According to a 2014 World Bank report, Africa’s agribusiness industry is expected to be worth $1 trillion by 2030. As of now, worth $313 billion, agriculture already provides jobs for 70% of the poorest people in Africa. An growth rate greater than threefold will bring jobs to lift millions out of poverty, mostly women; most stomachs will be filled with nutritious meals, Africa’s agricultural exports will dominate global markets, and the continent’s farmers, who borne the brunt of dire economic conditions poised to getting a new lease of life as they become competitive in the global marketplace.
With up to 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, fertile soils, abundant labour, and all-year sunshine with potential to Solar Energy, sub-Saharan Africa surely can fulfill expectations of being the breadbasket of the world… better yet, has the potential to become the world’s largest exporter of food products.
Even if Africa opted to ignore export potentials, continent’s one billion people provide a huge and ready-market-for-agribusiness to flourish. Still, to date, our countries import more than 72 percent of wheat consumed, over 450,000 tons of mostly GMO’fed chicken and spend more than $10 billion on imported grains, especially rice whereas other cereals exists than could resolve the food and nutrition deficit jeopardizing the future of millions new born lacking basic early nutritional supplement needs...
The question becomes, in the midst of this potential, strength, weakness (at some point) and opportunities, will AfDB leave the responsibility and the expected ROI to other “donors” to invest in this huge domestic market overlapping to international demands?...
If no which I bet the answer is, then we need to start by IDENTIFYING, SUPORTING AND STREAMLINING (with proper metrics) THE SUCCESSES of the already existing growth potentials featured by existing islands of success stories From Senegal, Mali to Kenya and down south to further north, with a responsive integration mechanism to carry the whole…
After the “lost decades of development” of the 70s, many including myself, would not believe that development experts and politics, lobbyists, so to speak the whole development partners would repeat the mistakes of the past… Well, it’s happening right now:
So as not to repeat the tragic mistakes of the past at times of dire needs to level up our food production and productivity balance in Africa, we must instill gender friendly approaches with minimum accountability criteria, at all levels of the agriculture value chains. Women are part of a bigger ecosystem and require a holistic approach to cater their social and financial needs within the community where they thrive.
As a specific demographic and constituency, financial literacy, education and advocacy must be sought to validate their already existing entrepreneurial skills in most cases. Existing traditional community financial inclusion schemes from Kenya to Dakar down to Malawi (Susu, tontines, village/rural microcredit proxies…) need to be revisited and revamped in light of a more accountable financial vehicle in regards to the specific cyclical nature of the overall agricultural value chain.
Last but not least, a critical data infrastructure through an exhaustive needs assessment, leading to key determination of respective priorities and opportunities in each category of the value chain must be conducted prior to simply resource provision. Today’s ability to sync various ICT processes might be of great help streamlining the process across countries and regions, widening the market needs as well as the productivity capacity along through women farmer cooperatives and associations or federations to name the latest trends.
Very much on point as far as the justification, the prospects and the context where we're at right now... With such evidentiary commnittment from early UN initiatives; 22 years lapsed and it still looks like the recommendations are better needed now more than ever before...
As we uncover the sad truth though, little to nothing has been done to meet the challenges...
AfDB in this regards might be seen for us, after decades of capitalisation on key strategic areas inherent to african development, as the first and last resort savior to bring the resources it takes to overhaul this challenge ahead.
20 years ago when “centralism” and interventionism were golden rules in most, if not all government platforms in Africa, it was unthinkable to get into the development arena in each of these countries involved in this exchange without encountering the stiffest rapport with such authorities…
Thanks to ongoing decentralization processes and “open government” dynamics in the making all over Africa, to date even donors have more respect of non-government actors than a couple of decades ago. In other words, creditworthiness has stopped being only ascribed to government related dealings… Civil Society and Community Based Organizations alongside with Key Opinion Leaders within their neighborhood associations with women in development…These are the key players to build the new collaboration paradigm.
With instable political institutions across the aisle, new key players in Africa are avid and ready for a New Deal meant to shifting the power balance structure.
It's time for donor community to engage more on impact monitoring, most definitely participative impact monitoring (involving civil society actors) in order to scale up the least progress made in the developing world. Without mentioning the ripple effect of such missing aggregate data irrelevant to achievements on the ground, to date most scorecards used to weigh in progress and limitations are simply outdated. (http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Millennium-Development-Goals-Scrambling-the-Development-Agenda&id=5065609)
AfDB should liaise with existing dynamic on the ground and help shape it up with the most appropriate overhaul through equipped business advisory services in communities in need.
Cette verite s'applique a tous les secteurs d'activites...
Submitted by Demba N on Sat, 19/08/2017 - 08:26 Permalink
En effet le modèle de valeurs et de perception de l'intérêt collectif pour la Femme est bien plus inclusif que la perception des hommes dans l'exercice d'activités économiques... Et les expériences d'intégration de la Femme au pouvoir de décision économique (en Asie, en Europe de l’Est et en Amérique Latine…) se sont dans l'ensemble révélées fort utiles pour la postérité...
Ace seuil il nous incombe de pousser à l'adoption de mesures actionnables en faveur de l'équité genre, mieux, la priorisation de l'accès de la Femme au pouvoir économique...
La volonté politique de nos institutions de financement du développement est bien à questionner…