Development through empowerment

“Africa’s Green Revolution must be built by Africans. It must rely on Africa’s knowledge, Africa’s experience, and above all, the skills and energy of Africa’s people,” says IFAD President Lennart Båge. 

A core team from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) attended the Africa Fertilizer Summit held in Nigeria from 9-13 June. Their mandate from IFAD President Lennart Båge was to ensure that the needs of African smallholders, particularly the poorest, were taken into account in regional and national action plans drawn up to boost fertilizer use. IFAD was also a major sponsor of the summit.

We interviewed President Båge after he addressed the heads of state session on the summit’s final day. The following are his answers to questions on key issues discussed during the summit.

On the African Green Revolution

”Almost two years ago, Kofi Annan called for a uniquely African Green Revolution. Africa’s challenges today are extraordinarily complex and profoundly different to those that confronted Asia 40 years ago, at the dawn of its Green Revolution. So while there are lessons to be learned from Asia, its experience cannot be replicated wholesale.  Africa’s Green Revolution must be built by Africans to respond to the problems facing the continent today, and it must rely on Africa’s knowledge, Africa’s experience, and above all, the skills and energy of Africa’s people.

“To succeed, the African Green Revolution needs investment, policies and institutions that can advance rural development. Although the Green Revolution model has been successful and puts agriculture in the driving seat, alone it is no ‘silver bullet’ cure for Africa’s problems. Africa’s future depends on a comprehensive program of development that is rooted in local communities.

“Such a program cannot be supply-driven. It involves listening to and addressing Africa’s needs: listening to its women, who are experts in everyday resource management and not just the poorest of the poor; and listening to farmers most of which are women, who have knowledge but lack methods of sharing it. By merging Africa’s knowledge with external agronomic expertise we can create win-wins on all fronts. The western disregard for local knowledge is a major aid problem.”

On agriculture as a driver of development

”The role of agriculture as a catalyst for economic growth, poverty reduction and increased employment in Africa has been neglected, as indeed have sustainable management and natural resource management. Of the 7 percent growth needed to lift Africa out of poverty, it has been estimated that as much as 4 percent must come from the agricultural sector. This is not understood in the North, where development aid focuses principally on health and education. Support for health and education is crucial in Africa, but it is not enough to break the continent’s poverty cycle.

“Agricultural history shows that change is not driven by technology alone, but by the interplay between economic and social factors and technological advances. The agrarian development needed in Africa today has similarities to that seen in Europe 150 years ago. One of the key factors there was farmers organizing around their social, economical and political interests. They formed associations for purchasing inputs and selling outputs, for road and water maintenance, and for other common needs. Farmers formed finance and loan associations to invest in technology and inputs. They also formed political movements to lobby for a viable framework for the development of agriculture. This was later strengthened by the rise of rurally based political parties.

“Today, as the fertilizer summit shows, there is a determination across Africa to harness economic, social and technological change to solve the continent’s problems, and to solve them now in a way that is inclusive, forward-looking and businesslike.”

On achieving Africa’s potential

”The world media’s portrayal of Africa is overwhelming focused on problems and conflict. Moreover, this is reflected in international debate and the work of development theorists. As a specialized agency of the United Nations, focused on reducing rural poverty in developing countries, IFAD faces a constant struggle to communicate Africa’s many success stories via the media. I believe it is time to balance this perspective by focusing on the great changes and important progress being made in Africa.

“We see the emergence of a new rural private sector, with agro-dealers starting to provide farmers with inputs, traders buying produce, and agro-processors and exporters contracting small farmers to produce crops for them. New technologies are spreading: NERICA rice in West Africa, and high yielding varieties of maize in East Africa, are making an enormous difference to the lives of millions of farmers. In Nigeria, the so-called cassava revolution has transformed this country into the largest cassava producer in the world; while in parts of Kenya we are seeing specialized small-scale dairy farmers producing primarily not for consumption but for sale in the market.

“Most important is the huge shift in policies and institutions towards rural poverty reduction. Moves by the African Union and NEPAD, and the 2003 Maputo Declaration are testimony to this new commitment. Governments are also providing the space for other institutions to emerge. In most countries today a vibrant NGO sector is delivering a whole range of services to smallholder farmers. And civil society organizations – especially farmers’ organizations – are starting to play a key role, not just in delivering services, but also in making their voices heard in national and regional policy dialogue.”

