African Agriculture Research Articles

Assessing food security among young farmers in Africa: evidence from Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda

Food insecurity remains a serious challenge for many households in Africa and the situation is even more prevalent among young people. However, there is a dearth of empirical evidence on youth food security status in Africa. We assessed the level and determinants of food security among young farmers in Africa. We adopted a multi-stage sampling technique to select 400, 429, and 606 young farmers in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda, respectively. Individual food consumption was assessed following a 7 days recall method. The Food Consumption Score, which combines dietary diversity and consumption frequency was used to assess food security status while the determinants of food security were identified using a logistic regression model. Results suggest low dietary diversity across the three countries. Also, the majority of the respondents had an unacceptable food consumption score, suggesting that despite being food producers, young farmers are still food insecure. The odds of being food secure was positively determined by access to extension services, participation in the ENABLE TAAT business incubation programme, and access to market information but, negatively by access to credit, number of employees, Covid-19 pandemic, and location. Additionally, the food security status of young female farmers was positively influenced by age, suggesting that younger youths are less food secure compared to older ones. These results suggest that more efforts should be directed towards improving the food security of young African farmers and that policy- and programme-level interventions should support access to extension services, market information, and land. Additionally, more investments should be directed towards developing need-based agribusiness incubation programmes with an effort to scale existing programmes beyond the regular one-time period.

Psychological profiles of South African smallholder farmers.

The present study examined smallholder farmer profiles based on key psychological variables associated with farm business performance in the South African context. A sample of 471 beef farmers (mean age = 54.15 years; SD = 14.46; men = 76%) and 426 poultry farmers (mean age = 47.28 years; SD = 13.53; women = 54.5%) provided data on a range of measures assessing attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, personality characteristics, present and future time orientation, expected benefits of, and efficacy to perform the farm business tasks, and farm-related concerns. Latent profile analysis identified three distinct profile segments of smallholder beef and poultry farmers, respectively: Fatalists, Traditionalists, and Entrepreneurs. Our results suggested unique combinations of psychological characteristics in a sample of South African smallholder beef and poultry farmers and show a novel way of understanding enablers of, and barriers to, engaging in the farm business.

How plant variety protection fails to benefit breeders to the detriment of plant innovation in Kenya's maize seed sector

AbstractThe adoption by African countries of plant variety protection via the adherence to the union internationale pour la protection des obtentions végétales (UPOV) convention has received criticism because it may dispossess African farmers of their seeds. Little is known about the empirical workings of UPOV's plant breeders' rights (PBRs) regarding African food crops. I interviewed plant breeders and right holders in Kenya's maize seed sector. I found that few actors register maize PBRs because maize varieties are often hybrid and especially because alternative, more powerful forms of pseudo‐intellectual property are available in Kenya. Accordingly, almost all of the few protected varieties have been developed by the same breeding team within the parastatal maize seed company. In short, the main problem I discovered with PBRs in the Kenyan maize seed sector is not that they dispossess farmers. It is rather that, although PBRs sometimes accrue to individual breeders, conservative employers like the parastatal do not regard breeders as creative innovators. They do not incentivise their employees and do not use PBRs to this effect. This is problematic in circumstances like Kenya's, where selected breeding teams and individuals are much more productive than others and where a quickly changing climate may require a higher varietal turnover of adapted, formally bred varieties.

How resilience innovations in food supply chains are revolutionizing logistics, wholesale trade, and farm services in developing countries

Developing country food supply chains have been pummeled by a series (and often a confluence) of shocks over the past several decades, including the Russia-Ukraine war, COVID-19, climate shocks from hurricanes to floods to droughts, animal and plant diseases, an intensification of road banditry and local conflicts, and overlaying all these, deep transformation in markets themselves with new requirements for quality and food safety. Yet supply chains have been largely resilient, adapting and bouncing back in surprising ways. We show that this has often involves deep ‘pivoting’ by one segment or one value chain, and ‘co-pivoting’ by another to facilitate the former’s pivot. We present a conceptual framework and then illustrate with a variety of examples from Africa and Asia, such as pivoting toward e-commerce by Asian retailers and co-pivoting by delivery intermediaries; pivoting toward quality horticultural production by African and Asian farmers and co-pivoting by mobile outsource services for farming and marketing; and building of redundant ports to protect rice milling operations from climate shocks in Asia by agribusiness and logistic firms. The paper provides implications for policy to facilitate these adaptions and for resilience strategies of agribusiness firms.

