Conclusions: what direction for the future of African agriculture?

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter draws overall conclusions from the current study as well as the preceding one and to point out directions for future research as well as policy. It is argued that the African Green Revolution might differ from the Asian one: it would involve other crops, be less focused on rice and wheat and be adapted to other water and climate regimes. More fundamentally, the African Green Revolution might not show the three characteristics observed in Asia, i.e. state-driven, market-mediated and smallholder-based, which were the focus in the earlier Afrint study. Attempts to replicate the Asian Green Revolution in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa may come to look as tragic farces. Examples of these failures are already seen in Nigeria and in the first attempts in Ethiopia in the early years of the new millennium to replicate the Asian Green Revolution. It is argued that crop technologies patented by the private sector will have to play quite a different role from what they did in Asia from the late 1960's onwards. Efforts to create partnerships with the multinational private sector will be critical and such organizations as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and others may provide some clear examples of how to stimulate public-private partnerships in promoting a smallholder-based Green Revolution in sub-Saharan Africa. A redefined division of labour and responsibility between the public and the private sector might thus come to characterize the African Green Revolution when it comes of age and gains pace. The coming decade will show if such a recast of classical Green Revolution strategies will be potent enough to take the edge off the African food crisis. If so, capital may come to play another role in pro-poor agricultural growth than Marx had envisaged.