Africa agriculture insight

After years of neglect African agriculture is being recognized as a powerful driver of the continents relentless growth.agriculture and business of buying and selling the food grown in Africa, now accounts for nearly half the continents economic activity. today Africas agriculture and food  market is worth 310B usd and has the opportunity to grow to 1T  usd by 2030.an efficient sector could increase incomes,boost jobs and reduce hunger and environmental degradation, while building shared prosperity. today brazil indonesia and thailand export more food products than all of the subsaharan countries (OVER 40 COUNTRIES) combined its time to change this. Despite being home to the half of the world fertile uncultivated land and abundant water resources African farmers get the smallest amount of their produce from their crops globally. Africa imports half the rice we eat and pay top dollar for it 3.5 billion usd  per year and more. at the country level business are unable to maximise their potential because of erratic border policies, poor infrastructure and poorly function input markets including for seed,fertilizer and equipment. lack of access to capital is also an hindrance. for instance while Senegal is competitive among its neighbors its being held back by the difficulty farmers have in accessing ,land,capital, finance for irrigation expansion and appropriate crop varieties.further east ghana produces fewer rice than senegal but significantly higher cost the country also imports rice but leveies 40% tarifs and other fees pushing up the price for consumers. poor grain quality., lack of cleanliness and packing  are major deterrence for consumers constraining the sector performance. there are challenges in the business environment ranging from poor infrastructure, high transportation costs erratic policy interventions in the agricultural market and trade, difficulties being faced by smallholder farmers and small business there is need for greater interventions in developing the informal value chains and linking them to formal value chains, maize is the stable food for many africans zambia is competitive when importing maize it leveies fewer tarrifs but fails on export  compared to Thailand  a major producer of rain fed maize it costs zambia 3 time more to produce the maize because of the high transports, higher labour costs and lower yields, with an example of kenya which has been a major exporter of fresh produce to the EU and smallholder farmers would grow crops such as green beans and exported to the EU market.this is not happening now because of the stringent measures taken by EU where smallholder farmers arr not able to meet this standards. there is need therefore to support this farmers so that they can be able to do business in this  changing environment by giving them skills that can assist them.tea is another example it is subsaharan africa most important export crop, kenya africa largest tea producer has not upgraded technology and management  and so yield are low. aging farmers and tree as also a major challenge . kenya needs a substantial investment to boost the tea sector and make growing coffee and tea a profitable business. the results to this challenges to african food production and trade is more imports and rising food prices like we are what we are experiencing now in kenya where there is no maize and rice being imported in mexico and china. coupled with rising of climate change... long droughts .african farmers and business must be empowered through good policy increase public and private investment and strong public private partnerships.
africa is at cross roads a dynamic food industry can work side by side  with governments to link to link farmers to consumers  in an increasingly urbanized continent . by investing in the agribuiness sector african countries can tap into regional and global food market make more food available locally and boosts exports