End apathy towards agriculture, Africa told

By John Njiraini

Tackling poverty will continue to be a pipedream unless African governments focus on the agricultural sector, a leading economist has said.

Nico Roozen, a Dutch economist and Director of Solidaridad, an organisation that works on creating sustainable supply chains for agricultural produce, said poverty has prevailed in Africa due to governments apathy towards agriculture.

“It’s sad to see that governments have neglected agriculture because I know Africa can feed the world,” he said during a visit in Kenya.

He added that governments should commit more resources in the sector to help farmers increase production and achieve high quality produce, something that will translate in to better earnings.

less for Agriculture

Data shows most African countries allocate less than five per cent of their national budgets to agriculture.

Only recently did governments commit to increase budgetary allocation for agriculture to 10 per cent under the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) initiative.

CAADP aims to help African countries achieve a higher path of economic growth through agriculture-led development.

Roozen noted that Africa should not use lack of access to markets as a reason for low and poor quality production.

To the contrary, governments only need to empower farmers to produce under sustainable conditions that meet international standards and accessing markets, particularly the European Union (EU), which expert say is attainable challenge.

“The EU has a policy of giving priority to agricultural produce from Africa but the future will depend on quality,” he said.

He added that one of Solidaridad’s key objectives is creating sustainable supply chains that help producers in developing countries to get a better price for their products.

Solidaridad has developed a fair-trade certification initiative designed to allow buyers and consumers identify products that meet agreed environmental, labour and developmental standards.

Among the beneficiaries of the certification initiative are local coffee and tea marketing companies.

Roozen said the organisation is in the process of expanding its presence in Kenya to support other subsectors like horticulture and livestock farming.