A methodological tool for sustainability and feasibility assessment of indoor vertical farming with artificial lighting in Africa

African agriculture is bound to face challenges for its future food systems development and economic transformation. Indoor vertical farms with artificial lighting represent an opportunity that has been gaining relevance worldwide, thanks to their potential to enable high productivity rates, food quality and safety, year-round production, and more sustainable use of water and mineral nutrients. The present study assesses the potential for vertical farming technology integration within the African continent, targeting the countries where a more sustainable approach could be achieved. A deep analysis of each territory’s major opportunities and challenges was built through an updated database of 147 development indicators from 54 African states. Countries such as South Africa, Seychelles, Egypt, Mauritius, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Cape Verde, and Nigeria showed the best prospective for indoor vertical farming implementation. Moreover, Seychelles, South Africa, and Egypt resulted to be the countries where vertical indoor farming could be more sustainable.

Post-Colonial Agriculture Policy and Agrarian Change in Malawi, 1964–1979

Abstract Agriculture has always been the main occupation and a source of livelihood for the majority of people in Malawi since time immemorial. This implies that any institutional reform implemented on land, agricultural production and marketing of agricultural enterprises directly affects the farming communities. The interest of the article covers institutional reforms from the years 1964 to 1979. The article briefly analyses the colonial era policies and further explores how the post-colonial government took up a very populist approach to change most of the colonial era ordinances not only as a means of consolidating power but also transferring ownership of the means of production like land to the African farmers. However, though these changes were well intentioned, both the colonial and post-colonial institutional frameworks turned out to be the means through which the peasant farmers were oppressed. This state of affairs of systematic oppression of the peasantry experienced through these policies and laws thwarted the attempts for the transformation of peasantry into capitalist or semi-capitalist farmers. The argument of this article, therefore, is that the current state of the peasantry and underdevelopment of the smallholder sector in Malawi draws its origin from the institutions and structures created in the colonial and immediate post-colonial period. It concludes that a positive change in the state of agrarian communities could be hampered more by the very institutional framework set up for agricultural development. Using a qualitative approach in data collection and analysis, the article explores how the post-colonial policies and practices assisted in bringing about agrarian change in Malawi.

Review: The Scarcity Slot: Excavating Histories of Food Security, by Amanda Logan

In The Scarcity Slot: Excavating Histories of Food Security, Amanda Logan argues that African foodways are persistently depicted as lacking in abundance, taste, and history. They are portrayed, she argues, as static and unchanging, and at the mercy of overly harsh environments. Such depictions, which Logan calls “the scarcity slot,” are pervasive in popular media, development policy directives, archaeological studies, and beyond. The issue with such descriptions, Logan argues, is that they don’t hold up to scrutiny. As an archaeologist, Logan is interested in tracking—and challenging—claims of scarcity across time, and as an archaeologist, she is well poised to do so. The Scarcity Slot delves into a long food history of Banda, a town in western Ghana, beginning in the 1400s and ending in the present, taking the reader through major moments in time, including the introduction of crops such as maize, a 250-year drought, slaving raids, political unrest, colonial rule, and the neoliberal, postcolonial moment.Logan explores how these major political-economic, social, and climatic events significantly altered foodways and livelihoods in Banda. Additionally, and importantly, Logan highlights how residents of Banda deployed creative strategies, deep knowledge, and flexible techniques to weather these events. Archaeological methods—combined with archival research and oral histories—allow Logan to cast a long temporal net. In doing so, she joins political-ecologists and critical agronomists, among others, who have continually stressed the ingenuity and resourcefulness of African farmers amidst popular narratives that would suggest otherwise (Berry 1993; Nyantakyi-Frimpong 2020).For those of us not trained in archaeology, Logan leads with clarity, carefully explaining her methods and analysis. Throughout the book she builds a strong argument for using excavation of soil, of histories, of cuisines as a key method for food studies. Anecdotally, I’ve taught the book in both undergraduate and graduate classes in development studies and have found that it provides students with a sturdy discussion starter on how narratives of scarcity obfuscate the political economy of food and the agency and empirical realities of African farmers.Zooming out, it’s not difficult to find examples of such narratives—or the scarcity slot—out in the world. Just open the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s latest Goalkeepers report, read an NPR article about fufu (Shields 2015), or consider the use of the term “orphan crops” (Dwyer, Ibe, and Rhee 2022).The task at hand, then, is not to downplay serious issues related to food access. Instead, Logan situates her work as “a devoted study of the history of food scarcity and abundance across the continent”—a both/and kind of scenario (p. 15). In showing the creative ways in which people navigate systems of scarcity and abundance, The Scarcity Slot joins other recent publications, such as Ashanté M. Reese’s Black Food Geographies (2019), in pushing food studies to think deeply about how the discipline engages with certain communities and structural violence.To this point, in the book’s concluding chapter Logan poses a number of questions: “What if regional African foodways were revered in the same manner as French cuisine, and African terroir and expert chefs were lauded for their creativity and evolved methods? What if the superior nutritional content of West African diets was held up as the gold standard to which we all should aspire?” (p. 167). These questions are provocations and opportunities for reflection. They may also serve as a guide for food studies programs to assess and revise their existing curricula. This offering, I argue, is one of Logan’s strongest contributions to food studies. Indeed, the African continent should be an essential component of food inquiry and education; Logan provides a framework for where to begin.

