For nearly 40 years, Africa has been trying to engineer an agricultural revolution. What makes the continuing struggle remarkable is not that the technologies have failed. Quite often, they have worked.
Improved seeds, fertiliser and better agronomy have repeatedly produced large yield gains on African farms. Beginning in 1986, the Sasakawa Africa Association, founded through the efforts of Norman Borlaug, Ryoichi Sasakawa and former American president Jimmy Carter, helped establish more than half a million large demonstration plots between 1986 and 2000. Its experience across countries, including Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mali and Uganda, convinced its organisers that farmers would adopt improved technologies when they could see the benefits. (Sasakawa Africa Association)
Yet there has been no continent-wide equivalent of the transformation that swept much of Asian agriculture in the second half of the 20th century.
That distinction matters. Africa is not devoid of agricultural success. Ethiopia, for example, has recorded major productivity and commercialisation gains in selected agricultural clusters. The more defensible question is why such successes have not become sufficiently broad, self-sustaining and interconnected to transform agriculture across much of the continent.
