africa

Africa at a Fork in the Road: Taking Off or Disappointment Once Again?
Knowing whom the smallholder trusts most is critical to determining where there
is greatest potential for disseminating new and existing productivity-enhancing
technologies. These circles begin with her family, her village, her larger community,
and extend progressively further out. She is affected by country policies, she
is affected by continental norms and declarations, like the African Union’s Maputo
commitments, and—in the largest circle—she is affected by the global context, be
it in terms of international food prices or guidelines around land tenure.
Notice that the Gates Foundation, based in Seattle, is in the lower left corner, very
far out. The Foundation is mindful of this; as Wendell Berry asked when the program
started its agricultural strategy planning exercise in 2010: “What are you doing that
actually makes something better for the smallholder farmer in the field, thousands
of miles away?” The program strives to ground our investments and interventions,
through using grantee partners, to see which context provides the best interface
for particular productivity-enhancing measures.
An approach mainstreaming innovation: After understanding the dynamics of
adoption of technologies in the smallholder’s family farm, and the kinds of technologies
she prefers—say growing staple crops as opposed to cash crops in certain
settings—the strategy focuses on key innovations that are designed to increase
productivity, and keeps in mind that these practices/technologies have the potential
to be scaled up. Such innovations can range from developing new crop varieties,
like scuba rice or vitamin-fortified sorghum, to creating storage facilities for dairy
products or strengthening agricultural extension.
An illustrative example in extension is Digital Green. This is a video method of peerto-peer,
farmer-to-farmer knowledge exchange that can better target extension and
farming practices based on farmers’ needs and results in higher adoption (seven
times higher) of new knowledge and thus greater productivity. Local partners, who
are mostly women, go into a community and use digital cameras to video the leading
farmer who demonstrates the best extension practices. Over holiday periods,
these videos are then presented to the villagers. The videos and the interactive
question-and-answer session are filmed again to see what questions farmers are
most concerned about. Using algorithms and tags in local languages, Digital Green
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