In 1997 I was in a Southern African country when what would turn out to be the first of a series of colossal blunders against a national economy was launched.
At the time, no one could have foreseen how bad things would get. From our perspective, we saw the opportunity to expand production and thus set up a commercial cooperative-style project across the border.
Starting out with 50 farmers (eventually the group, powered by ‘we can do it ourselves’ octane and ‘we are too important to fail’ additives diminished to less than 10), we negotiated with a neighbouring government for land, incentives etc and set about to create the first multi-farmer collaborative farming project.
A few years later, I was surprised to see that of the original group, only a handful were still operating. The commercial farming businesses that we thought we were simply diversifying, were decimated, and farming in the region was still fragmented and relatively smaller in scale. Land was still an emotive issue, and instead of output increasing with world demand, the national commercial farming sector had been neutered.
However, other countries, seeing this opportunity to pick up displaced farmers, extended invitations and were soon producing much more than they were before. In one case, the country moved from being a net importer to next exporter of Maize.
As evidenced by the controversy surrounding the failed agricultural land acquisition in Madagascar, and the echoing of nationalist sentiments by incumbent and opposition politicians alike, policy on land in Africa still requires attention. With rising food prices, the pressure from some external governments to ‘rent’ land in Africa for their own food security will increase. And cash strapped bureaucrats and politicians may be dazzled by the wad of notes in their faces, and pawn a valuable asset for the sake of a few more years in office.
Ranging from the need to allow title (and thus collateral) to smallholder and would-be commercial farmers, to fair allocation of land to communities, policy makers need to make efficient use of the nation-feeding, employment-creating, hard currency-generating assets laying fallow or under-utilised.
This is before they take responsibility for agricultural extension services (implements, fertilizer, out-grower schemes, seed selection etc) and infrastructure (tax incentives, agricultural marketing cooperatives, storage, transportation, export incentives etc). For now, policy and politics in many countries in Africa seems to be either preventing or slowing down the move from subsistence farming to sustainable commercial agricultural sectors. Agriculture policy, as we have seen from ‘butter mountains’ needs to be a high priority and not a means to garner votes or favours. Nor should it be something that is purely driven by donors.
Policy makers on their own, cannot break beyond the historical barrier. Once they [policy makers, politicians] have gotten out of the way of progress, private investment is critical.
A recent article on Agribusiness in India in The Economist illustrates the potential for dramatic transformation (and improvement) for the farming sector (from growing to supply chain to overall regional development) across Africa. The arch symbols of this development may spur a different debate down the road, but for now, they may bring the much needed investment that the fertile land belts across Africa need.