Advances in
Africa agriculture is contingent on the volume of technologies that is
available for use in the sector. Apparently, the same condition was responsible
for the agricultural transformation and food sufficiency in the advanced world.
Every development in the history of mankind is orchestrated by technological
revolutions; more specifically when technologies meets up with felt needs and
social political will for change. The
precarious state of Africa agriculture seems to have attain this threshold of
pain more than a decade ago and triggered the action of different organization
and pollical structures through the Africa Union Commission.
The development of
the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Program (CAADP) in 1994. The
CAADP ideal proposed a budgetary allocation of 10% at the country level to
agricultural sector in order to yield six percent annual growth on the average.
A key pillar of the earlier days of CAADP subscription by the countries was the
pillar four which stood for actions around technology generation, dissemination
and adoption. This was led by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa andits stakeholders, FARA thus took the pillar 4 action as its focus for
contributing to the transformation of Africa agriculture. The efforts yielded
ample attention to technology generations across board, and series of
technology testing actions in several pilots. Some of the technologies have
potentials and a handful also stood at bay requiring further development to
yield the desired outputs.
Despite the
efforts into technology generation, introduction, adaptation etc. the
agricultural sector development only experiences a slight move and it seems to
plateau suggesting that other actions are required to sustain the growth of the
sector. A more recent effort at the
continental level is the commitment of the head of state in Malabo, to sustain
the CAADP momentum. The Malabo declaration came up with various targets including
the doubling of the Total factor productivity by 2025 as well as eradicating
hunger among others. Attaining these targets will be elusive without a firm
commitment to technology generations, dissemination and adoption in a very
systematic way. FARA has developed the Science Agenda for Africa Agriculture
(S3A) to fast-track the broad contribution of science to deliver technologies
and knowledge to ensure the delivery of agricultural growth and transformation.
The S3A has four thematic focus and there cross cutting area, this is currently
getting grounded at the country level with the expectation of yielding
sustainable broad based socioeconomic benefit from the agricultural sector.
This book aims to bridge this gap In addition to
these efforts, the need to bring existing and upcoming technologies to scale
has been highlighted broadly by policy makers and development practitioners in
Africa. This felt need came along with the mantra that Africa have a lot of
technologies on the shelve that are yet to be translated to socio economic
benefit for the stakeholders in the sector. Whether this is factual or not,
Africa agriculture requires a systematic way of bringing technologies with very
high potentials to scale. This book aims to bridge this gap The book contains
seven chapters that exhaustively covers the subject matter and make a smart
proposition on the plausible pathway to ensure that agricultural technologies
delivers a vibrant and economically sustainable agrarian sector.
Download copy: FARA Africa
Download copy: FARA Africa
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