Fighting Africa's food deficit

• Author: Alhaji Tejan-Cole
• Position: Legal Counsel for the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF)
• Pages: 4-6

Experts have long agon ized over how to produce

higher crop y ields and more nutrit ious foods from

poor soi ls, to make fo od affordable for and acces-

sible to Africa’s expandin g population.

As Africa n farming is largely s mallholder-based

and mo st farmers still use i nefficient p ractices

that take a lot from the soil but give little in re-

turn, the prognos is is gloomy. W ith the current

faith i n market-bas ed

solutions, many of

them can on ly slip in-

to deeper poverty and

deprivati on.

The Food and Agri-

culture Or ganization

(FAO) of the Unite d

Nations says that

every 10 percent in-

crease in s mallholder agricultural produc tivity i n

Africa can l ift almos t 7 million people ab ove the

dollar-a- day poverty line.

Proprietar y technolog ies to i mprove the drought

tolerance, pest and diseas e resi stance, yield po-

tential and nutr ient content of food crops a re al-

ready being exploite d in d eveloped co untries,

with research companies coming up with better

technologi es every d ay.

While most smal lholders i n Africa seem re signed

to the hit-or-m iss characte r of their liveliho od,

they are ke en to adopt new prop rietary techno lo-

gy option s where the righ t incentives an d market

opportu nities exist.

With this in mind, the AATF was establi shed to

help s mall-scale f armers acce ss and us e these

proprieta ry technologies to attai n fo od security

and redu ce poverty.

Facilitating Technology

Transfer

The Foun dation identif ies proprietar y agricult ural

technologies that could benefit farmers. It then fa -

cilitates the t ransfer of these technologi es and the

associated know-how by negot iating royalt y-free

access for use in Afric an farming systems. In so do-

ing, AATF aims to address the legiti mate concerns

of both t he technology provid ers and the user s.

Although r ich in natural and human resources,

Africa is home to some 239 milli on u ndernour-

ished people with an estimate d 33 milli on ch il-

dren going to sleep hungry every night, a ccord-

ing to the FAO. The O rganization also no tes that

the rate of in crease in undernou rishment in Afric a

vastly e xceeds that of other deve loping regions.

The big quest ion is how to harness the be st of sci-

ence and techno logy to help the continent in-

crease its agr icultural produc tivity, p rofitability

and sustainab ility and cont ribute to impro ved

food secu rity for al l.

Between 1980 an d 1995, Sub-Saharan Africa was

the o nly region to exper ience a decrease in crop

productio n, with average yields falling by 8 per-

cent. This cont rasts with an incre ase of 27 percent

in Asia and 12 perc ent in Latin America.

A predominance of rain -fed, as op posed to irri-

gated, agriculture, minimal use of input s and th e

lack of functioning competit ive mar kets a re just

some of the problems facing Afri can agriculture .

A great deal of effort has been directed at reversing

this trend, but to little effect. Food aid continues to

be a major part of the strategic response to curbing

hunger. It is generally agreed, however, that an ef-

fective response to the food security crisis is to in-

crease the yield potential of the land, rather than to

expand the area of land under cultivation. Increased

production per person engaged in agriculture is es-

sential, because devastating problems such as

HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis are reducing the

productive capacity of the African labor force.

Certain proprietary technologies could be rea dily

adapted to the agro-ecologic al conditio ns in t he

region and ma de available to poor f armers. Use of

these tech nologies in the African context promis-

es to stimulate broader and more equitable eco-

nomic gro wth on a su stainable bas is.

AP RI L 20 11

4

FIGHTING AFRICA’S

FOOD DEFICIT

Legal Coun sel for the Afric an Agricultura l Techn ology Foundati on (AATF), Alhaji Tejan-Co le explain s

what his organ ization is doing to hel p farmers in Af rica inc rease prod uctivity, profitabil ity and sustain-

abilit y to rever se the co ntinent’s fo od deficit .

Farmer Julia

Odhiambo from

Kenya had

abandoned planting

maize in this field

because of striga.

With IR maize

technology she can

now grow maize.

Photos: AATF