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1 monty jones aasw2013 continental initiative and emerging issues
1. Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa
Prof. Monty P. Jones
Executive Director, FARA
African Agriculture R&D:
Continental Initiatives and
Emerging Trends
6th Africa Agriculture Science Wee
Accra, Ghana 15-20 July 2013
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Outline
1. Background to why continental approaches
and initiatives are increasingly important
2. Reflection on on-going continental initiatives
3. Emerging mega-trends
4. Conclusions
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Africa Rising !
• Over a decade of strong economic
growth (5% / year)
Real GDP growth
(%age) and prospects
4.
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Sustained economic growth has increased..
• Prosperity ( middle class)
• Consumption and demand
for services
• Resources for public
investment in infrastructure
& other productive sectors
• Attractiveness of Africa as
an investment destination
6. Is every African Rising?
0
20
40
60
80
100
1981 1984 1987 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008
East Asia & Pacific
China
South Asia
LAC
MENA
SSA
Developing World
Poverty Rate (% of population below $2/day in 2005 PPP)
Source: World Bank, 2012
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Challenge concerning Africa’s impressive
economic growth
1. Sustaining the growth over the long term &
enhancing it
2. Making the growth more
inclusive & environmentally
sustainable
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Agriculture’s Contribution
1. Productivity &
Competitiveness
2. Highest poverty
reducing potential
Rate of return on
investments
Level of investment
Level of economic
growth
9. Trend of Africa’s agric. competitiveness
GlobalCompetitivenessIndex(1-7)best
Innovation (1-7) best
Source: The Global Competitiveness
Report 2012–20013, World
Economic Forum, 2012
Innovation vs Competitiveness
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A better balance is needed
• Africa’s R&D agenda emphasizes Productivity
but insufficient attention to Competitiveness
• Productivity
emphasis on land, water
and inputs;
Insufficient attention to
labour productivity
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Growing Relevance of Continental and
Regional Actors …1 of 2
Deeping regional
integration
Regional / Pan-Africa
policy frameworks
Regional / Pan-Africa institutions
to coordinate implementation
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Growing Relevance of Continental and
Regional Actors …2 of 2
2. Developing critical mass, economies of scale &
efficiencies necessary to competitiveness
3. Addressing regional & trans-boundary issues
(climate change, watershed etc)
4. Brokering partnerships on behalf of many
countries e.g. Africa-Brazil, Africa-Europe, Africa-China
15. Reflection on Continental Agric. R&D initiatives …2 of 4
1 CAADP: Principal framework
2.Inter-regional partnerships for
technology transfer and
capacity development
• Africa-Brazil
• Africa-Europe (PAEPARD)
• Africa-UK-China
• G8 New Alliance for food security &
nutrition
3.Commodity-focussed initiatives
Rice, Cassava, Maize, Wheat
5.Global initiatives with a
substantial Africa focus
• Feed the Future
• GAFSP
• Australia IFSC
6. FARA-led continental
projects
SSA-
CP, RAILS, DONATA, UNIBRAIN, S
ABIMA, Africa-adapt, Foresight
academy
4.Continental ARD institutions
AGRA, AATF, BECA, AFAAS, ANAFE, TEA
M-Africa, PAFO, PanAAC, PANGOC
7. APPs
WAAP, EAAPP, APSA
8. CAADP-CGIAR alignment
Science Agenda for Agriculture
in Africa
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Reflection on continental Agric R&D
initiatives …3 of 4
• Almost all the investment in continental initiatives is
external
– Care is taken to assure African buy-in and ownership
• Cost effective mechanism for coordination to assure
synergies and avoid duplication is desirable
• Increased attention to improving adoption of
technologies and policies --- Innovation Platforms
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Reflection on continental Agric R&D
initiatives …4 of 4
• Recognition that countries in post-conflict and
protracted crisis situations have unique needs
• Value of foresight appreciated
• Pursue productivity in context of competitiveness
• “Publish or perish” is making way for “impact or
perish”
19. Mega trends shaping the agricultural
transformation agenda …2/2
Need for Africa to reach
consensus on possible
futures it wants to realise
and pursue them
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Concluding Remarks
• Increasing the effectiveness of African agric. R&D in
contributing to sustaining growth and reducing
poverty requires more attention on Competitiveness
• Need to better harness regional and Pan African
approaches and institutions for increased efficiency
• Major changes underway. Need to act now; to
determine the future agriculture that Africa wants
and to pursue it
Slide starts with animation kindly familiarise yourself with itAfrica’s growth was strong and demonstrated resilience in the face of the global food price and financial crisis in 2008 & 2009 and is growing faster than other developing regions (excluding China) and the advanced economiesIn 2012 about ¼ of SSA countries grew at 7% or better, and out of the 10 fastest growing countries in the world, 8 were from SSA (led by Sierra Leone). This year 6 of the 10 fastest are projected to be AfricanThe strong growth is projected to continue over the medium term (2015 & beyond).The continent that used to be characterized as “hopeless” is now portrayed as “rising”, “booming”, “promising”, the “new growth frontier”, etc
A sleeping lion signifies wasted potential. Through 1980s and 1990s Africa was a sleeping lion—Lots of potential that lay untapped.[Possible light Joke--If this lion does not wake up it will have to contend with the indignity of eating grass]Africa has awoken from its long slumber and is moving purposefully to take its place among the tigers, dragons and elephants in the global jungleof progressive nations and regions
The growth is benefitting especially those who are positioned to take advantage of opportunities –the educated, the skilled and those with access to capital to invest.Proliferation of large and small supermarkets in response to increased consumptionUrbanisation—Young people are moving to cities in search of opportunities thereThese factors are changing Africa’s food systems—especially the type of food consumed and the way it is processed and packaged. Consumption of rice is growing 6-7% per year because it is easy to store and prepare by urban dwellers.
