Harvard International Review

WINNING IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA'S AGRICULTURAL MARKETAuthor(s): Eric Li

Source: Harvard International Review , Vol. 41, No. 1, A QUIET DESPERATION: MODERN
AGRICULTURE AND RURAL LIFE (WINTER 2020), pp. 58-62
Published by: Harvard International Review

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26917286

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 H A R VA R D I N T E R N AT I O N A L R E V I E W

WINNING IN
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA’S
AGRICULTURAL MARKET
AGRICULTURE, POVERTY, AND THE ROLE
OF TECHNOLOGY
Eric Li
Staff Writer

D
efined as the percent
of people living on less
than US$1.90 per day,
the global extreme poverty rate
is 10 percent. Sub-Saharan Af-
rica’s is 41 percent. But the dis-
proportionate lack of economic
growth in sub-Saharan Africa is
far from decreasing; it’s estimat-
ed that 87 percent of the world’s
extreme poor will be living in
this region by 2030. But what
does living in extreme poverty
really mean? One of every thir-
teen children in sub-Saharan
Africa will die before their fifth
birthday, a rate fifteen times
higher than in high-income
countries, and one third of Af-
rican children are moderately to
severely underweight.
In this region, the high rates of
poverty are concentrated in ru-
ral communities. Especially con-

