Dr Michael Njume Ebong
By Dr Michael Njume Ebong
Puzzling statistics : Africa’s agricultural performance in the past several decades exhibits puzzling statistics. The region accounts for more than half of the world’s total uncultivated arable land, and has about 60%t of its population engaged in farming (including livestock and fisheries), that is relatively more farmers than any other continent. And yet Africa imports more food per capita than other developing regions. The only region still agonizing for an agricultural revolution, Africa is also the most troubled by recurrent food crises and food insecurity, according to data by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). In 2011 Africa imported food products worth USD 43 billion against agricultural commodity exports worth only USD 34 billion.
The World Bank’s 2008 World Development Report entitled Agriculture for Development, revealed that while agriculture contributed upwards of 30% to overall African GDP from 1980 to 2000, African public spending on the sector was astonishingly low at barely 4% per annum or less than half of similar expenditure in other developing regions during the same period. This comparison would imply that African countries are still to wake up in recognizing the centrality of agricultural development as driver of economic growth and poverty reduction, as so clearly demonstrated in past decades by other regions, especially Asia and the Pacific. This apparent neglect by African countries to use agriculture as their development springboard is further evident in other data, which show for example that while total African GDP grew annually by about 6% from 2000 to 2010, agricultural GDP grew only by 3.4%, according to a 2014 Deutcshe Bank publication entitled Agricultural value chains in Sub-Saharan Africa. Such dismal performance in a sector with virtually limitless development potentials and which should give African countries unique comparative advantages in world agricultural trade would seem to explain the region’s increasing food-import dependence and why its poverty rates have remained stubbornly high over the decades since the poor are concentrated in agriculture.
Why this under-performance ? Mainstream literature on this subject faults African governments for under-investment and sometimes misinvestment in agriculture. The lack of crucial infrastructure, especially inter-village and farm-to-market roads integrating farming communities with market hubs; effective farmer-enabling institutions and policies (e.g. acquisition and distribution of farm inputs or financial services for the farmers); and urban-oriented allocation of public investments, are singled out as some of the causes for Africa’s regressive agricultural statistics. African farmers (mostly village-based smallholders) are equally faulted for having the lowest productivity per farmer and per hectare in comparison with farmers in other regions. For example, whereas cereal yields on African farms average less than 2 tonnes per hectare, farmers in other regions achieve yields averaging 6 tonnes per hectare. Productivity on Africa’s cocoa and coffee farms averages 500 kg per hectare compared to yields as high as 3000 kg per hectare in some Asian and Latin American countries. Relatively lower productivity characterizes practically all crops and related activities, and explains in large part why Africa, with its relatively more agricultural land and more numerous farmers, is nonetheless the only region that still cannot feed itself or use agriculture as a powerful lever for industrial takeoff and substantial poverty reduction in the rural heartland.
Low productivity is attributed to severely limited applications of science and technology to agriculture, especially research and development (R&D) innovations to generate high-yielding and pest-resistant crop varieties. R&D played a crucial role in revolutionizing smallholder agriculture in China, India, Indonesia and Thailand for example. Because it accounts for close to 50% of total factor productivity, R&D is indispensable to the transformation of subsistence agriculture, such as predominates in African villages, into commercial farm enterprises able to engage the market efficiently, effectively and sustainably on profitable terms.