Is every African toasting and celebrating the boom on the continentGraph shows that although Africa is growing faster than other developing regions, poverty has not been falling as fast. Using the US$2 as the poverty line, poverty fell 6.9 percentage points in Africa from 2002 to 2008, compared to 10.5 percentage points for the developing worldClearly, the on-going boom in Africa is bypassing a substantial proportion of the population. By 2008 just under half of Africans lived below the USD1.25 poverty line—extreme poverty.Some people interviewed recently on African streets have questioned the figures on growth in Africa because it is not apparent to them—they are not feeling the rise / boom growing inequality
There are concerns that Africa’s growth is fragile and could unravel in the face of another major crisis. Hence the need to sustain it and assure it is resilient.It is argued that Africa needs to achieve higher economic growth levels to have a big impact on its high poverty levels This argument uses China & East Asia as examples that have significantly reduced poverty by posting double digit growth rates. Hence the need to aim for higher growthMore inclusive growth benefits everybody (urban and rural; all sectors)The agenda for agriculture and agricultural R&D should be designed with the two points on slide as major outcomes
Slide refers to agricultures contribution to sustained growth and poverty reductionProductivity and competitiveness are mutually reinforcing. For African countries to sustain growth they must attract needed investments. Toattract these investments they must offer high rates of return on investments, To offer high rates of return they must have high levels of productivity which depends on competitivenessAgriculture being the largest economic sector in many African countries will contribute to sustained growth if its productivity and competitiveness are improved and the industry expanded to develop all value chain subsectors and create jobsHigh productivity is bound to reduce food prices thereby freeing up more money for households to increase consumption and hence demand for other goods & services—resulting in more job opportunitiesBullet 2: Agriculture’s poverty reducing potential is well documented (2-4 times more effective than other sectors etc).
Animated slide with two Graphs:The first graph shows how Africa’s competitiveness have declined over the years. Individual countries like Brazil, Thailand and Indonesia have overtaken SSA and export more agric. products than all of SSA combined. This must change!The second graph shows a strong association between Innovation and Competitiveness. Scores are on a scale of 1-7 where 7 is best score.The most competitive countries have the highest scores on innovation. It is plausible that innovation reinforces competitiveness and vice versa. African countries in this sample score poorly on innovation and competitiveness[I would like to capture the data in excel and produce a sharper graphs]
By emphasizing productivity but without placing it in the context of competitiveness, R&D is not paying sufficient attention to all the essential elements in the value chain such as labour productivity, quality, safety, logistics, financial services, retailing and consumer preferences (agri-business) which determine whether the productivity can be sustained.Attention on competitiveness forces us to compare performance with competitorsExample of rice in GhanaGhana imposes tariffs on imported rice which together with other costs increase cost of imported rice by 40%. But urban consumers prefer imported rice because of its superior quality. Moreover the difference in price is not big because the cost of rice production in Ghana is high. A focus on increasing competitiveness rather than on productivity alone will help to improve performance of the local rice industryPicture: depicts how labour productivity has not caught up; people have embraced ICT but still use the handhoe (regarded as a stone age tool)
Animated slide showing that Africa is very fragmented based on data collated from latest population statistics.By 2012, 31 out of the 55 African countries had populations less than 12m. Of these 20 countries had populations less than 6m [see map in green].Small internal markets, not big enough to attract big investments,No economies of scale in industryLimited capacities for serious innovation (the AR&D rarely exceeds 100 Full Time Equivalent and budgets are small less than USD10m)16 African countries, many of them sahelian, that are home to 25% of the population are land-locked no direct access to the seahighcost of trade [see map in red]These factors combine to undermine competitiveness. Regional and Pan-African integration and collective action are critical to overcome impediments posed by fragmentation (RECS, AUC, SROs and FARA, AFAAS etc) including improving competitiveness
As regional integration becomes an important tool for improving competitiveness and productivity, the regional actors become more relevantbecause they are the agents on which the RECS, AUC & international partners e.g. CGIAR, G8 & Development partners rely to coordinate implementation of regional / continental frameworks and programmes; e.g. CAADP or SADC Agricultural Policy, continental initiativesIn most cases the regional actors are coordinating entities—the work is done within the countries by the mandated institutions (subsidiaarity)
Outlines additional reasons why regional and Pan African institutions as well as continental approaches are increasingly importantNext set of slides discuss on-going continental initiatives . Discussion is limited to a brief reflection on them.
