Africa’s Turnaround Will Masters Professor of Food Policy Towards Sustainable Growth in African

Africa’s Turnaround

Will MastersProfessor of Food Policy

http://nutrition.tufts.edu http://sites.tufts.edu/willmasters

Towards Sustainable Growth in African Agriculture

Tufts Research Day on Sustainability 3 May 2011

How much longer?

Cartoon (c) 2002, reproduced with permission by Nicholson from "The Australian" newspaper: www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au

Extreme poverty is being eradicatedrapidly in East Asia, slowly in South Asia,

and only recently in Africa

Source: Author’s calculation from World Bank (2011), PovcalNet (http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/), updated 11 April 2011. Estimates are based on over 700 household surveys from more than 120 countries, and refer to per-capita expenditure at purchasing-power parity prices for 2005.

Ultra poverty is already rare in Asia, and remains widespread

only in Africa


Africa now has 1/8th of the world’s people, over 1/4 of the extreme poor,

and 2/3 of the ultra-poor


An underlying cause of Africa’s impoverishment in the 1970s-1990s

was a sharp fall in land area per farmer

Reprinted from Robert Eastwood, Michael Lipton and Andrew Newell (2010), “Farm Size”, chapter 65 in Prabhu Pingali and Robert Evenson, eds., Handbook of Agricultural Economics, Volume 4, Pages 3323-3397. Elsevier.

Land available per farm household (hectares)

Falling land per farmer is due to Africa’s fast (but now slowing) rural population growth

-1.5%

-1.0%

-0.5%

0.0%

0.5%

1.0%

1.5%

2.0%

2.5%

SS Africa

S Asia

SE Asia

Rest of World

Rural population growth (decade averages), 1950-2030

Source: Calculated from FAOStat (downloaded 17 March 2009). Population estimates and projections are based on UN Population Projections (2006 revision) and UN Urbanization Prospects (2001 revision).

Growth rates by region, 1950-2030

0.0%

1.0%

2.0%

3.0%

4.0%

5.0%

6.0%

SS Africa

S Asia

SE Asia

Rest of World

Urban population growth (decade averages), 1950-2030 Rural population Urban population

Africa has long had the world’s fastest growing rural and urban population!

USDA estimates of average cereal grain yields (mt/ha), 1960-2010

Source: Calculated from USDA , PS&D data (www.fas.usda.gov/psdonline), downloaded 7 Nov 2010. Results shown are each region’s total production per harvested area in barley, corn, millet, mixed grains, oats, rice, rye, sorghum and wheat.

Africa’s green revolution has just begun

Appropriate new technologies have only recently been developed and disseminated

Source: Reprinted from W.A. Masters, “Paying for Prosperity: How and Why to Invest in Agricultural Research and Development in Africa” (2005), Journal of International Affairs, 58(2): 35-64.

US aid for agriculture has begun to recover, after 20 years of decline to near zero

Source: Author's calculations from OECD (2011), Official Bilateral Commitments by Sector, updated 6 April 2011 (http://stats.oecd.org/qwids).

In Africa, US agricultural assistancehad been much less than US food aid

Source: Author's calculations from OECD (2011), Official Bilateral Commitments by Purpose, updated 12 Jan. 2011 (http://stats.oecd.org). Agriculture includes forestry and fishing.

Conclusions: Towards sustainable growth

in African agriculture

• African poverty worsened from 1980 through 2000, but is now improving– A major underlying cause is land available per farmer, driven

down by rural population growth which is now slowing

– Appropriate new farm technologies are finally arriving, so crop yields, output and input use are now rising

• U.S. agricultural assistance had shrunk to near zero, but is now being restored– Aid for farm productivity was key to cutting Asian poverty,

then seen as no longer needed in the 1980s and 1990s;

– Africa is now poised for rapid uptake and sustained growth

Extra slides

Extreme poverty is being eradicatedWorld Bank estimates of global poverty, 1981-2005


Population by principal residence, 1950-2050

World (total) Sub-Saharan Africa

Source: Calculated from UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009 Revision , released April 2010 at http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup. Downloaded 7 Nov. 2010.

2010

2010

Urbanization eventually employs all new workers so land per farmer can rise

…in Africa that won’t happen until the 2050s

African agriculture is really distinctive

Source: Reprinted from W.A. Masters, “Paying for Prosperity: How and Why to Invest in Agricultural Research and Development in Africa” (2005), Journal of International Affairs, 58(2): 35-64.

Foreign aid for agriculture has just begun to recover after being sharply cut in 1985-99

Source: Author's calculations from OECD (2011), Official Bilateral Commitments by Sector, updated 6 April 2011 (http://stats.oecd.org/qwids).

The most recent data show continued poverty reduction across Asia,

but not in all countries


Poverty rates in Africa have also begun to fall, but not in all countries


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Africa’s Turnaround Will Masters Professor of Food Policy Towards Sustainable Growth in African