’s uncultivated arable land and to significant reserves of fresh water. However, only 4% of African surface and ground water is exploited. In addition, irrigation covers only 7% of its crop land. In contrast, almost 80% of available water in Gulf States is used for irrigation and 70% globally, highlighting the enormous potential that exists in Africa for agriculture for not only the fast-growing African population but also the rest of the world.
Read more about Africa’s Green Revolution in the October issue of FCI.
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