A Path to Prosperity New Directions for African Livestock

2 Overview
2.1 Agriculture and Food Security
in Africa
Agriculture is vital for promoting growth and
reducing poverty in Africa and essential to the
achievement of Millennium Development Goals
(MDG). Agriculture currently supports the livelihoods
of 80% of the African population, provides
employment for about 60% of the economicallyactive
population, and employment for about 70
% of the poorest people on the continent 2 .
Development is vital. The human population of
Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is approaching 800 million
people 3 and is growing at around 2.2% per annum,
compared to the global average of 1%. This fastgrowing
population is becoming increasingly urban,
with the overall share of the population living in
urban areas growing by 1.5% per year; which means
another 1.2 million people in cities next year. This
percentage of urban growth is similar to other
developing regions. However, the predicted GDP per
capital growth rate for the next 20 years is far lower
for SSA, at around 1.6%, compared to 4.7% for South
Asia and 5.3% for East Asia and the Pacific 1 .
Agricultural growth is a proven driver of poverty
reduction. When agriculture stimulates growth in
Africa, the growth is twice as effective in reducing
poverty as growth based in other sectors. In China,
agriculture-based growth is 3.5 times more effective
in reducing poverty than growth based on other
sectors. In Latin America, the effectiveness is 2.7
times 4 . Agricultural growth also means greater food
security. Sub-Saharan Africa currently has the
highest proportion of undernourished people in the
world, at 30 % of the population.
At current rates, it is estimated that Africa will be
unable to adequately feed half its population by
2015 2 . Agricultural GDP per farmer has over the last
two decades risen by 2% per annum in Asia, nearly
3% in Latin America but less than 1% in Africa. In
Africa farmers have been working harder and more
people have taken up farming, but productivity has
not increased. Most of the growth stems from
increases in the land area under exploitation rather
than from increases in productivity.
Africa is endowed with a wide diversity of
agro-ecological zones. These zones range from the
heavy rain-forest vegetation with bi-annual rainfall
to relatively sparse, dry and arid vegetation with low
uni-modal rainfall. This diversity is a tremendous
asset, but it also poses a substantial challenge for
African agricultural development.
On the one hand, it creates a vast potential with
respect to the mix of agricultural commodities
and products which can be produced and marketed
in domestic and external markets. On the other
hand, the diversity implies that there are no universal
solutions to agricultural development problems
across the continent. Consequently, any interventions
must be tailored to the particular conditions of the
different agro-ecological zones and to prevailing
socio-economic conditions of rural households
within individual countries.
Over the last three decades, increases in agricultural
output in Africa have come largely through extending
rain-fed crop cultivation, particularly food crops, on
to more and more marginal soils and/or by reducing
traditional fallow periods in cropping cycles.
Under conditions of rapid human population
growth, rural households have been forced to adopt
agricultural practices that guarantee their survival.
Unfortunately, raising the productivity of crop
enterprises through intensification per unit of land
cultivated – i.e., through increasing crop yields per
hectare – has not been adequately promoted as an
important household food security strategy.
Apart from commercial agriculture which covers a
relatively small share of livestock crop production,
the use of agricultural inputs – that is, improved
seeds and breeds, animal health, inorganic fertilizers
and pesticides – has been much lower in Africa than
in other parts of the developing world. Inorganic
fertilizer use is often less than 10kg per hectare.
Use of agro-chemicals and/or integrated pest
management techniques to deal with plant diseases
and pests is still largely confined to export crops 2 .
1 World Bank, World Development Indicators.
The Impetus Strategy Paper I Page 9