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A man works on a farm at the International Institutes for
tropical Agriculture. Ibadan, Nigeria. October 2012.
sidering that more than half of
all people living in Africa de-
pend on agriculture for “all or
part of their livelihood,” agri-
culture and poverty are inextri-
cably linked. In fact, the World
Bank found that increasing agri-
cultural productivity is the “crit-
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COVER
ical entry-point in designing ef-
fective poverty reduction strate-
gies,” in sub-Saharan Africa and
across the globe; historically, ag-
ricultural productivity growth
has been responsible for “40 to
70 percent of poverty reduction”
in some countries.
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Implications of Improving
Agriculture
Besides the economic benefits
of improving agriculture, high-
er agricultural productivity can
result in societal welfare gains
as well. Two-thirds of HIV in-
fections are in sub-Saharan Afri-
ca, which has just 10 percent of
the world’s population, and in
2017, of 219 million malaria cas-
es, “most cases and deaths” oc-
curred in sub-Saharan Africa. A
researcher at National Taiwan
University actually researched
the relationship between pov-
erty and HIV/AIDS and deter-
mined that without adequate
reduction of poverty, there will
be little progress with reducing
transmission of the virus.
Moreover, Sub-Saharan Afri-
ca’s educational attainment is
the lowest in the world; for ex-
ample, the mean years of school-
ing in Sudan is 3.7 years. In Ni-
ger, that number is two years.
UNICEF specifically identified
the direct and indirect costs of
attending school, such as the cost
of books or sacrificed time that
could have been spent work-
ing, as significant barriers to ed-
ucation in developing countries.
More than just these immediate
benefits, improvements in agri-
cultural productivity help break
the cycle of poverty that perpet-
uates socioeconomic disadvan-
tage, as better health and edu-
cation can both substantially re-
duce poverty.
The Role of Technology
As scientific innovation con-
tinues, technology will play a
massive role in revolutionizing
sub-Saharan agriculture. Specif-
ically, there are two axes along
which technology has the most
H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U // 59
 H A R VA R D I N T E R N AT I O N A L R E V I E W
potential: crop productivity and
water distribution.
Crop Productivity
The Food and Agriculture Or-
ganization (FAO) of the UN es-
timates that between 20 and 40
percent of global crop produc-
tion is lost to pests each year.
That number is even higher in
Africa—49 percent, according to
the Centre for Agriculture and
Bioscience International. How-
ever, genetically modified or-
ganisms (GMOs) could alleviate
this issue. Using gene-editing
technology, scientists are now
able to incorporate new DNA
into a species’ genome, artificial-
ly increasing the speed of evolu-
tion and genetic change. In the
context of agriculture, genetic
engineering has paved the way
for the creation of crops with
pest and herbicide resistance as
well as even drought tolerance,
increasing global agricultur-
al production by about 350 mil-
lion tons of corn and 180 million
tons of soybeans; it even “sig-
nificantly reduced” agricultur-
al land use due to increased pro-
ductivity.
In the past, agricultural scien-
tists transferred beneficial genes
from other species into their or-
ganism of interest, but recent-
ly, biotechnological innovation
has led to more efficient meth-
ods of genome editing. CRIS-
PR-Cas9, which acts as genetic
scissors that snip out certain seg-
ments of DNA, has become one
of the most popular and effec-
tive gene-editing tools and has
been approved for use on many
crops, such as corn and soy-
beans, by the US Department of
Agriculture (USDA). In October,
Harvard University researcher
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Dr. David Liu even improved on been used to drastically improve
CRISPR to develop a gene-edit- crop growth. Earlier this year,
ing process dubbed “prime edit- the Realizing Increased Photo-
ing” which is safer and more ef- synthetic Efficiency (RIPE) proj-
fective than conventional CRIS- ect developed a way to increase
PR. the efficiency of photosynthe-
This increasingly safe and ef- sis that resulted in a 40 percent
fective gene-editing technolo- increase in crop growth. No
gy could be pivotal in ending doubt the implications of this in-
extreme poverty and hunger in creased photosynthetic efficacy
sub-Saharan Africa. According are enormous, and even though
to the Center of Global Devel- the technology will take at least
opment, GMOs have the poten- a decade to be commercialized,
tial to bring about a New Green the RIPE team has already com-
Revolution for Africa, but at the mitted to giving royalty-free ac-
moment are vastly underuti- cess to smallholder farmers in
lized; only 4 of the 47 countries
in the continent allow the plant-
ing of genetically modified (GM)
crops. The non-profit Interna-
tional Food Policy Research In-
stitute (IFPRI), found that cur-
rent GM crops have had on aver-
age a “positive economic effect”
in sub-Saharan Africa. However,
this effect’s magnitude and dis-
tribution depends on the crop,
trait, and how the technology
is introduced; it does not func-
tion as a cure-all for agricultur-
al limitations. Specifically, using
South Africa as a case study, the
analysis describes how the in-
corporation of Bt crops—crops
that have been genetically engi-
neered to produce a protein that
is toxic to many pests—by sub-
sistence farmers has been benefi-
cial for the majority of adopters.
In Uganda, the estimated oppor-
tunity cost of non-adoption of
GM fungi-resistant bananas is
US$38 a year. Considering that
the extreme poverty threshold
is US$1.90 a day, the banning of
GMO use is a massive lost ca-
pacity for poverty reduction.
Besides just increasing