The Costs of Passing in the Transvaal

This essay anticipates twentieth-century arguments about the production of the ideal transgender subject as those who are harbingers of an extractive ethnonationalism and have a right to transnational mobility. In looking at Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm (1883), this essay frames the white English settler and landowner Gregory Rose as a proto-transwoman. Gregory’s seamless gender-passing, to the point that they can move across national boundaries with ease, without declaring their citizenship, while still maintaining private property elsewhere, throws into relief the mobility of whiteness and the immobility of Blackness and Brownness within the Transvaal, and South Africa more broadly. Such a narrative of white settler womanhood imbricates the prototranswoman in the exacting of colonial land dispossession. The proto-transgender settler subject’s privilege of passing, both in gender presentation and across geographical borders, is predicated on the dissolution of Native African customary land law and the exacerbated surveillance of indentured laborers of Asian descent under legislative acts called “pass laws.”

Evidence of collaborative opportunities to ensure long-term sustainability in African farming

Farmers face the challenge of increasing production to feed a growing population and support livelihoods, whilst also improving the sustainability and resilience of cropping systems. Understanding the key factors that influence farming management practices is crucial for determining farmers' adaptive capacity and willingness to engage in cooperative strategies. To that end, we investigated management practices that farmers adopt and the factors underlying farmers' decision-making. We also aimed to identify the constraints that impede the adoption of strategies perceived to increase farming resilience and to explore how the acceleration of technology adoption through cooperation could ensure the long-term sustainability of farming. Surveys were distributed to farming stakeholders and professionals who worked across the contrasting environments of Morocco. We used descriptive statistics and analysis by log-linear modelling to predict the importance of factors influencing farmers’ decision-making. The results show that influencing factors tended to cluster around environmental pressures, crop characteristics and water availability with social drivers playing a lesser role. Subsidies were also found to be an important factor in decision-making. Farming stakeholders generally believed that collaborative networks are likely to facilitate the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices. We conclude that farmers need both economic incentives and technical support to enhance their adaptive capacity as this can lessen the socioeconomic vulnerability inherent in arid and semi-arid regions.