And yet, here too, African countries have lagged behind, alarmingly. Their combined investment in agricultural R&D in the last decade was statistically insignificant – less than 0.1% of similar investment in other regions. Limited mechanized options and tools equally inhibit productivity. It is the main reason farming does not appeal to the youth, who recoil from the manual drudgery it entails using only a matchete and hoe. Indeed, a tractor is a very rare asset in a typical African village, so are animal traction solutions. Crop irrigation, which can significantly raise the productivity of some crops, covers barely 4% of Africa’s 50 million or so small farms, compared to 40% in some high-performing developing countries. Yet another productivity drawback is irregular or non-existent application of farm inputs to protect plants and boost production. Further, some major donor countries are held partly responsible for the agony of Africa’s agriculture. The share of agriculture in official development assistance (ODA) declined in relative terms from 18% in 1979 to 3.5% in 2004, and in absolute terms from USD 8 billion in 1984 to USD3.4 billion in 2004, most of it going to support the Asian green revolution. Powerful agricultural interests in some donor countries also lobby their governments against the use of development aid to support agriculture in their major export markets concentrated in Africa. As can be seen, therefore, the African farmer appears trapped in a fatal vise, from within and without. To this already stark situation should be factored still unknown climate change perils looming on the horizon of African agriculture.
The struggle for farmer visibility and recognition : Yet, as desperate as it may seem, the foregoing is only the tip of the iceberg threatening to sink the African farmer. The hard question is this : if freed from existing impediments noted above, can the African farmer spark a green revolution? We partly addressed this question in a 2007 article entitled Le paysan camerounais est le moteur de la croissance économique (www.chede.org), which drew attention to the blurred economic identity of the Cameroonian village farmer toiling daily on the informal margins of the « modern » economic sector predominant in the cities and usually favoured by public policies and investment strategies. We argued that the extensive land, farm, and livestock holdings of farmers in the Cameroonian village landscape accounting for about 60% of national employment and generating upwards of 30% of GDP were of such national scale and weal that they justified ranking the Cameroonian smallholders collectively as the most important local investor. And yet, this Cameroonian village-based investor lacks an economic identity card. For example, is he together with his farming household a small and medium-size enterprise (SME) on equal footing with SMEs in the cities in terms of government largesse? This village investor is for example silenced in the Cameroon investment code, excluded from the Cameroon business and investment forums, and does not enjoy the same red-carpet treatment usually rolled out for foreign investors. This observation applies to smallholders in other African countries who struggle daily for economic visibility and government policy recognition. We probe this important issue further below by comparing the farmer’s asset position relative to those of other productive forces in a typical African country.
City-village pattern of distribution of normative public goods and services : As currently structured, the national workforce of a typical African country can be subdivided into three segments, as follows : (1) public and parapublic sector which accounts for about 3 % average of the national workforce but commands (by our guess-estimate) 30% on average of its intellectual capital or brain power (defined in this context as the critical mass of well educated, trained, skilled, and experienced personnel in active employment), and has an average age of 35 years; (2) the formal and informal business class including the extractive, industry and service sectors, as well as large agribusiness companies and civil society and religious organizations, which together represent about 37% of the total workforce, account for about 50% of its intellectual capital, generates much of the direct tax and customs revenues going to state coffers, and has a 40-year median age ; and (3) village-based smallholders who represent 60% of the workforce in Cameroon and as much as 80% in some other African countries such as Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, or Mozambique, account for 20% of the intellectual capital of the national workforce, and has an average age of 55 years (60 years in Cameroon).
National workforce segments 1 and 2 above are mostly city-based except for decentralized services, are thoroughly well trained for their professions, and are relatively young. The farmers’ segment 3 is village-based, is the least educated, and is much older than the other workforce segments. A cursory analysis of the present relative distribution of normative public goods and services among these three segments (e.g. infrastructure such as roads, railways, ports, and energy supply networks ; transport and communication services; social services especially healthcare and educational facilities; safety and security services ; administrative services ; etc), which all the three workforce segments need in order to function efficiently and productively, shows that on average 70% of the total stock of such goods and services are urban-centred and benefit mostly the public and business sectors, while the more numerically important farmers segment 3 is supported by only 30%. This is at present the rough urban-rural or city-village capital assets distribution ratio in most African countries, including Cameroon, with respect in particular to total road network coverage, which is fundamental to agricultural production and productivity. But for those village farmers lucky to be located near inter-city expressways, much of the road network available to the farmers is unpaved and of such poor quality that it is almost useless if not too dangerous to use in the rainy seasons.
