Dr. Agnes Kalibata, President, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)

By Dr. Agnes Kalibata, President, AGRA

As the world’s population surges towards 9 billion by mid-century, food production has failed to keep pace, creating rising food shortages and a global food crisis ahead, according to the United Nations. To avoid mass starvation, the world needs to produce 70 per cent more food by 2050.

The greatest potential to deliver that growth exists in Africa. The African continent is home to 25 per cent of the world’s agricultural land. Yet it produces just 10 per cent of the world’s food. That compares with China, which has just 10 per cent of the world’s agricultural land, but produces 20 per cent of the global food supply.

If Africa can now rise to the challenge of upgrading its agricultural output, it will open the way to a takeoff in GDP, greater youth employment, and the potential of positive trade balances and rising currencies.

Yet, the continent faces two profound issues in delivering its own agricultural turnaround, with its agricultural industry both rural and fragmented, and built upon smallholder farmers. It is the continent’s rural areas that have been most deprived of resources and investment: with the straight-line consequence that the continent’s core industry continues to under-perform, and under-perform badly.

The allure of city living has left rural areas neglected and strained Africa’s urban infrastructure and services, including health, water and sanitation, creating rising social problems and competition for city space. Indeed, Africa is now the fastest urbanizing continent in the world, with 60 per cent of all Africans forecast to be living in cities by 2050, according to UN Habitat.

But urban areas are dependent on rural populations for food. Moreover, agriculture holds more power in creating youth employment than any other sector, at a time when 10 million youth are entering the labor market each year in Africa, according to the 2015 Africa Agriculture Status Report (AASR).

Red cabbage farming in Kenya

In late April this year, at the G20 Conference in Germany, panelists at the ONE World no hunger meeting powerfully demonstrated the importance of attracting youth to the agricultural sector.

Rural youth are the future of the sector, with the capacity for innovation and entrepreneurship. Yet their participation has been hindered by the perception that the sector is unattractive due to risks, costs, low-profitability and agriculture’s labor intensive nature.

Additionally, rural youth have limited access to educational programs that provide agricultural skills, often limited access to land, and a lack of financial services tailored to their needs, as well as poor infrastructure and utilities.

The outcome of the ONE World no hunger meeting was the Berlin Charter, which seeks to create opportunities for the younger generation and women in the rural world by mapping out a model for rural development to achieve food security, long-term jobs and improved livelihoods.

It calls on governments to put in place agricultural, nutrition and anti-poverty policies to “lift at least 600 million people out of hunger and undernutrition” and “cut youth underemployment at least by half” by 2025. The Charter with a core focus on smallholder farmers, was presented to the G20 leaders at their meeting in July 2017 in Hamburg.

 Agriculture accounts for 32 per cent of Africa’s GDP and employs more than 60 per cent of the continent’s total labor force. But in order to realize its full potential, the political and economic environment needs to be conducive for smallholder farmers, who make up 70 per cent of the sub-Saharan Africa population. With smallholder output hampered by insecurity of land tenure and unequal access to land, land policy formulation and reforms are critical in Africa to in order to boost agricultural production. Rwanda has provided a benchmark in this, with over 10 million land parcels now titled and owned individually.

Other problems smallholder farmers face include limited access to markets, finance, high-yielding seeds, farm inputs and mechanization, which, invariably, lead to low levels of productivity. External shocks such as climate change have further hampered agricultural production.

 African countries urgently need to support smallholder farmers in order to capture the continent’s $300bn food market - projected to be worth US $1 trillion by 2030. At present, only five per cent of Africa’s imported cereals come from other African countries, with intra-African trade running consistently at around 15 per cent of Africa’s total trade – which is amongst the lowest intra-regional trade levels in the world (UNECA). In fact, African governments have stepped-up efforts to transform agriculture over the last decade, delivering often exceptional results.

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Ethiopia, for instance, has invested in extension workers, rural roads and modern market-building enabling cereal production to increase and increasing the number of calories its rural people consume by roughly 50 per cent. As a result, Ethiopia is now reducing poverty at the rate of four per cent a year (ONE.org, 2014).

Burkina Faso, a landlocked country, has also made remarkable progress in poverty reduction and food security with government investment in the sector averaging 17 per cent of total expenditure for the past 10 years (ONE.org, 2014). Ghana’s agricultural transformation agenda has, likewise, remained a top priority for successive governments, spurring reforms and heavy investment.

Yet as these early investments now move these particular economies up the growth ladder, other African governments have been slower to prioritize agriculture, despite the demonstrable financial gains and growing consequences in protest on food shortages.

As the G20 now reviews its strongest commitment yet to African agriculture and rural development, African governments and investors, likewise, need to heed the clarion call to action, and move agricultural reform and smallholders to the center of the continent’s political and economic debate.

            Indigenous chicks feeding.The poultry sector in Kenya contributes approximately 1.7% to Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

Active and prospective farmers encounter various challenges in their day to day farming lives. These range from low production output, difficulties in controlling diseases and adoption of management interventions. This is due to inadequate training or lack of information on management of their farms especially in indigenous poultry management where chicken are mostly kept in a free range system.

The Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) has thus chipped in and is conducting training for first-hand poultry farmers, extension officers, supervisors and trainee farmers/farm managers on indigenous chicken management.

 Since 2016, KALRO has provided training to over 2,500 farmers from all the 47 counties in Kenya. “We are offering this training to farmers to enhance their performance and overall productivity” says Vincent Ochieng, one of the officers in charge of training at KALRO. “Before, farmers had challenges in controlling diseases like gumboro, Newcastle & coccidiosis which can be prevented by simple vaccination through a new vaccine called avivax which we have developed at KALRO” added Ochieng.

 The short training course provides an excellent background into the “what”, “why” and “how” on improved indigenous chicken management. The training is held at KALRO Non-Ruminant Institute-Naivasha Centre on selected dates depending on the applicants’ convenience.

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 The training is a four day hands on practice where farmers and other interested parties are taken through all the aspects of Indigenous Chicken production, though with an agribusiness point of view. Participants are engaged in theoretical classes in the morning sessions, and then the afternoon is spent on practical work based on the morning sessions.

Areas covered by the training include;

• Selection and breeding
• Bio-security
• Disease diagnosis and management
• Vaccine handling and usage
• Vices related to production and their management
• Hatchery management
• Chick brooding and placement
• Feeding and feed formulation
• Housing
• Information Technology in poultry production
• Economics and record keeping.

Training costs Ksh. 20,000 which caters for meals, facilitation fees and local transportation to and from Naivasha town. A fee of Ksh. 300 per day is charged to small scale farmers who go for training as members of a group at least 20 members and cannot afford the sh. 20,000 fee for four days. An individual farmer can also visit KALRO office on any working day and get free training.

Kenya’s Vision 2030 places great importance on value addition in agriculture and livestock as a means of raising rural household incomes as captured by the sector's driving strategy, the Agricultural Sector Development Strategy 2010-2020.

The poultry sector in Kenya contributes approximately 1.7% to Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The sector is majorly important to over 70% of the rural population where the industry is a major source of food, income and self-employment.

 KALRO also provide training in hatching management, poultry record keeping, poultry health management and supervisory skills in poultry management.