Beverley-Anne Joseph: cheers to the perseverance of an entrepreneur

Learning outcomes The learning outcomes of this study are as follows:▪ evaluate the difficulties of entry-level women entrepreneurs in the South African farming industry;▪ appreciate the entrepreneurial journey of a women entrepreneur in the farming industry;▪ assess the role of networking and support programmes in prompting women entrepreneurs in South Africa;▪ understand the role of diversification in building a sustainable business in today’s COVID-19-affected economic environment;▪ make an informed decision regarding how COVID-19 had negatively affected the farming industry; and▪ critically evaluate which options are available for women entrepreneurs to overcome the negative effects of COVID-19 and remain sustainable businesses. Case overview/synopsis In April 2021, managing director and co-owner Beverley-Anne Joseph, was considering the long-term business strategy options for Zelpy, her hop farm business outside George, a town in the Western Cape, South Africa. As the first black woman hop farmer in Africa, she had run a successful business supplying hops to South African Breweries (SAB), a subsidiary of the global conglomerate Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev). To date, her hop farming business had not been impacted by the South African Government’s COVID-19 lockdowns that impacted the sale of alcoholic beverages. However, it had given her a wake-up call as to the risk of having most of her eggs in one basket. She now had to consider how to diversify her farming business to minimise risk. Complexity academic level MBA, Masters in Management, Postgraduate Diploma in Business and Executive Education short courses. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Subject code CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

Endogenous learning and innovation in African smallholder agriculture: lessons from Guinea-Bissau

ABSTRACT Purpose To advance understanding about the way endogenous knowledge on mangrove swamp rice (MSR) farming is transmitted, reinvented and negotiated between generations and highlight the implications this has for R4D. Design/Methodology/Approach Long-term qualitative research using an ethnographic approach, technography and biographies of farmers. Findings The endogenous Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS) is dynamic but faces shortcomings owing to socio-environmental changes. This highlights the relevance of knowledge exchanges from multiple sources, eroding the divide between endogenous and exogenous from the farmers’ point of view. For positive exogenously induced socio-technical change to occur, external actors must fully understand the conditions under which (a) endogenous knowledge is produced and reinvented and (b) endogenous innovations flow among farmers. This will then allow the co-production of innovations adapted to each specific agro-ecological, cultural and socio-economic context, leaving them to be further transformed and refashioned by smallholders to meet their individual ‘dispositions’ and generate the roots necessary for a strong AKIS. Practical implications This paper highlights the importance of locally embedded processes of learning and innovation, the better understanding of which can provide a more solid basis for the co-production of technologies and the establishment of an AKIS. Theoretical implications This paper improves understanding of socio-technological change in smallholder agriculture by focusing on endogenous processes of learning and innovation. Originality This paper advances the knowledge on endogenous processes of learning and socio-technical change in smallholder agriculture.

Poverty dynamics and the determining factors among East African smallholder farmers

CONTEXTRapid economic development in East Africa is matched by extremely dynamic smallholder livelihoods. ObjectiveTo quantify the changes in poverty of smallholder farmers, to evaluate the potential of farm and off-farm activities to alleviate poverty, and to evaluate the potential barriers to poverty alleviation. METHODSThe analyses were based on a panel survey of 600 households undertaken in 2012 and re-visited approximately four years later in four sites in East Africa. The sites represented contrasting smallholder farming systems, linked to urban centres undergoing rapid economic and social change (Nairobi, Kampala, Kisumu, and Dar-es-Salaam). The surveys assessed farm management, farm productivity, livelihoods, and various measures of household welfare. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONSAlmost two thirds of households rose above or fell below meaningful poverty thresholds – more than previously measured in this context – but overall poverty rates remained constant. Enhanced farm value production and off-farm income proved to be important mechanisms to rise out of poverty for households that were already resource-endowed. However, households in the poorest stratum in both panels appeared to be stuck in a poverty trap. They owned significantly fewer productive assets in the first panel compared to other groups (land and livestock), and these baseline assets were found to be positively correlated with farm income in the second panel survey. Equally these households were also found to be among the least educated, while education was found to be an important enabling factor for the generation of high value off-farm income. SIGNIFICANCERural development that aims to stimulate increases in farm produce value as a means to alleviate poverty are only viable for already resource-endowed households, as they have the capacity to enhance farm value production. Conversely, the alleviation of extreme poverty should focus on different means, perhaps cash transfers, or the development of more sophisticated social safety nets. Furthermore, while off-farm income presents another important mechanism for poverty alleviation in rural areas, these opportunities are restricted to those households that have had access to education. As more households turn to off-farm activities to supplement or replace their livelihoods, farming approaches will also change affecting the management of natural resources. These dynamics ought to be better understood to better manage land-use transitions.

