“African
agriculture has long been a symbol of the continent’s poverty. Officials considered the hundreds of millions of
African smallholder farmers too backward to thrive; the future would arrive not
by investing in them but rather by bypassing them. But all that is changing.
In recent
years, African agricultural policies have been haphazard and inconsistent. Some
countries have neglected smallholders in favor of commercial farmers. Others
have given them attention but focused narrowly on increasing their
productivity. African farms’ harvests are indeed much smaller than harvests
elsewhere, so increasing productivity is important. But agriculture is about
more than yields. A vast food system spreads beyond farm and table to touch
almost every aspect of life in every society. Making that system in Africa as
robust as possible will not merely prevent starvation. It will also fight
poverty, disease, and malnutrition; create businesses and jobs; and boost the
continent’s economies and improve its trade balances.
Food
systems cannot be created quickly out of whole cloth. They tend to evolve
incrementally over time. But in digital technology, today’s African leaders
have a powerful tool they can deploy to help clear away the primary obstacle to
progress: the profound isolation of the vast majority of smallholder farmers.
Until now, it has been very hard to get information to or from smallholders,
preventing their efficient integration into the broader economy. But mobile
communications can shatter this isolation and enable the creation of a new food
system suited to contemporary needs. If farsighted leaders seize this
opportunity, they can transform African agriculture from a symbol of poverty
and backwardness into a powerful engine of economic and social development.”
Read the full article here: http://fam.ag/1GgBbrT
And summary of the article: bit.ly/1XeDkJ2
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