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Title Helping Africa Feed Itself Increasing Agricultural Productivity for Poverty Reduction
Full text http://hdl.handle.net/1885/14982
Date 2012
Author(s) Silvers, Brooke
Abstract This report seeks to identify the role Australian aid can play in promoting agricultural productivity in Africa. Agriculture is central to Africa's development, stability and prosperity. However for many years, it has been neglected by African Governments and the international community alike. As the rest of the world experienced immense agricultural growth, Africa has lagged behind, stunted by the lack of technological advancements, infrastructure, and inadequate irrigation and fertilizer availability. Negative annual crop growth rates and increasing population have contributed to Africa's embedded poverty and severe food insecurity. Furthermore if predictions are correct, not only will Africa fail to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, its the incidence of poverty and food scarcity will also increase. The myriad of literature on Africa's development unanimously draws correlations between increased agricultural productivity and decreased poverty, particularly in rural areas where poverty and deprivation are most severe. Agriculture has the potential to increase employment opportunities for rural and non-rural industries, connect smallholder farmers to market value chains, increase smallholder profitability and sustainability and lower the price of food for those who produce and consume it. Focusing on enhancing agricultural production for Africa's development presents unique opportunities for Australia's aid program. Even though Australia is a relatively small donor in Africa, employing an integrated aid program focused on increasing agricultural production would allow Australia to make an extensive impact to a range of cross-cutting issues confronting Africa including gender, health and climate change. Australia presents similar climatic conditions to Africa, including low rainfall, semi-arid and tropical regions. Similarly, Australia and Africa have experienced climatic challenges such as prolonged periods of drought. However, under these agro-ecological conditions Australia has prospered through building considerable scientific and technical expertise in agricultural productivity and trade. With this in mind, combined with Australia's growing strategic interests in Africa and AusAID's objective of helping people from poverty, there is a strong case as to why Australia should focus on enhancing agricultural aid to Africa. Enhancing an effective agricultural aid program which supports pro-poor development and places smallholder farmers at the crux can be achieved through a number of aid modalities. Much of Australia's aid to Africa is already channelled through multilateral and bilateral partnerships. Partnerships are most effective at extending Australia's reach and impact and, as such, Australia's engagement with partners should be increased and maximised. Australia also needs to embrace the private sector, as without the private sector any momentous growth in agricultural output in Africa is unattainable. There are a number of limitations that have persistently hindered Africa's agricultural development, such as limited infrastructure and technology. However, these obstacles present certain opportunities for Australia's competitive advantage in Africa, particularly in terms of trade and exports. In light of these findings, this report makes several key recommendations. These include increasing aid budget allocations to agricultural aid in Africa, specifically through the Australian International Agricultural Research Centre (ACAIR), tightening geographic scope for greater impact and enhancing engagement in the private sector.
Subject(s) agricultural productivity; Australian aid; Africa; Millennium Development Goals; food insecurity
Type of publication Report
Rights Copyright the author/s
Repository Canberra - Australian National University
Added to C-A: 2015-09-07;13:48:24