africa

Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
agriculture. Digital technology will be a key driver of the needed changes, allowing
smallholder farmers to be connected upstream and downstream to innovations in a
way never before possible. (An analogy is the way mobile phones have changed the
telecom space, allowing people in remote parts of the continent to leapfrog over the
need for landlines.) For instance, today some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have
digital soil maps that can be used for targeting specific interventions, like non-tillage
agriculture. This technique can boost yield by a factor of two without the environmental
consequences of tilling. Identifying areas where it is suitable would not have
been possible without the advent of information and communications technologies.
A comprehensive food systems approach must guide investment and policy
action for African agriculture. With urbanization, along with rising wealth given
high economic growth, and accompanying diet-diversification patterns, it is critical
to use the “demand pull” of agriculture through food retailers to bring smallholders
into the value chain. This requires us to match supply with demand; for too long,
we have focused only on the supply side of the equation.
A comprehensive food systems approach can match supply and demand trends to
link smallholders to markets in an integrated way: doing so would provide smallholders
with a greater share of profits, while also making agriculture more economically
sustainable.
I have not mentioned trade here, either intra-regional or international. Trade is
important for agricultural commodities and it ought to be encouraged. A certain
level of self-sufficiency in critical commodities, essential for national food security,
is required and must feature in trade discussions. This need holds true for most of
the developed world and we do not see why the approach should differ for Africa.
However, I would urge caution against taking an isolationist approach to food security.
27.3 The Gates Foundation’s approach to agricultural development in Africa:
catalytic philanthropy in action to increase smallholder productivity,
sustainably
The Gates Foundation’s Agricultural Development Strategy takes into account the
four factors mentioned above, to help increase smallholder farmer productivity by
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