Sub-Saharan African Agricultural Research

Abstract

Following two decades of increasing investments, growth in public agricultural research spending in Sub-Saharan Africa stagnated during the 1980s and 1990s at an average rate of about 1% per year. Nonetheless, this continent-wide trend masks significant variation among countries. During 1991-2000, about half the countries in the authors' 27-country sample experienced negative annual growth in total agricultural research and development (R&D) spending. Declines often resulted from political unrest or the completion of large donor-funded projects. The majority of African agricultural research is still conducted by the government sector, with the private for-profit sector accounting for only a small, but seemingly increasing, share of total research expenditures.

The Economics of Desertification, Land Degradation, and Drought Toward an Integrated Global Assessment

“…Kenya spent about 1.43 percent of agricultural GDP on research and development, which is almost twice Sub-Saharan Africa's level of 0.7 percent (Beintema and Stads 2004;Flaherty et al 2008). Crop breeding and research in other management practices contributed to the increased crop yield (Smale and Jayne 2008).…”

Responding to the crisis in sub-Saharan Africa: the role of nutrition

“…It cut agricultural investments in SSA during that period by 57%, to about $US 80 million. By 2000, African agriculture received less US development assistance than any other sector 18 . This has led to a continuing decline in agricultural productivity.…”

“…Agricultural productivity per worker for the region as a whole has fallen by about 12% since 1980. Growth in agricultural output has arisen mostly from expansion in the area under cultivation, encroaching onto fallow lands and leading to significant reductions in soil fertility 18 . Significantly, the yields of most important food grains, tubers and legumes in most African countries are no higher today than in 1980.…”

Implementation of REDD+ in sub-Saharan Africa: state of knowledge, challenges and opportunities

“…Moreover, the underdeveloped transport systems and infrastructure have significantly limited the capacity of developing national and regional markets for agricultural products, thereby allowing greater competitiveness for foreign products (Hazell and Diao, 2005). More recently, it has been observed that African agricultural policies have tended to enhance comparative advantages for specific cash crops, at the expense of subsistence agriculture on which most of the smallholders depend (Beintema and Stads, 2004).…”

“…First, we note that most of the institutions lack the financial, technical and human resources to enable the management of their territory. Second, agricultural R&D is declining in half of the SSA countries (Beintema and Stads, 2004), putting at risk their ability to produce the necessary information for the implementation of sustainable land management policies. In the following section we seek to analyze the state of knowledge, the quantification of C stocks, C flows and the contribution from deforestation and forest degradation.…”