Shaping The Future of Agriculture in Africa
By Kathurima Mwongera
In the year 2050, more than a quarter of the world population (28%) will be living in Africa. Sadly, Africa is currently the hungriest continent where the largest portion of the population suffers starvation and malnutrition. To feed this increased population, the people of Africa must ditch traditional and inefficient farming practices and adopt modern ways of farming to feed not only the current population but also the future generations. This future of agriculture will be shaped by science and innovation. Not on paper though, but by actual adoption of the latest technologies and farming methods on the ground. In this article, we will explore both policy and actual work on the ground that has the potential to help Africa safely feed its growing population.
Policy Support
Whereas individual farmers have taken admirable measures to transform their farming methods, the continent would immensely benefit from wide-reaching policy formulation and implementation. Such policy frameworks include both continental and national policies. At the continental level, the African Union (AU) has had policy strategies such as the 2003 Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security, the 2014 Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth, and the most recent one, the 2025 Kampala CAADP Declaration on Building Resilient and Sustainable Agrifood Systems in Africa. The latest declaration aims to push Africa towards “achieving food security and nutrition, transforming agriculture into a leading driver of economic growth, and reducing the continent’s dependence on food imports.” Such policy frameworks help enhance and strengthen individual efforts for greater impact. For example, when the policies are right and well-implemented, farmers can get timely information, link to other farmers, entrepreneurs, and investors, and influence policy and government decision-making from their hands-on experiences.
Proper policies also create an enabling environment for other stakeholders in the agricultural sector such as innovators, investors, and organizations involved with agricultural development. These include; the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA), Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT. With the right policies in place, such players support governments’ measures to improve and modernize agriculture in the continent. For example, the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT has worked to push the inclusion of topics on climate and agriculture in over 70 institutions across Africa. In partnership with such organizations, African governments should do more in terms of establishing training programs for farmers who wish to pursue agriculture. This will equip the youth and women with the right skills to take advantage of the food system’s entrepreneurial opportunities. When governments welcome support from other stakeholders, the transformation would have a greater impact on the African farmer and the population at large.
Adopting Technology
Since the industrial age, technology has been at the heart of agricultural transformation in terms of cost reduction and increased yields. In the 21st Century, Agritech has gone beyond mechanization. For example, modern farms are currently practicing precision farming, which refers to the use of technology to achieve greater accuracy in monitoring, management, and crop production. This approach optimizes inputs such as water, fertilizer, and pesticides for maximum crop yields. Precision farming techniques include drones and satellite imaging, GPS-enabled equipment, soil sensors, and the use of mobile apps to monitor aspects such as weather, farm status, and market.
African governments must also open doors for negotiation and adoption of approved genetically modified (GM) products to increase yields. South Africa, for example, leads in this space having adopted GM cotton, maize, and soybeans. Other countries such as Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Eswatini, and Malawi are at different levels of trials for various GM seeds that include cotton, cowpea, maize, and brown streak virus-resistant cassava. GM foods that are certified as safe can go a long way in ensuring there is food to feed the growing population.
Despite the challenges that remain to be tackled, there has been an admirable adoption of technology in farming within the continent. Among the countries that have done amazingly well in this regard include Kenya and South Africa. In Kenya, for example, advanced fintech gives small-scale farmers access to finance on their mobile phones without having to visit banks. Financial inclusion is a major development that has the potential to lead to a thriving agricultural sector in Africa. This is especially true for women and young people who make up a large portion of work in agriculture but are excluded from the traditional financing network.
Away from fintech, there are other numerous Agritech farm solutions available for Kenyan farmers. They include M-Farm, Twiga Foods, and Apollo Agriculture, among others. With the help of partners, other African countries are also making headways in the digital agriculture space. For example, the World Bank has helped Côte d’Ivoire launch its “Digital Solutions Program for e-Agriculture.” African countries are also adopting precision farming which helps both small-scale and large-scale farmers abandon traditional farming methods for increased efficiency, better yields, and increased profitability. Tanzania for example, has MazaoHub while Farmonaut is helping Cocoa farmers in West Africa to increase yields, managest pests, and mitigate the effects of climate change.