Challenges and opportunities for agricultural development in West Africa

The article is about the challenges and opportunities for the development of the agricultural sector in West Africa. The aim of the study is to identify ways of improving the efficiency of agricultural production in West Africa, to increase yields. The task is to find, identify, develop and implement the most effective methods and algorithms for realising the above aim, and the challenges and obstacles along the way. The article describes the current state of agriculture in this sub-region. The author considers modern problems of agriculture in this territory, gives examples of agriculture in other regions of the world for comparison with West African. Intensive agriculture of various countries is considered as an option for the development of the West African region. The external factors, affecting the development of West African agriculture, in particular climatic change, increase in the average annual temperature, are considered. Attention is paid to the question of finding a new way of development of agriculture, resistant to climatic change. Possibilities and problems, related to the application of agroecology on the example of the Republic of Senegal, are analysed.

Cheap chicken in Africa: Would import restrictions be pro-poor?

Europe’s chicken exports to Africa have long been criticised for their negative effects on local producers. However, while cheap chicken imports may hurt African poultry farmers, the same cheap imports benefit African consumers and improve their access to affordable nutrients. A few African countries have established import restrictions, but it is unclear how such policies affect different population groups and whether the potential benefits for farmers outweigh the broader social costs. We use nationally representative household data from Ghana and a partial-equilibrium framework to simulate domestic household supply, consumption, and overall welfare effects of two hypothetical policies, namely a 50% import tariff on chicken and a complete import ban. Our results suggest that both policies would lead to increased domestic chicken prices with negative consumption effects that are much larger than the positive supply effects. Average poor and non-poor households in rural and urban areas would suffer welfare losses from these import restrictions. While many households purchase and consume chicken, relatively few produce chicken and only very few sell any chicken in the market. The findings imply that chicken import restrictions are not a pro-poor and welfare-enhancing policy. To compensate the few households particularly hurt by cheap chicken imports, targeted support measures would make more sense economically and socially than general import restrictions.

Decomposition of Green Agriculture Productivity for Policy in Africa: An Application of Global Malmquist–Luenberger Index

Previous research on agricultural productivity in Africa has focused on conventional Total Factor productivity (TFP) growth rather than Green Total factor productivity (GATFP) growth, thus ignoring the effect of undesirable outputs such as emissions. This has raised concerns about the sustainability of agricultural productivity growth in the continent. The study was designed to examine GATFP growth in agricultural productivity for 49 African nations from 2000 to 2019. We apply the Global Malmquist–Luenberger (GML) Productivity Index, which complies with the sustainable development agenda that promotes greater production of desirable outputs and minimising unwanted outputs. This approach is also compared to Global Malmquist (GM) Productivity Index which ignores unwanted outputs, yielding to conventional TFP growth. We found an average GATFP growth of 0.6% and TFP growth at 0.9% suggesting that the actual agricultural productivity growth is overstated if agricultural emissions are disregarded. Both estimates fell short of the desired annual target of 7% from the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). Regional growth is mostly characterised by high (low) GATFP and TFP except in Southern Africa and East Africa. The two regions represent an ideal situation where GATFP exceeds TFP. At country level growth can be divided into three scenarios: desired growth, where GATFP exceeds TFP; balanced growth with both estimates equivalent; and undesired growth, where TFP exceeds GATFP. Unfortunately, most African nations fall in the last scenario. We conclude that policies must be developed to encourage sustainable agricultural productivity growth in Africa.

Limits to capital: Assessing the role of race on the Paycheck Protection Program for African American farmers in America

AbstractWe examine Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) lending among African American and white farmers. Using data from the U.S. Small Business Administration we run fixed effect estimations with a Mills inverse ratio. Our findings suggest discrimination due to limited capital access. We find statistically significant differences between approved loan amounts among African American farmers due to income level and location of their farms. These had minimal effects on white farmers. Our results call for policymakers to carefully monitor the PPP distribution in areas more vulnerable to financial difficulties. We provide policy recommendations.