Inverted pyramid: This inverted pyramid of national capital stock distribution between the urban and rural sectors is typical of industrialized countries but difficult to justify in predominantly agriculture-based economies mostly found in Africa. It operates in conflict with African national constitutions which guarantee equal and equitable development rights and opportunities for all citizens irrespective of station and sector. It sidelines the farmer operationally and psychologically because it trivializes farming as a worthy profession entitled to the same robust government support enjoyed by other city-based professions. It deprives village farming households of young muscle and intellect because it encourages mass migrations from the villages to the cities and to distant lands abroad – to the point where some countries such as Angola or Gabon currently have close to 80% of their total populations living in cities and townships. Any surprise then that these countries’ agriculture sector is in deep trouble and their food import bills are skyrocketing ? To that should be added other factors which kill farmer motivation and ambition, such as the lack of the same professional benefits enjoyed by public and private sector personnel, especially social security policies including pension and health insurance schemes, dependable healthcare services, risk insurance against crop failures and epidemics, ready access to markets and technology packages, and first-class quality training and refresher programmes. In Cameroon, for example, prestigious elite schools in the likes of ENAM or IRIC exist for public sector employees and numerous management schools for the business class, but hardly any for the more numerous farmers, excepting MINADER’s sparse and nondescript network of agricultural colleges and University faculties of agriculture strong on theory but weak on practice, with almost no technology conveyor belts to the farming population. Predictably, most of the graduates aspire not to become farmers but to work as government civil servants in air-conditioned offices in the cities. Which implies that the development of African agriculture has been abandoned to an old and illiterate village spent force with no succession plan in view. No wonder therefore that the African farmer may be considered an endangered species. So how can this African farmer compete with wealthy and heavily subsidized farmers in the developed countries under the World Trade Organization (WTO) multilateral trading system or the African and European Union Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA)?
The village: Additionally, the African farmer works in a village setting which in some countries such as Cameroon lacks administrative codification as a development unit in its own right, similar to the administrative demarcation of regions, divisions, subdivisions, districts and communes. Try very hard for example to find the village mentioned anywhere in the Cameroon Constitution. And whereas some countries have entire Ministries in charge of urban development and planning, to the best of our knowledge no African country has a similar Ministry exclusively responsible for village development and planning. The village is equally missing in the most authoritative publications on this subject by the World Bank, FAO or IFAD, which rarely see the strong link between Africa’s poor agricultural performance and the appalling conditions in African villages due to their inaccessibility challenges. Appending « rural development » to the Ministry of Agriculture misses the imperative of comprehensive and integrated village modernization. This should be the prime mission of all development ministries in a context where smallholder agriculture is recognized, supported and moved as the engine of national economic and industrial growth and equalizer of development opportunities and income distribution nation-wide.
We argued that case some ten years ago in a 2004 study entitled Agricultural expansion for poverty eradication in Africa : rethinking strategies from a village perspective – case study of Cameroon, in which we considered African villages as the foundation blocks of nation building. Building a nation is like building a house – you must start from the foundation, comprising agriculture as the economic foundation and the village as the socio-political foundation. Thus comprehensive development of African villages – with special focus on the modernization and promotion of their cultural heritage – should be the entry-point for the modernization and expansion of smallholder agriculture. Our villages need to regain their colourful cultural effervescence punctuated with harvest festivals of yesteryears. That is what will attract our numerous jobless youth now in the cities to agriculture. In other words, Africa’s agricultural productivity revolution will have to be engineered in the villages, not in the cities. The first assignment to that end should be to restore pride, prestige, self-esteem and self-confidence to the village farmer, recognize his contribution as the first indigenous investor and foremost architect in nation building at foundation level, and give him the hardware and software packages he needs to perform our long-awaited agricultural miracle.
Copyright Dr Michael Njume Ebong
Chede Cooperative Union Ltd
Tel/WhatsApp: 679 548 929
10/06/2017
