African Agricultural Development Research Articles

The impact of cooperative patronage: The case of National Small Holder Farmers’ Association (NASFAM) of Malawi in Kasungu District

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the impact of individual farmers’ participation in the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi (NASFAM). Precisely the paper analyses the effect of participation on credit market access, fertilizer use and total incomes of its participants in the Kasungu district of Malawi. NASFAM is a form of producer cooperative with a number of socio-economic functions. Using data on income per capita, fertilizer expenditure and access to credit, this paper tests the hypothesis that participation in NASFAM positively impacted incomes, fertilizer use and credit acquisition. Employing Propensity Score Matching methodology to estimate Average Treatment Effects (ATT) on programme members, this paper finds evidence that participation in NASFAM had a positive effect on all the endogenous variables. Membership enhances household level incomes, fertilizer use and credit acquisition and is hence in line with national goals of poverty reduction, the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) principles, the SADC's Regional Indicative Strategy Development Plan (RISDP) and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Based on these findings and the fact that credit and fertilizer access are still problematic in Malawi's rural areas, it appears that there is great need for NASFAM to expand to areas where it currently does not have activities. Such expansion would ensure food security over a wider range of rural households through improved input access.

Evidence on Key Policies for African Agricultural Growth

It is widely agreed that reducing poverty in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) depends largely on stimulating growth in agriculture. To this end, heads of state in Africa rallied to form the pan-African Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) with the goal of raising investments and improving strategy implementation. However, while implementing an agricultural agenda under the CAADP framework, more and more countries have realized that increasing public investment in agriculture alone is not enough. Policy can play an important role not only to make public investment more efficient, but also is crucial for incentivizing private sector and farmer investment in agriculture. Against this backdrop this paper takes stock of current agricultural policies in SSA with a view to identifying policies that are working as well as areas for improvement. The paper examines policies to encourage the adoption of agricultural inputs, initiate greater private-sector investment in agriculture and agro-industries, and manage price volatility while encouraging openness. The paper further reviews successful land tenure policies and property rights systems, reviews the evidence on the synergies between agriculture and nutrition, and examines how CAADP is laying the institutional architecture for improved policy formulation in Africa. In general, the paper finds that although substantial progress has been made, there is considerable scope for improvement. This is not surprising given the relatively primitive and deeply rooted nature of smallholder farming in Africa. Evidence synthesized in the paper supports the view that most policies cannot be implemented in isolation. Rather, policies tend to be most effective when implemented along with complementary policies and public investments.

Towards the Implementation of the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Plan (CAADP) in Zimbabwe: A Propositional Analysis of Key Activities Required for Pillar 1

CAADP is the agricultural programme of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), which is therefore a programme of the African Union (AU). Established by the AU assembly in 2003, CAADP focuses on improving food security, nutrition, and increasing incomes in Africa's largely farming based economies. It aims to do this by raising agricultural productivity by at least 6% per year and increasing public investment in agriculture to 10% of national budgets per year. One of the key areas for agricultural and investment is pillar 1 and this paper using evidence and best practices from agriculture projects implemented in three districts in Zimbabwe propose some activities to achieve the goals of this Pillar. Zimbabwe is highly endowed with various natural resources, that if sustainably utilized can help in facilitating household food security. Of critical importance as leant from Wedza district is the pre-requisite of supporting all the activities along commodity value chains (input, production, post-harvest, processing, utilization and marketing) especially targeting crops and livestock that are the main activities in the economy of Zimbabwe covering the 70% of the habitants that reside in rural areas. There is also need to conserve the factors of production especially land that has been degraded and is now highly infertile due to continuous use without nutrient replenishment over the years. Low productivity is the order of the day in most communal areas and this is because of inadequate crop/animal husbandry, limited access to cash to buy inputs, limited access to inputs and commodity markets, complete reliance on rain fed agriculture and unsustainable management and utilization of natural resources. There is therefore need to design activities to address these constraints. Activities like conservation farming, beekeeping , organic farming which uses less inputs while conserving the resources like land, credit schemes to ensure capital to purchase inputs timely and linking the farmers to markets are a potential solution to the constraints faced by farmers. Value addition on all enterprises has not been explored by communities at a commercial level but it is a highly potential lucrative venture.

