What cassava teaches us about transformative agriculture

The “Africa can feed the world” narrative is one that is almost making my ears go numb now. But, granted, I pay more attention when the AfDB President and 2017 World Food Prize Laureate, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, says it more affirmatively and even throws in a timeline for it, stating that the continent will be the breadbasket of the world in 2050.

  Zimbabwean tycoon Strive Masiyiwa also, not too long ago, stated while speaking at the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) that, “if he were to start all over again, he would bet on agriculture.”

What are these people seeing that the rest of us aren’t? Why is a sector that holds such potential still largely ignored and underdeveloped? By the mere fact that Africa consists of 65 per cent of the world’s arable land, it’s not far-fetched to see how the continent can become the breadbasket of the world. The most important question to me is two-fold: what are we farming, and how?

Well, the first part of the questions is the easier one. Maize and rice are the most important sources of calories in the tropics, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). While these are yet to reach their full production and market potentials, the next most important source of calories after them, cassava, is perhaps the most overlooked and, subsequently, underdeveloped high potential crop in most parts of Africa.

Tanzania is among the top producers of cassava, with different data sources consistently ranking the country in the top 10 cassava producing countries in Africa and top 20 in the world, yet the crop is being produced only at a fraction of its potential.  In improving cassava farming, there are plenty of insights that can be drawn from the work of the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Their project, the African Cassava Agronomy Initiative (ACAI) has a bold aim to increase the availability of appropriate and affordable technologies to sustainably improve cassava productivity in the short- and long-term in Tanzania and a few other African countries. Their work can be used to answer the “how question” as I will highlight further below:

The cornerstone of agricultural development is research. One of the primary reasons for our poor performance in cassava production is the undeniable fact that there is plenty that we do not know about the crop and its farmers. In their initial study of cassava based cropping systems, ACAI have shown that the use of herbicides, fertilisers and mechanisation for land preparation is almost inexistent in cassava farming in Tanzania. That’s a problem half solved, and my next point illustrates why.

Another reason for the dismal performance of agriculture in most parts of Africa is related to our inclination towards “one size fits all” solutions. These “hybrid seed for all”, or “tractors for all” type of solutions have not achieved much in the way of transformative agriculture.  ACAI, building upon extensive insight on farmers and their farming, are doing research to address specific requests of organisations actively engaged in the cassava value chain, and from the early stages involve the end-users so that the solutions offered are tailored to the needs of the end-users.

The fifth phase government in Tanzania has often communicated their focus on industry. However, the linkage between industrialisation and transformative agriculture remains either implicit or missing altogether. If industrialisation is to have its envisioned gains, then it will have to service the millions of smallholder farmers who form the largest chunk of the labour force in the country, but this will require a conscious and coordinated effort.

Perhaps the task of reaching millions of smallholders is too onerous, explaining why our countries have not seen much success in this area. But there is an important realisation that can help governments redirect their attention back to smallholders.

If China can feed one-fifth of the entire world’s population on less than 10 per cent of the globe’s arable land, imagine what Africa can do if agriculture is done right. IITA’s ACAI project offers valuable lessons on how to transform the continent’s cassava farming, which can be applied across the board in the agriculture sector. Luckily for our governments, there is no shame in replicating, and knowing so, another important goal for ACAI is to train and build the capacity of national research-for-development institutes to do their type of research, and continue the activities after the project ends.