drought tolerance or pest resis-
tance, genetic engineering has
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sub-Saharan Africa.
While the incorporation of GM
crops into the agricultural main-
stream is a vital step towards in-
creased agricultural productivi-
ty and decreased poverty, there
are valid concerns about its
practicality in the region. Amer-
ican research group the Brook-
ings Institution describes that
the pushback against GMOs
involves concerns about the
health, safety, and socioeconom-
ic effects of these crops which
manifests in low public sup-
port for pro-GMO policies, even
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COVER
though the scientific consensus
is that GMOs are just as safe as
non-GMO foods. Additional-
ly, they emphasize that the po-
tential negative effects on trade
with other countries that are
more anti-GMO as well as the
lack of rigorous biosafety and
biotechnology regulatory frame-
works in African countries south
of the Sahara both play large ob-
stacles towards widespread
GM crop adoption. Although
gene-editing technology has the
potential to revolutionize agri-
cultural production, countries
A worker releases a sheep fixed with a tracker
collar. Cape Town, South Africa. July 2012.
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must first address these practi-
cal concerns to ensure an effec-
tive implementation of GMOs.
Kenya is one of these nations
that has done so, finally begin-
ning trials on pest-resistant cot-
ton after 17 years of research and
government scrutiny.
Water Distribution
Another limiting factor of
sub-Saharan African agriculture
is that only four percent of the
land is irrigated. Furthermore,
in parts of west, central, and
Southern Africa, the FAO identi-
H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U // 61
 H A R VA R D I N T E R N AT I O N A L R E V I E W
fies drought as the “main source
of vulnerability.” The lack of
adequate irrigation systems in
these areas causes farmers to be
at the whim of increasingly er-
ratic weather, especially as a re-
sult of climate change.
A 2013 UN report on African
agriculture revealed that cur-
rent irrigation only harness-
es a third of the irrigation po-
tential of Africa’s main rivers,
which means that about 31 mil-
lion hectares of land goes unir-
rigated. Beyond the classical
dam-based irrigation, the IF-
PRI highlights the potential of
an additional 7.3 million hect-
ares of irrigated land via the de-
velopment of small-scale irriga-
tion technology (SSI)—technol-
ogy ranging from watering cans
to automated water pumps that
help with irrigation for subsis-
tence farmers. In fact, the IFPRI
recommends improving SSI as
compared to large-scale, dam-
based irrigation, because it is a
more effective use of resources;
the estimated profitability of in-
vestments in small-scale irriga-
tion are four times the estimat-
ed profitability of investments in
dam-based irrigation. A research
study published in the Water
Resources and Economics jour-
nal showed that adoption of SSI
technologies could increase the
net profit of a farm between 154
percent to 608 percent based on
data in northern Ghana. How-
ever, regarding microeconomic
concerns, the lack of capital on
the part of farmers leads them
to prefer low-cost low-return
SSI options over higher-cost but
higher-return alternatives. On a
macroeconomic scale, the IFPRI
estimates that it would require a
total of US$38 billion to to irri-
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gate these 7.3 million hectares of
potential irrigable land.
Besides irrigation, technology
can help farmers tailor crops to
weather patterns. International
non-profit Consultative Group
on International Agricultural
Research (CGIAR) has created
the Platform for Big Data in Ag-
riculture which has used artifi-
cial intelligence to predict envi-
ronmental conditions six months
in advance. This type of infor-
“IT’S
ESTIMATED
THAT
87 PERCENT
OF THE
WORLD’S
EXTREME
POOR WILL
BE LIVING IN
SUB-SAHARAN
AFRICA
BY 2030.”
mation would be invaluable to
smallholder farmers, who could
adjust their crops and planting
strategies for what is best suit-
ed to those conditions. In fact,
artificial intelligence algorithms
have already been developed for
drought prediction; research-
ers in Kenya and Austria creat-
ed an algorithm that predicted
drought situations one month in
advance.
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Demand-side Considerations
Though these technological
advancements could do much
for agricultural growth, they
are all supply-side improve-
ments. Increases in crop yields
do not always translate into eco-
nomic growth; without the nec-
essary demand from consum-
ers, these yields would just re-
sult in decreased economic effi-
ciency and the lowering of crop
prices which means that the in-
creased crop output would not
translate into increased prof-
its for the farmers. US manage-
ment consulting firm McKinsey
& Company describes how most
agricultural-development plans
don’t consider the demand-side
aspects of agricultural produc-
tion enough even though it is
the markets where this influx of
crops will eventually go. Specif-
ically, McKinsey suggests look-
ing towards three main sourc-
es of demand: export markets,
domestic urban markets, and
the food processing industry.
Without substantial develop-
ment into the market and trade
infrastructures, increasing crop
yields will only do so much.
With disproportionate pover-
ty rates due to agricultural rea-
sons, the necessity of increas-
ing agricultural productivity via
GMOs, SSI, and AI in sub-Sa-
haran Africa is clear. However,
without improving infrastruc-
ture in the region to prepare it
for a New Green Revolution,
any use of these technologies
will fall short. As scientific in-
novation continues and the so-
ciopolitical landscapes contin-
ue changing, technological inno-
vation will no doubt usher in a
new era of sub-Saharan African
prosperity. H