Ask most who have worked in this region, “what characterizes small holder farming in sub-Saharan Africa ?”, and the answer, which sadly, has remained unchanged for the past ten years, will go something like this: mono-cropping, reuse of seeds season after season, no fertilizer, and ever diminishing land holding sizes. Add to that the fluctuations in global weather patterns, and what you get is an entire population living on the very fine edge of food security.
When the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) started in 2005, as a vision of Professor Jeffrey Sachs at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, it was to show that a holistic approach involving health, education, infrastructure and agriculture could stabilize some of the poorest communities in the world and lay the foundation for sustained development.
Launched in ten countries, and 14 different locations throughout sub-Saharan Africa, one of the first areas the project tackled was food security for the smallholder farmer. “Provide them with high quality seed and fertilizer and you will see a dramatic change,” the agronomists told Jeff, and based on their advisc a program for the universal distribution of hybrid seeds and fertilizer commenced in all the sites. Sure enough, yields tripled in most locations. Food security was established and even after setting aside 1.25 tons for personal consumption there was still some left to sell.
This limited surplus generates $200-300 in earned income – not nearly enough to pull a family out of the poverty trap. So is there a solution for this ?
In deep rural sub-Saharan Africa, poor roads, lack of electricity and water, and a lack of technical skills, all conspire to keep industrialization at arms length. Agriculture remains the dominant engine for economic growth. So as I see it, there are four possible ways for the small holder farmers to grow their incomes: (1) Increase land holding sizes – an unlikely phenomenon for a multitude of reasons; (2) grow higher value crops or diversify to non-agricultural activities like animal rearing, fish farming, honey production etc.; (3) add value through post processing and completing the value chain; (4) cultivate the same plot of land multiple times through the use of irrigation.
With a social and agriculture program firmly in place the MVP now embarked on the program to increase the incomes of the smallholder farmer. We studied each site carefully, and solutions began to emerge. Global partners stepped in: Ericsson, with cell phone coverage; Mosaic and Agrium, with fertilizer; Panasonic with solar technology; JM Eagle, with piping, just to name a few, and together it began to weave the tapestry of change. The three examples I have chosen show the nature of the transformation underway.
Completing the Value Chain:
Year round horticulture:
Fish Farming and Goat Rearing:
And so, from shea butter and mangoes in Mali, to cocoa in Ghana, pineapples in Uganda, three seasons of irrigated maize in Malawi, onions and hibiscus in Senegal, honey and fruit trees in Ethiopia – the opportunities are plentiful. They require patient capital, a completion of the value chains, and a connection to either the local markets, or as in the case of Ghanaian cocoa, to the international markets.
Public-private partnerships will be the early instruments of change in these communities, and with increasing financial stability the investment community will surely follow. In time investors will come to see sub-Saharan Africa as one of the last great opportunities, not for extractive minerals, its oil and gas, but as a vast region, where collaborative agriculture is possible, benefiting the poor and the investor equally.