3 min
Dr Ikechi Agbugba from Nigeria has featured a number of times already on this platform. He stresses the importance of developing professional agriculture in Africa, especially since cheap oil and Covid-19 are laying bare the vulnerability of Nigeria's economy in particular and Africa's in general.
Yesterday the British newspaper The Guardian published an article that shows the impact of Covid-19 fallout on the Nigerian capital Lagos. This working-class Lagos community has been reeling from job losses, a collapse in informal services and rising food and transport costs. A lack of formal jobs and assured food security policy lay bare the lack of resilience of one of Africa's largest economies. According to the Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in June, some 42% of Nigerians who depend on salaries for their livelihoods have lost their jobs during the pandemic. About 80% of households contacted for a survey reported lower incomes compared with last year. Already, 82 million Nigerians on a total population of 200 million live on less than $1 a day.
Dr Ikechi Agbugba
Dr Agbugba was educated at the University of Nigeria. He is a great networker and is on several international boards and networking organisations. He is a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Agriculture & Applied Economics of the Rivers State University, Port Harcourt, and is the Advisor for Africa Agriculture Sector Development of the Canada Africa Network – Africa Trade Action Group (CAN-ATAG). He is also a faculty member for Masters in Agribusiness Management as well as MBA programmes of the Rome Business School (Nigeria Campus) and a senior research fellow for the Africa Agriculture Agenda. He received the ‘Agro-Economist of the Year’ award in the 2017 Conference of the Pan African Agricultural Journalists (PAAJ). His energy is geared towards contributing to the on-going transformation of rural communities and agro systems with the aim of reducing poverty and ensuring food security.
After I had read about Dr Agbugba's views for the first time here, I decided we should be in touch. Since then we've been on the phone and ZOOM several times. Two weeks ago, the young American Jared Lefkort reported on a seminar featuring my now dear friend Ikechi. That was a reason for me to push one step ahead and ask Dr Agbugba why Africans traditionally look down on being a farmer and what can to be done to overcome a deeply rooted cultural issue.
The short answer is: by making agriculture part of a real commercial food business system and turning the pandemic into an opportunity to do so. The longer answer? Africans tend to see farming as a subsistence activity, rather than a business. Listen in and join the discussion with Ikechi and - I hope - Africans and non-Africans in the comments. I hope that especially Europeans will join, for I guess that stress on Africa's economies will threaten the northern Mediterranean shores worse than has been the case in the past ten years. Migration and misery will result from the current situation, unless we do our utter best to help develop not only agricultural production in Africa, but also an agrifood business system and trade that makes a profit in proudly African owned processing as well.
Dr Ikechi Agbugba
Dr Agbugba was educated at the University of Nigeria. He is a great networker and is on several international boards and networking organisations. He is a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Agriculture & Applied Economics of the Rivers State University, Port Harcourt, and is the Advisor for Africa Agriculture Sector Development of the Canada Africa Network – Africa Trade Action Group (CAN-ATAG). He is also a faculty member for Masters in Agribusiness Management as well as MBA programmes of the Rome Business School (Nigeria Campus) and a senior research fellow for the Africa Agriculture Agenda. He received the ‘Agro-Economist of the Year’ award in the 2017 Conference of the Pan African Agricultural Journalists (PAAJ). His energy is geared towards contributing to the on-going transformation of rural communities and agro systems with the aim of reducing poverty and ensuring food security.
...I asked Dr Agbugba why Africans traditionally look down on being a farmer and what can to be done to overcome a deeply rooted cultural issueNorthern Mediterranean shores
After I had read about Dr Agbugba's views for the first time here, I decided we should be in touch. Since then we've been on the phone and ZOOM several times. Two weeks ago, the young American Jared Lefkort reported on a seminar featuring my now dear friend Ikechi. That was a reason for me to push one step ahead and ask Dr Agbugba why Africans traditionally look down on being a farmer and what can to be done to overcome a deeply rooted cultural issue.
The short answer is: by making agriculture part of a real commercial food business system and turning the pandemic into an opportunity to do so. The longer answer? Africans tend to see farming as a subsistence activity, rather than a business. Listen in and join the discussion with Ikechi and - I hope - Africans and non-Africans in the comments. I hope that especially Europeans will join, for I guess that stress on Africa's economies will threaten the northern Mediterranean shores worse than has been the case in the past ten years. Migration and misery will result from the current situation, unless we do our utter best to help develop not only agricultural production in Africa, but also an agrifood business system and trade that makes a profit in proudly African owned processing as well.
African migration towards Europe, the role of agriculture and trade policy with regard to Africa have been an issue on the Dutch version of Foodlog for many years now. Unfortunately for our international audience our articles and interviews are available mainly in Dutch, with the exception of two books authored by two distinguished members of our community.