New investment, old challenges. Land deals and the water constraint in African agriculture

Foreign investment in agricultural land acquisition in sub-Saharan Africa has been viewed primarily as driven by a set of linked ‘crises’: in financial capital markets, in security of energy and food supply, and in global environmental governance. This paper argues that a focus on the ‘buyers’ of land risks overlooking the dynamics that operate on the side of the land ‘sellers’. Accordingly, the first part of the paper argues that it is important to view the current ‘land grab’ as the latest stage in a longer historical process of competition for control of land and other natural resources by different ‘domestic’ economic and political actors within African countries. While such struggles are often characterised as the ‘state versus the peasantry’, with the state acting on behalf of ‘urban elites’, the paper argues that processes of accumulation and associated enclosure of natural resources need to be examined more critically in specific contexts if the role and impact of foreign capital investment are to be understood. The second part of the paper seeks to identify the ways in which questions of scale (in the sense of greater capital intensity) can be considered to be constraints to the development of African agriculture. Particularly, it considers the extent to which the production models most frequently mentioned in connection with foreign investment (large-scale mechanised farms and small-scale outgrower contract farming) respond to current productivity constraints. The paper argues that current debates about foreign investment in agricultural land underplay the importance of water resources needed to overcome production risks associated with irregular rainfall. Bringing the water dimension of land deals more clearly into focus is necessary if the scope for positive and negative impacts of new investment on existing land users is to be fully understood. The paper concludes by considering the implications of such challenges in the current context of foreign investment in agriculture in Africa.

Africa’s Development Corridors as Pathways to Agricultural Development, Regional Economic Integration and Food Security in Africa

Africa’s Development Corridors as Pathways to Agricultural Development, Regional Economic Integration and Food Security in Africa

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this issue. Institutional Economics Perspectives on African Agricultural Development. Edited by J. F. Kirsten, A. R. Dorward, C. Poulton and N. Vink. Moving Out of Poverty, Vol. III: The Promise of Empowerment and Democracy in India. Edited by Deepa Narayan. Uganda's Economic Reforms: Insider Accounts. Edited by Florence Kuteesa, Emmanuel Tumusiime‐Mutebile, Alan Whitworth and Tim Williamson.

Structural Transformation and African Agriculture

The purpose of the Africa Emerging Markets Forum is to discuss the continent’s economic and social challenges and to share ideas for better results on the ground. This article focuses on the performance and potential contribution of agricultural development, first looking at the current constraints and then setting out some suggestions for the way forward. Over the past 50 years, the normal structural decline in the share of agriculture in the economy and accompanying convergence of incomes in the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, has not yet happened in sub-Saharan Africa. The economy, in terms of sector shares in total output, has been practically frozen, as has the structure of production within agriculture itself, its technology, and its mode of growth primarily via area expansion. As a consequence, African agriculture remains extremely under-capitalized, and the number of poor and hungry has increased in both the rural and urban areas. Encouraging signs for a new beginning for agriculture discussed in this article include the resumption of economic growth, the reduction in agricultural dis-protection, the end of the secular downward trend in agricultural prices, growing domestic and regional demand for food, improvements in the institutional environment for rural development, and a growing commitment of African Governments to agricultural development. While there is much talk about another structural transformation in Africa toward large scale commercial farming, there appear to be diseconomies of scale in farming, while the success rate of large scale farming has been very limited in Africa. The family farm model therefore remains an appropriate model for most of African agricultural development. To seize opportunities underlying the above-mentioned encouraging signs, sub-Saharan Africa will need to support economic growth by (a) continued sound macroeconomic policies, (b) removing of the remain-ing agricultural taxation that still disadvantages African farmers relative to all other farmers in the world, (c) improving services for small farmers, (d) significantly increasing investment in agricultural technology and its dissemination, (e) empowering local governments, communities, and farmer organizations for their own development, and (f) strengthening the already existing regional agricultural institutions. An overall conclusion emanating from this article is for individual countries to adapt and customize the above broad goals into country-specific action plans to enhance the performance and contribution of the agriculture sector, in line with the CAADP (Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme) compacts on which they are already working.

