Time for Africa to enhance its research in agriculture
By Mercy Rurii, June 20, 2023Contemporary agricultural sector faces many new challenges, from new crop diseases to impacts of climate change. Yet these challenges can often be combatted with new and improved technologies developed through scientific research.
The world faces a huge dilemma which needs urgent action to prepare for with a potential crisis related to population growth. With an estimated 570 million farms worldwide today, agriculture is an important employer with millions of people engaged in food-related jobs.
Projections from the World Bank and other expert organisations are that the world will need a 70 per cent increase in global food production and a doubling in food production in developing countries to cope with food demands by 2050. Doubling food production calls for the development and execution of innovative and transformative strategies anchored on strong agricultural research.
Here in Africa, though agriculture is a key driver of economic growth and plays a part in reducing hunger and poverty levels within the continent, investments in agricultural research over the past fifty years has been on a downward trajectory.
Despite understanding its importance, countries in the region have failed to prioritise agricultural research. This has left many countries ill-equipped to meet development needs of the rural poor and national food and nutritional security.
Despite high rates of return, investment in agricultural research in developing countries is dismal, amounting to 0.5 per cent of agricultural GDP against the desired level of 1.5 per cent. The shining lights from the Green Revolution have dimmed and growth in agricultural productivity has significantly declined.
A recent World Bank report states that all the increased production must come from increases in yields and cropping intensity as land, water and other production resources are shrinking, but also from reducing post-harvest losses and waste.
These enormous challenges facing the agricultural research community can only be achieved through adopting a new paradigm. Reformed and vibrant agricultural research, technology, innovation, extension, and knowledge systems will be required to bridge the huge yield gaps.
Canada’s International Development Research Centre and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research have partnered with other organisations to organise an international conference to discuss experiences and lessons learned from a concluding two phased five-year food security project christened Cultivate Africa’s Future.
We partnered with select countries in Eastern and Southern African regions to fund applied research to develop and scale-up sustainable, climate resilient and gender responsive innovations for smallholder producers. Through the programme, nine projects have tested 19 innovations in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Our experience in implementing the programme over the past ten years has demonstrated the importance of research to produce the evidence required and decisions that need to be made in efforts to ensure increased food and nutrition security in the region. We have also noted that countries that use research results from sound science to inform food security, nutrition, climate change and water policies and programmes are more successful in their efforts to implement transformative change.
We are, therefore, requesting African Governments and supporting institutions to scale up investments in agricultural research in order to support their scientists and technical teams to address the needs of smallholder farmers and provide solutions, through science.
Finally, there is need to reframe and redesign agriculture policies that advance access to food/feed products, inputs and technologies and allow an advancement in value addition.
— The writer is the Programme Officers, International Development Research Centre. Email: MRurii@idrc.ca