Developing Institutions and Inter-Organizational Synergies through Digitalization and Youth Engagement in African Agriculture: The Case of “Africa Goes Digital”

As digitalization increasingly gains attention in the agriculture sector, many African youths are seizing the opportunity provided by digital technologies to engage in agriculture. While prior studies have started examining the intricacies of digitalization in agriculture, they have paid less attention to its implications for fostering institutions and inter-organizational synergies that can support and sustain the businesses of youth enterprises engaging with Africa’s agriculture. Against this backdrop, we undertook a qualitative case study to shed light on the development of a community of practice comprising youth enterprises engaging in agriculture through digitalization. Thus, we studied Africa Goes Digital (AFGD), a consortium of young African enterprises that rely on digital technologies and solutions to provide services to farmers across the African continent. The results showed that: (1) the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA) played a pioneering role as a development agency in supporting enterprises with drones and training for agriculture, which led to the formation of AFGD; (2) two prevalent themes characterized the services offered by AFGD members; (3) AFGD brings members under one platform where they leverage WhatsApp for communication and knowledge sharing and Twitter to showcase success stories and form partnerships with each other to execute certain development projects with governments and development agencies; (4) the lack of regulations or the restrictive regulations on the use of drones are still problems that some members face, and the high costs of sensors and related drones are challenges for the members. Building on the results, we discuss the implications of digitalization for supporting African governments in meeting sustainability goals and conclude by describing the theoretical contribution of our study and promising future research directions.

Potential tipping points for climate change adaptation costs

ABSTRACT The achievement of adaptation objectives will require increased investment with the increasing warming, but adaptation cost curves are not yet well quantified. We propose here that tipping points (sharp increases) in adaptation costs may emerge as key warming levels are exceeded, with important implications for policymakers and planners. We explore this proposition using selected African agriculture and ecosystem-based livelihoods examples, considering how adaptation responses might progress from a coping phase (with low-cost efforts), through a tipping point into a phase of proactive or planned (‘incremental’) adaptation that requires a sharp increase in adaptation investment, and through a further tipping point into a technology and capital-intensive (‘transformative’) phase requiring a further sharp increase in investment. Tipping points in adaptation costs may result as a series of limits to adaptation are breached, but the associated sharp cost transitions are not well recognized in the literature. Adaptation research could usefully focus on identifying the likely timing of these tipping points and in what sectors they may occur. Emerging analyses of joint mitigation/adaptation response options may need to account for these tipping points.

Productivity growth and the role of mechanisation in African agriculture

ABSTRACT This paper compares agricultural productivity growth, specifically, the impact of agricultural mechanisation on total factor productivity and cereal yields, across African countries using contemporaneous and sequential Malmquist index approaches. Contemporaneous approach findings indicate that agricultural productivity grew by 1% annually over 1961–2014, while sequential technology measures show much higher growth of 1.7%. The highest growth rates were experienced since the 2000s due to technical progress. Regression analysis indicates that mechanisation, research and development, weather conditions, and population pressure influence African agricultural productivity. Climate-smart options to sustain crop yields in countries relying heavily on rain-fed agriculture are critical. The transfer of knowledge from countries with high-level productivity might enhance productivity in “laggard” countries.

No Maize, No Life: Conservation, Maize Production, and African Responses in Colonial Southern Malawi, 1920–1960

This study explores the history of maize production to demonstrate the extent to which colonial conservation interspersed with economic expediency stifled African production from 1920 to 1960. Drawing on archival and oral evidence from southern Malawi, it argues that colonial restriction on maize production to conserve the country’s soil fertility was an excuse by the state to achieve various economic interests. What the colonial state in Malawi wanted was to divert the Africans from the production of maize to other crops whose global market demand and value was high. This was critical during the post-depression era when settler agriculture collapsed, and even worse in the post-war period when Britain desperately required African agriculture for its economic recovery. But since maize had become their life-blood, African producers, with the support of some colonial officials who shared similar fears, could not submit to this restrictive policy. By forefronting maize production, the study sheds new light on the socio-environmental historiography which has generically attributed the implementation of colonial conservation policies in Africa to economic depression, drought, demography, the American dust bowl, colonial land policies, and local farming practices.