"African farmers and agricultural policymakers have achieved a series of significant successes in agricultural development, although these successes are still inadequate in number and scale to counter Sub-Saharan Africa's daunting demographic challenge.....What common ingredients and processes underlie these earlier successes? How can policymakers translate these lessons into improved performance going forward? By examining instances in which important advances have occurred in the past in African agriculture, IFPRI, NEPAD, and colleagues aim to identify promising avenues for achieving similar success in the future. The following briefs offer highlights of some of these important accomplishments and lessons learned from past successes in African agriculture. Collectively, they aim to identify key ingredients necessary for building on these individual cases and expanding them into broad-based agricultural growth." From Text

Haggblade, Steven

Hazell, Peter

Kirsten, Ingrid

Mkandawire, Richard

English

Research Papers in Economics

A
gricultural growth will prove essential for improving the 
welfare of the vast majority of Africa’s poor. Roughly 80
percent of the continent’s poor live in rural areas,and even those
who do not will depend heavily on increasing agricultural produc-
tivity to lift them out of poverty. Seventy percent of all Africans—
and nearly 90 percent of the poor—work primarily in agriculture.
As consumers,all of Africa’s poor—both urban and rural—count
heavily on the efficiency of the continent’s farmers. Farm produc-
tivity and production costs largely determine the prices of basic
foodstuffs,which account for 60–70 percent of total consumption
expenditures by low-income groups. Consequently,significant
reductions in poverty will hinge in large part on the collective
ability of African farmers,governments,and agricultural specialists
to stimulate and sustain broad-based agricultural growth.
Given Africa’s high population growth rate, its farmers and
agricultural policymakers will face the most difficult challenge of
any developing region until its demographic transition is
complete. Africa has contended with population growth rates
of 2.7 percent per year over the past 40 years, compared with
2 percent in developing Asia and 2.2 percent in Latin America.
For this reason, in recent decades the numbers of malnourished
and poor people have risen more rapidly in Africa than in any
other region. In the face of current demographic trends,Africa
will simply have to run faster than the rest of the developing
world to keep up with its growing population.
It is difficult to imagine how significant poverty reduction in
Africa can occur without a vibrant agricultural sector that provides
income,employment,and affordably priced staple foods. Only
rising agricultural productivity can simultaneously reduce food
prices,which govern real incomes and poverty in urban areas,
and increase the incomes of the 70 percent of Africans who
work in agriculture. Agricultural growth provides a
central thrust around which the battle against African
poverty must be waged.
PAST PERFORMANCE:THE LONG VIEW
Agricultural production across the continent has
changed considerably since the beginning of domesti-
cated agriculture in Africa 7,000 years ago. Today,
African farm households plant more than half of all
cropped area in imported plant species,principally
maize,cassava,groundnuts,bananas,cocoa,potatoes,
sweet potatoes,tea,and imported varieties of cotton
and rice. These imported species currently account
for more than two-thirds of the value of Africa’s
gross agricultural output. Even more striking,the
continent’s 600 million head of livestock and 700
million head of poultry descend almost exclusively
from imported species,with the lone exception of
the guinea fowl. Despite a virtual absence of indige-
nous domesticable livestock species and a limited range of indige-
nous plants,African farmers have built up diverse agricultural
systems based largely on imported plant and animal species. This
transformation has taken place in spite of the formidable ecolog-
ical constraints imposed by Africa’s old and weathered soils,
limited irrigation potential,and debilitating endemic diseases such
as malaria,tapeworm,yellow fever,and trypanosomiasis,which
has severely limited livestock rearing,animal traction,and mixed
cropping in the tropical zones.
The first half of the 20th century brought with it profound
changes in smallholder agriculture across Africa. Migrant
farmers spread cocoa across much of West Africa, while other
farmers gradually introduced cassava to replace cocoyams, with
the aid of rural artisans who developed processing equipment.
Maize, cassava, and sweet potatoes gradually replaced sorghum
and millet, leading to productivity gains across much of Africa.
Tree crops and growing population pressure led farmers to
abandon shifting cultivation. Outside the endemic trypanosomi-
asis zones of Central Africa, ox plowing took root among many
small farmers and commercial settler farmers.
THE LAST HALF CENTURY
During the second half of the century,aggregate agricultural
performance has remained positive,though progress in Africa has
lagged behind that achieved in other developing regions. Over
the past 40 years,the value of aggregate agricultural output has
increased by 2.5 percent per year in Africa compared with 2.9
percent in Latin America and 3.5 percent in developing Asia
In spite of their considerable achievements, the efforts of
African farmers and agricultural policymakers have failed to
FOCUS 12  •  BRIEF 1 OF 10  •  APRIL 2004
BUILDING ON SUCCESSES IN AFRICAN AGRICULTURE
African Agriculture: Past Performance, Future Imperatives
STEVEN HAGGBLADE,P ETER HAZELL,I NGRID KIRSTEN,AND RICHARD MKANDAWIRE
FOR FOOD,AGRICULTURE,
AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Trends in agricultural production per capita by region,1961–2002
SOURCE: FAOSTAT.
2.00
1.80
1.60
1.40
1.20
1.00
0.80
0.60
Sub-Saharan Africa
Developing Asia
Latin America
