In an article that appeared in this newspaper, it was reported that President Paul Kagame stressed the urgency of transforming the world’s food systems, citing that agriculture and agri-business, especially in Africa, will drive the attainment of sustainable development goals.
The Covid-19 crisis has highlighted a number of global vulnerabilities, including the uncoordinated nature of the world’s pandemic response, its inability to support the poorest countries and their populations in managing the economic fallout, and of course the weakness of existing health-care infrastructure. Moreover, fragile agriculture and food systems, particularly in Africa and other low-income regions, have exacerbated the pandemic’s impact. Unless addressed, these systems’ shortcomings could deepen any crisis in the decades ahead. The dependency on agriculture was also highlighted in developed countries and in fact, the concept of food sovereignty started being discussed together with the notion of food security.
For Africa, agriculture is critical. It can form the basis of transforming economies but also can be the first step in helping countries achieve more basic needs and goals.
For starters, vibrant food and agriculture sectors are essential for preventing malnutrition – one of the leading global causes of illness – and strengthening them is important in managing pandemics as well. Ensuring the right access to food and also having agricultural systems and markets that enable people to eat can be important elements in reducing hunger and malnutrition. Here, industrialised countries and development aid can play a critical role in building such agricultural systems and markets which have the potential to support countries and populations fight hunger.
Agriculture is also crucial to successful economic transformations. There can be no global economic stability, green economy, or eradication of mass poverty if African and other developing countries do not industrialize. And as the United States, Europe, and Asia have demonstrated, industrialization first requires an agricultural revolution, which Africa has yet to experience. Here, we need to think about the whole value chain. Although agriculture is already an important element in Africa’s economy, it currently makes up around 20% of the continent’s GDP; we need to think bigger and better. The world needs to stop looking at Africa as just a cultivation zone. Transforming agriculture means moving up the value-chain. African countries need to start seeing that agriculture does not stop at cultivation but includes the processing of food to enable the creation of new industries. This needs to be seen across the complete agricultural landscape to include aquaculture and fish processing in countries that have access to the sea or lakes; dairy and meat processing; as well as new industries such as medical marijuana. Cultivation should just be the first step in a value-adding process whereby a food industry establishes itself, attracting investment, talent transfer and the use of technology and digitalisation.
The use of digital technologies can also support this economic revolution. We have already seen the use of drones in agriculture, but even other technologies and digitalization can bring significant benefits. The use of IoT and AI can support farmers in irrigation and nutrition apart from the use of indoor farming systems such as hydroponics. It is therefore imperative to start looking at agriculture as a critical sector, one which needs to be seen as an ecosystem and therefore with its own investment incentives, tax schemes, training and human capital development.
Finally, supporting infrastructure will be critical for countries to really participate in regional and international trade. This includes storage facilities as well as telecommunications systems which can support the deployment of digitalization such as IoT. Essential to this transformation is land reform which can really enable families and farmers to start building their livelihoods.
Given the right focus by governments, policymakers can identify agricultural sectors, which, with the deployment of technology and new practices, can attract investment, in turn spurring employment, economic growth, and tax revenues – thereby initiating a virtuous cycle of development. Investment and reform – both domestically and externally financed – can accelerate change.
The time is now. Agriculture can not only kickstart an economic transformation but also lead to human development. As President Kagame rightly said, "the central goal is to halt our continent’s over-reliance on food imports, end malnutrition, and create millions of new jobs in the food economy.”
The writer is a co-founding partner of Seed Consultancy, a research-driven internationally-focused advisory firm.
www.seedconsultancy.com | jp@seedconsultancy.com