africa

Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
26.6 Conclusion
A decade after Kofi Annan’s 2004 call to action, there are grounds for cautious
long-term optimism about African agriculture. Recent progress has the “green
shoot” characteristics of an early stage. Achieving a transformation across roughly
500 million rural Africans will still require scaled up public and private investments,
alongside complementary policies tailored to each country’s circumstances. No single
approach will work everywhere, but some common principles can be supported to
raise Africa’s widespread agricultural competitiveness. Boosting crop productivity,
especially staple crop productivity, should ultimately help drive much-improved living
standards for Africans across the continent.
References
Annan, Kofi A., 2004. “Africa’s Green Revolution: A Call to Action.” Public address
at High-Level Seminar on “Innovative Approaches to Meet the Hunger MDG
in Africa,” United Nations Conference Center, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, July 5.
Arbache, Jorge Saba, and John Page, 2010. “How Fragile is Africa’s Recent Growth?”
Journal of African Economies 19 (1): 1-24.
Block, Steven A., 2013. “The Post-Independence Decline and Rise of Crop Productivity
in Sub-Saharan Africa: Measurement and Explanations,” Oxford Economic
Papers 66: 373-396.
Christiaensen, Luc, Lionel Demery, and Jesper Kuhl, 2011. “The (Evolving) Role
of Agriculture in Poverty Reduction – An Empirical Perspective,” Journal of
Development Economics 96: 239-254.
Collier, Paul, and Stefan Dercon, 2013. “African Agriculture in 50 Years: Smallholders
in a Rapidly Changing World?” World Development. Available at http://dx.doi.
org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2013.10.001
de Janvry, Alain, and Elisabeth Sadoulet, 2010. “Agriculture for Development in
Africa: Business-as-Usual or New Departures?” Journal of African Economies
19 (AERC Supplement 2): ii7-ii39.
468