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1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000Steven Haggblade (s.haggblade@cgiar.org) is a senior research fellow in IFPRI's Development Strategy and Governance Division (DSGD). Peter Hazell
(p.hazell@cgiar.org) is director of IFPRI's DSGD. Ingrid Kirsten (ingridk@nepad.org) is a research assistant and Richard Mkandawire (richardm@nepad.org) is
the Agricultural Advisor at the Secretariat of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).
International Food Policy Research Institute
2033 K Street, N.W. •  Washington, D.C. 20006-1002  •  U.S.A.
Phone: +1-202-862-5600  •  Fax: +1-202-467-4439  •  Email: ifpri@cgiar.org
www.ifpri.org
match the historically unprecedented demographic challenge
they face. Comparisons of per capita production performance
across continents over the past 40 years reveal a deterioration
in agricultural performance in Africa alone (see figure).
In addition,Africa’s share of world agricultural exports has
fallen from 8 percent to 2 percent over the past 40 years.
Over the same period,Africa has fallen from the ranks of net
food exporters to become a net importer of food. Given that
Africa must grow faster than the rest of the world just to keep
up with its increasing population, it remains true that the many
individual successes achieved over the past half century have
simply not been sufficient in number or scale.
Equally worrisome are signs of decapitalization of Africa’s
key agricultural resources: its soils, human talent, and support
institutions. Nearly half of Africa’s farmland suffers from
erosion and nutrient depletion. Nutrient balance studies
suggest annual losses of 22 kilograms (kg) of nitrogen, 2.5 kg of
phosphorus, and 15 kg of potassium per hectare over the past
30 years, a nutrient loss valued at US$1–US$3 billion per year.
HIV/AIDS, with more than 70 percent of known cases
worldwide concentrated in Africa, has likewise taken a heavy
tool on Africa human strength and capital. One study has
estimated that 50 percent of agricultural extension staff time in
Africa is lost to HIV/AIDS.
Ministries of finance must routinely cope with enormous
debt loads, narrow tax bases, and donor-imposed pressures for
social spending that leave little room for maneuver or debate
over the relative role of productive investments in agriculture.
In this environment, public spending on agricultural research fell
from 0.8 percent of agricultural gross domestic product (GDP)
in 1981 to 0.3 percent in 1991. And over the past 20 years,
overall public spending on agriculture has fallen from 7.5
percent to 6 percent of agricultural GDP. Eroding civil service
salaries and anemic recurrent budgets have demobilized
extension and research staff, demotivated them, and fueled an
exodus of top scientists and staff from key ministry positions.
These worrisome trends place Africa’s natural, human, and insti-
tutional capital under pressure.
SCATTERED SUCCESSES
African farmers and agricultural policymakers have achieved a
series of significant successes in agricultural development,
although these successes are still inadequate in number and
scale to counter Sub-Saharan Africa’s daunting demographic
challenge. Focused efforts have led to sustained gains in specific
commodities and countries. Malian cotton production has
grown at 9 percent per year for the past 40 years,while small-
holder dairy production in Kenya represents the fastest-growing
source of farm income,benefiting more than half a million farm
households,which each earn more than US$300 annually on
average from dairying. Other broad efforts have proven more
generally applicable. Farmers and researchers have launched
hundreds of innovative soil and water conservation initiatives in
a wide variety of locations to contend with declining soil fertility
and declining fertilizer subsidies. Work by cassava scientists
across Africa has countered deadly disease and pest attacks and
converted these threats into opportunities for significant subse-
quent rapid production growth,benefiting tens of millions of
small farmers and making that crop one of the continent’s most
powerful poverty fighters to date.
LEARNING FROM PAST SUCCESSES
Though inadequate in scale and scope to outrun Africa’s daunting
demographics,these successes offer potentially important lessons
for replicating and scaling up successful efforts more frequently in
the future. Determined to learn from past successes,a group of
agencies—the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI),
the International Water Management Institute (IWMI),the New
Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD),and others—has
commissioned investigations of successful episodes in African agri-
culture. These reviews aim to answer key questions about how to
translate lessons from past successes into improved performance
in the future.
What common ingredients and processes underlie these
earlier successes?  How can policymakers translate these
lessons into improved performance going forward?  By
examining instances in which important advances have occurred
in the past in African agriculture,IFPRI,NEPAD,and colleagues
aim to identify promising avenues for achieving similar success in
the future. The following briefs offer highlights of some of these
important accomplishments and lessons learned from past
successes in African agriculture. Collectively,they aim to identify
key ingredients necessary for building on these individual cases
and expanding them into broad-based agricultural growth.  
For further reading see S. Haggblade, P. Hazell, I. Kirsten, and
R. Mkandawire,“African Agriculture: Past Performance and
Future Imperatives,” Background Paper No. 2 presented at
the conference “Successes in African Agriculture: Building for
the Future,” Pretoria, South Africa, December 1–3, 2003, and
the numerous references cited therein.
Copyright © 2004 International Food Policy Research Institute. All rights reserved. Contact ifpri-copyright@cgiar.org to request permission to reprint.

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