Year in year out, Grants, DFI funds & Private Equity funds flow into Sub-Saharan African Agriculture space. From a discussion paper by Husmann, Christine & Kubik, Zaneta titled Foreign direct investment in the African food and agriculture sector: Trends, determinants and impacts, they estimated that a total of $48.737 billion was invested in the African food and agriculture sector by foreign private-sector investors between 2003 and 2017. At the backdrop of these FDI statistics lies the following;
As reported by the guardian in 2019, “Almost 60 million children deprived of food despite continent’s economic growth, in what is ‘fundamentally a political problem.” https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/jun/05/nearly-half-of-all-child-deaths-in-africa-stem-from-hunger-study-shows.
This article deploys another aspect into the discussion being politics, however at this point we will not delve deeper into that. From the article it is clear that there is a negative correlation between the accelerated economic growth being experienced on the continent and the ability to feed ourselves amid a spiraling population growth.
One Agriculture Specialist Rainer Tögel in a reality check comparing Germany, a country to Africa, a continent wrote the following;
“The leading industrial nations are always in the position to supply themselves and to gain profits from the surplus through export. Germany is a small country, it is the forth largest industrial nation in the world. Africa is 86 times larger than Germany and if you calculate the actual agricultural area, the ratio is 1 to 100. Only 30% of the area in Germany is used for agriculture, the population density is higher than in China. The German agricultural industry has exported agricultural products worth €70 billion in 2019.”
Official statistics indicate the number to be €79 billion. Not only is Germany, in the same year, the Dutch exported €94.5 billion worth of agricultural goods up 4.6% from the previous €90.4 billion in 2018. In the same year however, according to the Brookings Institution, Sub Saharan Africa exported €43 billion worth of agriculture produce which is 54% & 45% of the Germany & the Dutch exports respectively. So, if the whole continent’s export output is making up around 50% of a nation’s export output, clearly there’s a problem here. Furthermore, as expressed by Rainer, Germany is 86 times smaller than Africa so where are we missing it in our agriculture when we possess 70% of the world’s arable land? Why are we falling behind other continents in the race to food sufficiency?
With the continent experiencing an accelerated economic growth with a bursting population growth amid a growing hungry population, the following questions can only be asked;
How did we end up in this position?
Why are we failing to feed ourselves?
What needs to be done?
In the Part 2 article, I will outline areas where we may be missing it as a continent and what needs to be done to fundamentally shift the continent’s fortunes in as far as agriculture output is concerned. With all the monies that have been invested in African agriculture space, we should by now be in a position of self sufficiency otherwise the only logical answer is that there is something we are repeatedly doing wrong as a continent.
By:Prosper Tinomutenda Rukete ,African Agribusiness Analyst
https://www.linkedin.com/in/prosper-tinomutenda-rukete-40640553/
