…And Calls for ‘Approtech’ to Drive Change
By J. Ato Kobbie, Managing Editor
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), has revealed that the structural adjustment programmes (SAP), introduced by the Bretton Woods institutions in the 1980s put Africa backwards by at least three decades, as far as agriculture was concerned.
Disclosing this in Accra last Friday, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, Vice President of AGRA said “the programme dismantled all the institutions and support systems around farmers in Africa,” and therefore “today, majority of farmers do not have access to functioning extension systems, affordable credit, stable prices or markets.”
Dr. Adesina, who was delivering the key note address at the launch of the Policy Hub for Ghana at the Golden Tulip Hotel, said “As a result, less than 5% of farmers in Ghana use improved varieties of maize, and fertilizer use averages 8kilogrammes per hectare.”
He has therefore called on policy makers in Ghana, and the continent as a whole, to learn from the Chinese experience, where home-grown policies rapidly transformed its agriculture from seeds through finance and marketing, by adopting appropriate technology to drive the necessary change.
AGRA, in partnership with national governments, development partners, civil society and farmers, is championing policies aimed at accelerating growth in agricultural productivity, to ensure food security at affordable prices and improved incomes of farmers, to mend the broken policy support systems for farmers in Africa.
Dr. Adesina said Asia went beyond technology and put in place price support systems with guaranteed minimum prices and access to credit which yielded dramatic results.
The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), has, with the support of AGRA, released 12 new crop varieties of maize, cassava and cowpeas which, when cultivated on millions of hectares of land, can cut down drastically Ghana’s one-billion dollar food import bill and make Ghana self-sufficient in food production.
“The yield of one of the varieties called “Etube” is 200% above that of the popular maize variety “Obatampa” released some 20 years ago,” Dr. Adesina revealed.
The policy hub, developed in partnership with government and other development partners, aims at accelerating growth in agricultural productivity, food security and incomes of farmers, whilst ensuring affordable food prices.
Responding to questions during an interaction with the media after the launch, Dr. Adesina said apart from real challenges confronting farmers such as not meeting international averages in terms of fertilizer applications and improved varieties of seedlings usage, only one percent of cultivated land is under irrigation, whilst infrastructural challenges exist as well.
According to him the lack of adequate storage facilities, warehousing, and unstable prices, coupled with transactional costs and high storage losses conspiring against farmers, emphasize the need for policies that will ensure that farmers, particularly the smallholder farmer, “have high productivity and sell at good prices to make a decent living out of agriculture.”
Dr. Adesina said the Policy Hub is to support the Ghanaian government and its development partners, to think through what those policies that would address these shortfalls should be.
Drawing a parallel between Ghanaian farmers and those of the developed world, he said local farmers have been abandoned and therefore, there was the need to “rethink and replace the policies of abandonment with policies of comprehensive support.
“We are therefore asking for government allocation to agriculture to go up significantly: to invest in irrigation, in storage, in infrastructure, which are the things that make agriculture work!”
He said it is evident from countries where agriculture is changing that it is the political will to effect such changes that have yielded results and addressed the food needs of farmers and those countries.
He said the platform is also to interrogate the quality of investment of public expenditure in agriculture and a paradigm shift that will benefit farmers.
Recounting AGRA’s impact on the continent, Dr. Adesina said AGRA has over 15,000 agro dealers in several countries and sold over 374,000 tonnes of improved seeds and about 770,000 tonnes of fertilizers in rural areas and “They have secured about $45 million in loans from banks.”
“In Ghana, AGRA and IFDC have trained 1,700 agro dealers and they have received over $3 million in loans. Farmers can now get seeds and fertilizers close to their fields, producing more at a lower cost,” he stated, adding that distances travelled by farmers have declined by 50% from 30 kilometres to 15 kilometres in the Northern region, and to 7 kilometres in Ashanti Region.”
Continuing, Dr. Adesina said with over 50% of what Africa produces getting lost due to poor storage, “Development of warehouse receipt systems will further make it possible for farmers to reduce storage losses, stabilize prices, use their grains as collateral for credit, and stimulate incentives for further uptake of new agricultural technologies.”