Former Wageningen researcher Dr Niek Koning wrote Food security, agricultural policies and economic growth on agricultural policies worldwide. He has a specific view on Africa from a European perspective: the EU should redo its Economic Partnership Agreements as they prevent Africa from developing a serious agribusiness industry and make it even more difficult to motivate young Africans to pick up the opportunity to become food producers and processors. Dick Veerman did an interview on the book with Niek Koning in April 2018 (in Dutch).
Dr Henk Breman - widely know in Wageningen as 'the Sahel Professor' - wrote From Fed by the World to Food Security (the link leads up to a free PDF version of the hard copy ISBN 978-94-6395-085-5). Henk Breman has dedicated his life to agronomy, soil fertility and women's rights in Africa, especially in French speaking Africa. His book is in English. Breman is extremely critical of white NGO backed agroecology ideologies that - in his opinion - will result in an even poorer Africa as he told Dick Veerman in a video interview in June 2018 (in Dutch).
Former Wageningen researcher Dr Niek Koning wrote Food security, agricultural policies and economic growth on agricultural policies worldwide. He has a specific view on Africa from a European perspective: the EU should redo its Economic Partnership Agreements as they prevent Africa from developing a serious agribusiness industry and make it even more difficult to motivate young Africans to pick up the opportunity to become food producers and processors. Dick Veerman did an interview on the book with Niek Koning in April 2018 (in Dutch).
Dr Henk Breman - widely know in Wageningen as 'the Sahel Professor' - wrote From Fed by the World to Food Security (the link leads up to a free PDF version of the hard copy ISBN 978-94-6395-085-5). Henk Breman has dedicated his life to agronomy, soil fertility and women's rights in Africa, especially in French speaking Africa. His book is in English. Breman is extremely critical of white NGO backed agroecology ideologies that - in his opinion - will result in an even poorer Africa as he told Dick Veerman in a video interview in June 2018 (in Dutch).
Related
Hello everyone!
My comment would address both agribusiness and Food processing. Being a businessman with a strong interest in both agribusiness and processing especially, I have observed the following issues with agribusiness in Africa and precisely Nigeria:
1. Lack of requisite knowledge to go into agribusiness
2. Lack of funding
3. None existence of effective national Gov't policiy on agriculture that should create an enabling environment for agriculture - as obtainable in Europe
4. Lack of solid distribution structure
For processing which is inevitable if wealth is to be created from the agribusiness and food processing industry, the lack of a solid distribution structure remains a hindrance. Building a supply chain isn't difficult but lack of raw materials (farm produce) poses a problem. This is where the agribusiness subsector is required except where the processing organisation decides on backward integration to settle its raw materials challenges.
Harsh operating environment for businesses poses another challenge to the development of the sector. The recent fuel scarcity in Nigeria is an example. Added to that is the epileptic power supply. This is an issue.
In situations where loans have been secured to fund processing, the business environment stifles growth. How can young people who are even interested be encouraged? We can't say that 100% of young people in Africa are not interested in agribusiness or food processing. No! There are many who are interested but where is the enabling environment and the funding? Simply put, where's the encouragement?
Hi everyone I trust all is well to your side. Thank you for the insights about agriculture in africa .
My take, we youth we are energetic so it's our responsibility to help our elders in doing farming. We need a good environment for us to venture into agriculture. Agriculture has move angle to settle so it has a long value chain to attach
Thank you for this contribution, I would like to also add that Africa’s education pedagogical system continues to be theoretically lacking serious agricultural enterprise vocational training and learner-centric to motivate young people to turn agriculture into a high-impact profitable business for self-employment. This inability by the agricultural sector to attract the youthful population in rural areas is resulting in urban immigration, causing multifaceted challenges of outward and unmanned urban expansion which again is posing serious environmental problems such as: growing very fast within the biodiversity hotspots, wetlands, prime agricultural land, and challenging food security while at the same time deepening economic consequences of social inequalities especially in the cost of water, health care, sanitation, electricity, transport, and movement time for families who rely on informal provisions the majority being women. These and more are restricting women, youth and vulnerable children access to ladders of opportunity
Thank You Ikechi for the interview and well articulated issues.
I also wanted to add other challenges faced in SSA as regards to the agriculture sector.
These are some of the challenges that needs to be tackled holistically if we are to make significant progress; Low mechanization especially for small scale farmers, outbreak of notorious pests and diseases, Poor market linkages for producers and suppliers,
Thank you for the insightful interview. It mainly highlighted that the problem in Africa mainly emanates from lack of information and improper guidance in instances where the information is available. It is high time people are encouraged to be bold and venture into agricultural practices that are beyond mere subsistence.