CAADP’s refreshed strategy: It is an agenda aimed at transforming Africa to an industrial and knowledge based economy driven by agricultural growth and agribusiness which together account for 44% of GDP currentlyThe World Bank projects that agriculture and agribusiness will become a 1 trillion dollar industry by 2030 up from USD313 billion in 2010 Note the focus on competitiveness and regional integration in addition to productivity as principal outcomes—they are all mutually reinforcingWork to be organised around 3 strategic thrusts—R&D fits best in Knowledge and knowledge support thrust. It also contributes to other thrusts.
The list is not exhaustive. The idea is not to list all the initiatives, rather its is to characterise them and outline a few observations about them.First observation is that there are many initiatives—many acronymnsWish to single out the CAADP-CGIAR alignment initiative highlighted the need for an Africa-led science agenda for agriculture on the continent. Its is an inclusively developed agenda that spells out the S&T Africa needs to focus on to achieve its productivity and competiveness goals.It goes beyond serving the CAADP-CGIAR alignment to serve all actors engaged in African S&T—it is under development, led by FARA, and a discussion paper has been circulated for your input. It will be presented at business session for endorsement
Reflections – here the discussion in emerging issues starts picking upBullet 1: desirable for Africa to invest own resources in continental initiatives or at least in the institutions responsible for coordination & implementation.Bullet 3: Without adoption all the investment and energy going to R&D does not deliver any impactPlatform approach: IAR4D, DONATA, G8 Platforms is aimed at incraesing adoption; the strategy of the Australia IFSC is devoted to enhancing adoption. Adoption depends on factors beyond the domain of R&D hence the need to engage and build partnerships with the concerned actors—through platforms and other means
Bullet 4: funders of continental ARD initiatives just like with all research are demanding demonstration of impact in a short time frame. This is both good and risky—risky because it compels us to focus on short-term results yet typically AR&D is a long-term enterprise. We risk sacrificing the breakthroughs that emerge from long term studies.
Many mega trends—focus here is on the main onesTop left: Population growth: African Population set to double to 2b by 2050; urbanisation set to reach 50% by 2030, with most people living in mega cities. With urbanisation it is the youth that migrate to cities leaving behind an ageing population in the rural areas.Declining fertility rates, less dependence demographic dividendBottom Left: Urbanisation associated with changes to food systems and diets. More protein and dairy products. 61% of adults in South Africa are obeseTop right: Globalised markets and increased importance of agribusiness: SSA agric + agribusiness market to reach US$1 trillion in 2030. Regional integration is one of the responses to globalisation.Bottom right: Climate change; will make conditions for increasing agriculture productivity more unfavourable. May precipitate migration from drier regions to coastal areas, risk of conflict over water etc.
Top left: Rising energy and agric input prices: In spite of the many new discoveries of oil and gas around the world including Africa—picture is of oil rig in east Africa) and the new wave of green energy technologies, the cost of energy is predicted to remain high. Cost of energy affects cost of inputs especially fertilizers. Top right: ICT--mobile technology helps to link farmers to markets. A lot of services e.g. index-based insurance, vouchers for inputs, on demand-advisory services and financial services are now possible via ICT which makes their provision affordable. Presently, 40% of Kenya’s GDP goes through mobile phone. The scope of ICT applications is unimaginableICT has made Africa leap-frog in communication tech, bypassing the fixed line. Bottom: Biodiversity loss. Caused by increased population and subsequent pressure on genetic diversity rich land for settlement, production. Climate change will further compound it. Bullet in text: is the essence of engaging in foresight—determining a realistic future we want and intervening to achieve it; rather than leaving outcomes to others without our intervention.