Agriculture for development in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper argues that an agriculture-led strategy of economic growth offers most countries of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) their best chance at rapid economic growth and poverty alleviation. Given the huge heterogeneity of SSA, no single Asian-style green revolution is likely to drive that growth. Rather, SSA will need to develop a series of differentiated agricultural revolutions suited to its varied ecological niches and market opportunities. SSA faces unique organizational challenges in fostering this growth, due to more weathered soils; much weaker infrastructure than other areas of the world; highly heterogeneous social and linguistic systems; poor governance in some countries; and a large number of small countries, which makes it difficult to achieve economies of scale in some of the prime movers of agricultural development, such as agricultural research, higher education, and market development and regulation. In sub-Saharan Africa growth needs to be accelerated, secured and used more effectively to promote broadly shared development. This requires two elements. The first is a reversal in the massive underinvestment and significant mis-investment that has taken place in the past in African agriculture, which has led to a huge cost in forgone development for Africans. There is an opportunity now for increased productive investment and improved efficiency of investment in African agriculture, which can significantly increase productivity and output, especially among certain groups of smallholders. The second element is to capture part of this productivity growth to help finance a set of investments, programs and policies that in the short to medium term will secure the assets and access to services of those smallholders facing severe resource and productivity constraints, while over the longer term provide them or their children with a path out of low-productivity farming.