Besides adopting technology from outside, African governments must also encourage indigenous invention and innovation within the agricultural sector. Examples of such platforms that encourage this type of innovation include Kenya’s AgriTech4Kenya Innovation which encourages innovators to share their inventions for upscaling in the larger market.
Improved Farming Methods
According to a 2019 report by the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) titled “Feed Africa”, the continent has 65% of the world’s remaining uncultivated arable land. In addition, Africa also has an abundance of fresh water and usually more than 300 days of sunshine in a year. These statistics point to a huge potential that is yet to be tapped or fully exploited. Proper exploitation of this potential would reverse the situation in Africa from hunger and starvation to food exportation.
To achieve this, there is a need to reform land use to protect agriculturally productive land from encroachment by real estate developments. For example, between 1992 and 2015 Egypt lost up to 74,600 hectares of fertile agricultural land to urbanisation. Such losses of arable land to concrete structures worsen the situation of food scarcity in the continent and governments should update their land use policies to protect agricultural land. To protect the arable land, Africa must also deal with land degradation to ensure it remains productive. For example, farms are more productive when there is increased organic matter, moisture retention, and the use of inorganic fertilizers.
Governments must also address the issue of land fragmentation by establishing an integrated land management strategy. This will ensure optimal use of the available land for food production. Over and above addressing land degradation and fragmentation, Africa must also promote farming methods that increase yields per unit of land. In Rwanda, for example, the introduction of 13 climbing bean varieties has helped to improve the yields of the farms, nutrition, and household incomes.
For maximum agricultural returns, policies should also go beyond the farms and focus on the entire agricultural value chain. Governments must institute and implement measures that ensure the effective governance of agricultural value chains. These include promoting contract farming, supporting cooperatives, creating producer organizations, and the creation of grades and standards systems to encourage better yields from farmers. African governments must also invest heavily in agricultural infrastructure, research and extension, and market information systems. Developing and promoting information systems will give Africa’s youth access to not only the newest agricultural information but also platforms to network. For example, the African Leadership Academy’s AL for Agribusiness Network (ALAN), offers African youth in agriculture a platform to network with both peers and leaders in the sector.
Addressing Climate Change
One of the ways African farmers are addressing climate change is through climate-smart agriculture (CSA). This is a farming approach that promotes environmentally sustainable and climate resilience strategies. Among the methods used to achieve CSA include conservation tillage, crop rotation, integrated pest management, use of renewable energy, efficient water use, crop engineering, and lately the use of artificial intelligence. While CSA takes care of the climate, it has the core goals of increasing food security and safety and increasing the incomes of the farmers involved.
To help African farmers understand and adopt CSA, organizations such as The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) have come up with tools such as climate information services (CIS) that enhance capacity building and targeted climate advisory services. According to CIAT, the adoption of CSA methods such as agroforestry, conservation agriculture, and drought-tolerant crops has increased farm yields by up to 20% and a 15% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in Kenya.
A holistic approach to addressing climate change should involve integrated land use and efficient water management systems that are vital in reversing the loss of biodiversity and also rehabilitating the already degraded regions. Governments must put in place policies that incentivize farmers to ditch unsustainable farming practices in favor of more environmentally sustainable methods.
As part of promoting environmental sustainability, farmers in Africa are also looking back to reliving old farming methods that have proven harmless to the environment. These include the use of organic manure instead of synthetic fertilizers. One such farmer is Kumar Sheth, the Founder Director at Food for Soil Africa Ltd. Before venturing into what he calls chemical-free farming, Kumar visited several countries to learn about the production of organic fertilizers and chemical-free pesticides. He calls on farmers to explore the benefits of chemical-free farming which reduces manure and pesticide costs while also increasing yields.
Reduced production costs and increased yields lead to greater profitability. Another benefit of chemical-free farming that Kumar mentioned was its premium nature whereby he does not use middlemen to market his products but sells directly to health-conscious consumers. When we take care of the environment, it takes care of us in return and we can lead healthy lives.
Although the population in Africa is expected to increase exponentially, the continent also has a huge unexploited agriculture potential that it can tap to meet this challenge. To achieve this, African governments must prudently work on initiating policies that help shape the future of agriculture. These policies should include the adoption of the latest Agritech, agricultural training, access to financing, land-use reforms, sustainable farming methods, and encourage indigenous innovations and inventions in the agricultural space.
