Building a bridge — From agriculture to African prosperity

Africa’s recent economic growth has been impressive; as demonstrated in the Africa Progress Report 2014, entitled Grain, Fish Money — Financing Africa’s Green and Blue Revolutions, which was launched in Abuja, Nigeria, on May 8 2014. But as the report also shows, agriculture needs a boost so that the related economic growth can reach and improve the lives of many Africans.

Just as a bridge at Kazungula is needed, a bridge needs to be built between agriculture and African economic growth. The stakes are high. African agriculture could not only lift rural communities out of poverty, it could feed the whole continent, and help feed the rest of the world, too.

Governments are well aware of this as they signed the Maputo Declaration in 2003, pledging to commit 10% of public spending to agriculture. But more than 10 years later, only seven countries have met that pledge and, in 18 countries, spending on agriculture is actually falling. As a result, agricultural research (a vital element of “green revolutions” in other parts of the world) has been starved of funds.

As well as keeping their agriculture spending promises, governments need to implement policies that help to build (or fix) the networks upon which agriculture depends.

One huge gap is in access to financial services. Two-thirds of African adults don’t even have a bank account. Governments need to make it easier for farmers to borrow and to buy insurance. Indeed, insurance, which helps farmers cope better with risks, and hence enables crucial investments in seeds and fertiliser, is more important than ever as climate change leads to more extreme weather.

As a result of the barriers to agricultural growth, African countries import $35 billion worth of food a year. But only 5% of their cereal imports come from countries elsewhere in Africa, which is a clear indication that there is urgent need to improve intra-regional trade in agricultural products, notably by removing all tariffs and non-tariff barriers.

There is also urgent need to help farmers get their produce to markets, by improving infrastructure such as ports, energy networks, roads and bridges.

Kazungula, after all, is more than a symbol; a bridge would connect as many as seven African countries to ports, such as Durban in South Africa and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Instead, this crossing point has become a bottleneck. READ MORE