He stated further that the rapid growth of cell phones in Africa has opened up opportunities for farmers to reach markets and get better prices, with Commodity Exchanges now offering great opportunities for farmers to trade their produce and attract competitive prices, while meeting grade and standards.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the estimated resources to achieve the green revolution are enormous. We cannot invest everywhere. We must focus on areas with high potential where faster gains can be made, which will drive down the price of food. While we must also pay attention to low potential areas, we cannot solve all problems at the same time,” the AGRA Vice president stressed.
He said AGRA is focusing its resources in breadbasket areas – areas with good agricultural potential, better infrastructure and markets. National governments, donors and private sectors are now investing in breadbaskets in Ghana, Mali, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Ethiopia.
However, he said more funding is needed to take things to scale. He regretted that unlike the state of affairs during the Asian Green revolution, today, several of the donor countries have been hit by the global crisis and development funds are easiest to cut back on.
“The $20 billion promised for African agriculture in Gleneagles by the G8 has not materialized,” he lamented, adding: “A deficit of $US18billion is yet to be paid. The taps have dried.
“Africa must learn the hard lesson: it must look within itself, and find the resources to achieve the green revolution.
“So far 24 countries have signed the national CAADP compacts to devote 10% of their budgets to agriculture. But only 8 countries have met their 10% target: Ghana, Ethiopia, Niger, Mali, Malawi, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Guinea.
“More can and should be done! African economies have continued to post strong economic growth rates over the past five years. According to the Mckinsey report “lions on the move: the progress and potential of African economies”, the GDP of Africa rose from $461 Billion in 1970 to $1.6 trillion in 2008. Between 2005 and 2008 real GDP growth rates grew by between 5.5 -5.6% annually. Agricultural output in Africa could potentially grow from the current level of $280 billion per year to $880 billion by 2030.
“Despite recent global economic crisis, the economies of Africa are projected to grow by an average of 5.5% into the near future. The implication is clear: there exists significant amount of excess liquidity today on the balance sheets of the banks and other financial institutions in Africa. This excess liquidity needs to be harnessed and leveraged to go into critical sectors that can help drive the MDGs.
“The challenge is serious, less than 1% of total lending by commercial banks in Africa goes into agriculture. Banks don’t lend because of perceived high risks, poorly coordinated agricultural value chains and poor infrastructure in the agricultural sector. “What needs to be done is to leverage the excess liquidity in the banks to agricultural value chains.
To achieve the green revolution there needs to be a financial revolution for agriculture. That financial revolution is already on its way.
“AGRA is spearheading the use of risk sharing instruments to reduce risks of lending by banks to agriculture, with good results. AGRA and its partners have leveraged $170 million in new affordable financing from commercial banks in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Mozambique.
“In Ghana, AGRA partnered with the Millennium Development Authority and Stanbic bank to leverage $25 million in lending to agriculture. Stanbic has lent $5.2 million, with an additional $13.2 million in the pipeline, targeting 15,500. AGRA is also partnering with DANIDA in Ghana to launch a new facility to leverage additional $30 million in term financing for agriculture in Ghana.
“AGRA has partnered with the Central Bank of Nigeria and completed the design a $500 million risk sharing facility to leverage $3 billion in agricultural lending from banks in Nigeria – the largest effort In Africa. This will make loans available to 3.8 million farmers, impacting some 20 million people,” Dr Adesina concluded.
Meanwhile, the President of the Ghana National Seed Producers Association, Mr. Patrick A. Apullah, making a contribution at the launch, implored the media to devote some more attention to coverage of developments in the agricultural sector.
He said considering the fact that the sector contributes over 40% to Ghana’s gross domestic product (GDP), it was regrettable that the media does not give it the attention it deserved.
Other speakers at the event were Alhaji Dr. Alhassan Yakubu, who spoke on Ghana’s Parliament’s role in agric policy making and also encouraged the continent to embrace technologies that would improve its agric yields, Hon. Ernest Debrah, former Minister for Food and Agriculture (MoFA), and Mr. Atta Adjapong, Co-Chairman of the Joint MoFA – Donor Partners, who spoke on the theme: Development partners support for the Policy Hub’, as well as Dr. Augustine Langyintuo, Policy Programme Officer of AGRA who took participants through the formation of the Ghana policy Nodes and Hubs and introduced Node and Hub Co-ordinators.j.atokobbie@yahoo.com
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