On Africa’s need for fertilizer

”Africa’s soils are of low fertility and they are being further depleted through constant cultivation. Yet farmers in sub-Saharan Africa on average use less than 10 kg of fertilizer per hectare; this is less than one-tenth of the world average. Effectively, they are mining the soils they use. The summit has served as an important reminder of the critical role that increasing fertilizer use – both chemical and organic where possible - must play in restoring soil fertility, increasing crop yields and agricultural production, and reducing poverty across the African continent.

“Small farmers are at the heart of achieving these objectives. With the right sort of support they can overcome their own poverty, and contribute to national and continent-wide objectives for increasing agricultural production. But, without an enabling infrastructure, fertilizer is not a solution in itself. Nor is any other agricultural input. To succeed, an agricultural change programme must address the entire value chain from inputs to markets.

“So success depends upon serving the broad production and marketing needs of the people who use fertilizer as one small piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is their farming system; the hundreds of millions of poor rural people who are trying to ensure that they grow enough to feed themselves and their families, and to have a small surplus to meet their cash needs. For IFAD, the African Green Revolution is about enabling these people to overcome poverty and, above all, it is about achieving the targets of the first Millennium Development Goal: to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.”

On key interventions

”I believe that if we want to increase fertilizer use in Africa, we must understand why the continent’s farmers currently use so little on their fields. And we have to work to create the conditions that enable farmers’ demand for fertilizer to grow. This requires us to address issues from land tenure and production technologies, to soil and water conservation, and market and financial incentives for investment. And all must be tackled through a country’s own agricultural policy framework.

“Farmers’ physical access to fertilizers is improving, largely due to the growth of agro-input dealer networks across rural Africa.  But this work has to be scaled up through collaboration between governments, fertilizer suppliers, NGOs, farmers’ organizations and international development agencies. We are also seeing promising initiatives that bring fertilizer closer to the farmer and make it available in small packages, no bigger and barely more costly than a pack of sugar. But, this doesn’t entirely resolve the situation, particularly for the poorest farmers.

“Small farmers’ access to financial resources and markets is key to increasing fertilizer use in Africa. Contract farmers may be able to get credit from buyers to cover fertilizer costs, but other sources of credit for small farmers are very limited. Most of the development banks that used to provide loans for fertilizer have been wound up, few countries have commercial banks interested in lending directly to small farmers, and the micro-finance institutions that have grown up in the past decade are not enough to meet the financial needs.

“IFAD believes that ‘smart subsidies’ can play an important role in giving poor farmers access to fertilizers. The subsidies must be targeted to ensure that they benefit farmers rather than powerful interests and stimulate, rather than undermine, private sector market development for fertilizers. Subsidies must also have effective exit plans to ensure that they don’t become an unsustainable burden to the governments providing them.”

On smallhold farmers

”Smallhold farmers and their organizations are critical for developing African agriculture. Today many farmers have a sense of disempowerment. They are isolated, lack knowledge and information and are easily exploited. By joining these ‘weakest links’ together, farmers’ organizations are pivotal in boosting fertilizer use and smallholder production. They enable farmers to negotiate with fertilizer suppliers for bulk orders that bring down transaction and transport costs, they support smallholders in learning how to use organic and inorganic fertilizers profitably and sustainably, and to improve their access to credit.

“IFAD has been working to strengthen the position of small farmers worldwide for 30 years. Our strategy is to empower them to develop their own skills and confidence and to establish their own organizations. At the fertilizer summit we were instrumental in facilitating the farmers’ side-event, which allowed farmers’ organizations to present their common standpoint on the pivotal role of family smallholdings and mixed farming systems in African agriculture. IFAD participated in the panel discussion, where the role small farmers play in managing soil fertility was stressed, together with their struggle for sustainable agriculture and food security.”

On IFAD

”We are essentially an enabling organization that aims to empower rural poor people to overcome poverty. Our success is the result of a radical approach: in working alongside smallholders and communities we consider them as active subjects in their own development, not as objects of top-down policies and interventions.

“IFAD has spent the past 30 years working in Africa to reduce rural poverty.  When much of the development community abandoned the agricultural sector, we remained committed. Today, we are one of the principal external financiers of agricultural development in Africa and during the past decade we have doubled our funding to Africa.  Across the region, we are working to assist governments and their national partners develop and implement their policies and their programs for reducing rural poverty and enhancing the performance of the agricultural sector.