africa

Africa at a Fork in the Road: Taking Off or Disappointment Once Again?
productivity it will not be enough to increase yields per hectare through modern seeds
cultivated with sufficient fertilizer. Rather, a multiplicity of other policy interventions
would have to be implemented, ranging from lowering transport costs—through
deregulation and better infrastructure—to expanding credit in rural areas and making
reliable and low-cost energy available to agricultural producers.
Dryden agrees that the goal must be to have sustainable and substantial productivity
gains in African agriculture, as an indispensable condition to keep high rates of
economic growth, achieve an inclusive economic transformation, create jobs for
the youth, and enable dramatic poverty reduction. Based on the work done by the
remarkable Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he submits that the right strategy
to pursue that goal must focus on smallholder farmers; key geographies; key staple
crops and livestock; identification, diffusion, and adoption of key technologies and
practices; and the development of comprehensive regional food systems comprising
both the demand and supply sides of the agricultural supply chain.
Omiti and his co-author, too, believe in the importance of looking at entire agri-food
systems rather than paying attention only to the supply aspects of food production.
A holistic approach requires actions comprising natural resources, social networks,
and maintenance of diversity in genetic resources and farming techniques, as well
as policies that create conditions for effective governance. Furthermore, in their
view, special attention should be dedicated to policies aimed to reduce drastically
food losses and food waste. Globally around one third of the food produced in the
world is lost or wasted.
Quite pertinently, Udry warns analysts and policymakers about the pitfalls of following
rigidly general prescriptions when pursuing higher yields and productivity in the
African agricultural sector. Reporting on several randomized controlled experiments
to provide support to small African farmers, he concludes that interventions, to be
successful, must take into account heterogeneity on the ground—and also that proposed
interventions must be tested before being widely applied. A corollary of that
conclusion is that large-scale programs that are introduced from above and purely
state-led are likely to fail. The experiments reported by Udry do provide however
strong support for the validity of a general proposition: that markets with prices, and
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