Some Issues in Trade, Environment and Sustainable Development: The Case of African Agriculture

Agricultural trade holds potential for the development of African agriculture. Notwithstanding the different perspectives about the relationship between trade and development, trade and environment, there is consensus on the need to integrate environmental concerns into trade policy design. In the absence of strong environmental policy, trade liberalisation is capable of aggravating trade-induced environmental problems to an unsustainable level. While, the identified four linkages between trade and environment were capable of exerting positive and negative effects on the environment, the net effect on the African countries are most likely to be negative given the weak environmental policy. The paper argues for appropriate trade, investment, technology, and environmental policies as a prerequisite for maintaining trade-induced environmental damages at a sustainable level.

The Rise of Agrarian Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Agricultural Modernization, Agribusiness and Collective Land Rights

In what forms are agribusinesses entering agriculture and interacting with farmers? How are land, labor and capital now controlled by corporate and individual actors, and then organized into agricultural production? How does such control and organization shape the relationships between the actors? In this article we argue that agrarian capitalism is expanding in China. The means of production, such as capital and land, are increasingly controlled by agribusiness, while direct producers increasingly sell their labor for a living. We document various forms in which agribusiness companies are conducting transactions with individual agricultural producers. We also argue that China's unique system of land rights featuring collective ownership but individualized usage rights has acted as a powerful force in shaping interactions between agribusiness and direct producers. It provides farmers with a source of economic income and political bargaining power, and restricts corporate actors from dispossessing farmers of their land. We find strong norms protecting farmers' collective land rights in the agricultural sector, contrary to the received wisdom about weak protection of land rights in China. In the rest of the paper, we first review the policy context in which this transformation has taken place. Next we introduce our method of data collection, summarize the five forms of agribusiness-farmer interaction found in our study, and analyze each of the five forms in depth. We conclude with a discussion of the causes and characteristics of the rise of agrarian capitalism, with a focus on the role of the land rights system.

Development through Positive Deviance and its Implications for Economic Policy Making and Public Administration in Africa: The Case of Kenyan Agricultural Development, 1930–2005

Positive internal innovation has long been a central element of African agricultural development, even if modern efforts to stimulate technical, institutional, and policy innovations in African agriculture have tended to look outwards. This paper examines the role of positive deviance in Kenyan agriculture over the last 75 years to cast doubt on the alleged authoritative sources of policy advice and mandates from the outside. Positive deviance and appreciative inquiry are suggested as organizing frameworks for identifying and amplifying the generation and uptake of internal African innovations.

Revitalising African agriculture through innovative business models and organisational arrangements: promising developments in the traditional crops sector

Within the last four years, a number of high profile reports outlining new strategies for pulling African agriculture out of its current impasse have emerged. These include the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme of NEPAD, and the InterAcademy Council Report commissioned by UN Secretary General Koffi Annan. Whilst these strategies are a welcome improvement on those that have characterised African agriculture in the past, it is argued here that like their predecessors, they fail to focus on business-competitive approaches as an integral part of the reform package needed to stimulate African agricultural productivity and development. This paper draws on innovation, business and organisation literature to highlight some of these approaches. It focuses on three concepts: value innovation, lead user focus and organisational value logic.

Pathways of Change in Africa: Crops, Livestock and Livelihoods in Mali, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe

Ian Scoones and William Wolmer, eds. Pathways of Change in Africa: Crops, Livestock and Livelihoods in Mali, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. Oxford: James Currey / Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing, 2002. xx + 236 pp. Figures. Maps. Tables. Boxes. Bibliography. Index. $64.95. Cloth. Pathways of Change offers a conceptually interesting, empirically rich, and convincing argument for a more sophisticated understanding of the complexities of small-scale mixed farming in Africa than much of the existing literature provides. The authors of this volume use a sustainable livelihoods approach, informed by their diverse academic backgrounds and field experiences, to unpack the underlying assumptions behind the conventional model of crop-livestock (5). Their goal is to highlight how perspectives on ecology, historical dynamics, social differentiation, and institutional processes (5) can sharpen our insights into the range of interrelated socioeconomic, technological, and institutional considerations that facilitate and constrain small-scale farm families in Ethiopia, Mali, and Zimbabwe in their striving for access to resources to improve the quality of their lives. The five chapters of this volume provide a valuable overview of the literature and key issues regarding crop-livestock integration in Africa. The three solid and empirically grounded country case studies are informed by this overview but could just as easily have been used independently of it to support the sustainable livelihoods perspective. The editors' review of the core assumptions of the conventional approach to crop-livestock integration should be required reading for anyone seriously involved in African agricultural development. To challenge this linear, deterministic evolutionary model, the authors use four themes-agroecological and livelihood contexts, historical dynamics, social differentiation, and institutional processes-all of which require new disciplinary perspectives and field research methodologies that go beyond... conventional... agricultural economics and household surveys to more qualitative analysis (23). More attention and perhaps a separate chapter identifying and assessing the different field research methodologies would have been a welcome complement to the authors' conceptual overview. Such a discussion is critically needed by both researchers and policymakers, and it might also have provided a means for drawing more clearly identifiable conceptual and methodological threads among the three case studies. …

