The Urgent Need for African Leadership in Science, Engineering and Technology to Transform African Agriculture into Agri-Food Value Chains

Abstract

Africa is a huge and diverse continent in terms of land mass, natural resources, peoples, culture and level of economic development, with each region and country showing considerable variations and further diversity. The economic history of many countries in Africa and the continent at large during the last century has been one of negative results, false starts and even decline. The continent often leads the rest of the world in nearly all the wrong and negative statistics – high poverty incidence, low human development index, corruption with impunity, prevalence and persistence of some of the most deadly communicable diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS, high infant and maternal mortality, recurrent food and nutrition insecurity, high frequency of political strife and instability, and the list goes on and on.