Adult midgut expressed sequence tags from the tsetse fly Glossina morsitans morsitans and expression analysis of putative immune response genes.

Tsetse flies transmit African trypanosomiasis leading to half a million cases annually. Trypanosomiasis in animals (nagana) remains a massive brake on African agricultural development. While trypanosome biology is widely studied, knowledge of tsetse flies is very limited, particularly at the molecular level. This is a serious impediment to investigations of tsetse-trypanosome interactions. We have undertaken an expressed sequence tag (EST) project on the adult tsetse midgut, the major organ system for establishment and early development of trypanosomes. A total of 21,427 ESTs were produced from the midgut of adult Glossina morsitans morsitans and grouped into 8,876 clusters or singletons potentially representing unique genes. Putative functions were ascribed to 4,035 of these by homology. Of these, a remarkable 3,884 had their most significant matches in the Drosophila protein database. We selected 68 genes with putative immune-related functions, macroarrayed them and determined their expression profiles following bacterial or trypanosome challenge. In both infections many genes are downregulated, suggesting a malaise response in the midgut. Trypanosome and bacterial challenge result in upregulation of different genes, suggesting that different recognition pathways are involved in the two responses. The most notable block of genes upregulated in response to trypanosome challenge are a series of Toll and Imd genes and a series of genes involved in oxidative stress responses. The project increases the number of known Glossina genes by two orders of magnitude. Identification of putative immunity genes and their preliminary characterization provides a resource for the experimental dissection of tsetse-trypanosome interactions.

African Agriculture and Rural Development in the 21st Century

African Agriculture and Rural Development in the 21st Century

STOCHASTIC BIASES IN TECHNICAL CHANGE IN SOUTH AFRICAN AGRICULTURE

This paper examines biased technical change in South African agriculture using a system of share equations with unobserved components. Developing on the work of Lambert and Shonkwiler (1995), this paper generalises previous work by introducing independent unobserved components into each model using a regression-based approach. We find evidence of stochastic technical change, which is itself biased between the four factors of production: machinery, land, labour and fertiliser, and which closely reflects distinct phases of South African agricultural policy and development.

Women in higher education in agriculture with reference to selected countries in East and Southern Africa

In Africa, the continued under-representation of women in education is particularly severe, especially in tertiary level programs relevant to agricultural development. The underlying premises of this paper are, firstly, that African agricultural development would be better served by an increase in the number of well-trained women leaders in agricultural research, extension, training and policy. Secondly, that there are currently very few women in positions of leadership in agriculture development agencies in countries visited in this study. And thirdly, that although there is a relatively low rate of participation of trained women agriculturalists in field positions, higher education in agriculture provides a passage through which women could gain greater access to leadership positions in agriculture. This paper examines the current status of women's participation in higher education in agriculture in selected East and Southern African countries, identifies existing obstacles to their greater participation, and presents several strategies attempted in Botswana, Tanzania, and Malawi, for surmounting these obstacles.

The Dynamics of Soil Fertility Change: Historical Perspectives on Environmental Transformation from Zimbabwe

Soil fertility is currently highlighted as a major issue for African agricultural development. But embedded within policy statements are a series of underlying assumptions and methodological commitments. This paper questions these, arguing that an historical approach to understanding the dynamics of soil fertility change offers important insights of relevance to development policy and planning. Work on environmental change in southern Zimbabwe emphasizes how issues of non-linear dynamics, spatial heterogeneity and the role of contingent events in precipitating change are important in understanding the nature of soils and their management. Transformation of soils is seen to be the result of a complex interaction of factors, mediated by a variety of social, economic and political institutions over time. Such insights suggest a more embedded, context-specific, adaptive and learning approach to intervention, which rejects simplistic, aggregated assessments of people-resource relationships, but instead takes uncertainty, complexity and the potential for non-linear change seriously.

Gender Issues in African Agriculture and Sustainable Development: Women Wielding the Hoe: Lessons from Rural Africa for Feminist Theory and Development Practice . Deborah Fahy Bryceson. ; Changing the Boundaries: Women-Centered Perspectives on Population and the Environment . Janice Jiggins.

Women Wielding the Hoe: Lessons from Rural Africa for Feminist Theory and Development Practice. Deborah Fahy Bryceson

The Impact of Agricultural Technology in Sub-Saharan Africa

Despite considerable investment in African agricultural technology development and transfer (TDT) activities, it is commonly perceived that TDT has had little impact. This paper summarizes and interprets recent evidence on the impact of agricultural TDT in sub-Saharan Africa, and draws lessons to improve the efficiency of future investment in African TDT. The evidence suggests that rates of return to TDT activities are often positive and in excess of the opportunity costs of capital, indicating that these activities have had significant impact on human well-being. However, improvements can be made by including demand-side considerations into TDT activities, particularly off-farm constraints in processing, storage, and distribution that inhibit the farm-level demand for improved technology. Copyright 1996 by Oxford University Press.

Economic Policy Adjustments in Developing Countries: Discussion

I shall first discuss the paper by Weber et al. It is true, as the authors say, that policies designed to increase farm producer incentives through increased prices rely on the implicit, and often even unconscious, assumption that producers are net sellers. However, as the authors show, most of the farmers in the areas studied are net purchasers. Therefore, increasing prices provides an incentive to only a few while lowering the real income of most of the producers. In fact, the net effect of price increases could be to decrease production as resources are diverted to meet increased household consumption demands. This may be a reason for the otherwise peculiar finding of Scandizzo and Bruce, noted in the paper, that the price elasticity of supply was negative in 25% of the cases they surveyed. There are several practical principles of policy analysis that this case study illustrates. First, it is vital to question all the assumptions made in performing policy analysis. This is especially important where expatriate policy analysts work in developing countries. It is all too easy to assume that everybody does things just like we do at home in Two-Bit, Montana. For this reason it is absolutely necessary for expatriate policy analysts to work closely with local people who know the physical and social landscape. However, as this example shows, even knowledgeable local people can fall into the trap of implicit assumptions. In this case, senior agricultural officials also assumed that the producers were net sellers. Hence the need for good empirical research to test everyone's policy assumptions. Second, policy analysis relies on hundreds of facts, or implicit assumptions about facts, which may or may not be true. Norman Mailer has aptly described these unverified as There never is sufficient time, resources, or data to test all the factoids. Part of th art of policy analysis is to identify the facts in the analysis, the that will switch the conclusions from one direction to another and then concentrate empirical resources in testing these strategic facts. Certainly, whether most producers are net sellers or purchasers is a strategic fact in price policy, and the analysts very rightly concentrated their empirical work in this area. Third, I applaud the authors' emphasis on the need to attain a balanced approach among economic policies, human and natural resource development, and infrastructural facilities in development. Economic policy is only a part of the development process-not, by any means, all of the process. Indeed, economic policy is much like a string: it can hold devel pment back; but without the help of the o her factors, it cannot push development forward. For example, we know a priori that, in order to get high yields, it is necessary to have good water and fertilizer supplies. If these factors are ot available, policies will have very little effect on yields. One of the most important strategic about African agricultural development is that only about 5% of the arable area of Africa is irrigated. In Asia it is 50%. These simple explain a great deal of the difference in agricultural development between Africa and Asia. Four h, and last, I also applaud the authors' plea for an open mind in policy analysis and to av id ideological, dogmatic positions. Different policies work differently under different con itions, and it is absurd to think that there is one, universally applicable set of policy prescriptions. We must keep policy dialogue from degenerating into policy monologue. Turning now to the paper by Humphreys and Jaeger, I have mixed reactions. I strongly support the kind of work they are doing, which is empirically testing the impact of policies on economic performance. However, I have two problems with their analysis. David Seckler is Director, Food and Agricultural Policy, Winrock International, and a professor, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Colorado State University.