id21 viewpoint - a response to id21 insights #61

Food, agriculture and the challenge of beating hunger in Africa lead the international development agenda today. But these are not new issues: Africa has been falling behind on all key development indicators for decades. It is clear that Africa urgently requires new solutions.

id21 insights #61 laid out the challenges for the ambitious ComprehensiveAfrica Agriculture Development Programme of the New Partnership for AfricanDevelopment (NEPAD). Familiar problems were eloquently outlined – a lack offertiliser, a lack of irrigation, poor infrastructure and inadequate research.But the solutions offered were also very familiar – more seeds and fertiliser,more infrastructure, more and better research. Have we not been hearing thisfor decades, with little impact?

Thereare of course qualifications today. Our language is now full of mentions ofstakeholders, partnerships, participation, integration, coordination and so on.But it is often not clear what all this actually means. The ambitions of amarket-driven, technology-led Green Revolution in Africa are apparent, and fewwould deny the need to boost agricultural productivity growth, and see thedepressing statistics over-turned. But how to do it?

Therewere some ideas floated in this issue of id21 insights. For example, MontyJones and Frances Kimmins argued for new forms of innovation systems to facilitate‘rainbow evolutions’, rather than ‘big-bang’ Green Revolutions, while MalcolmBlackie argued for an integrated ‘starter pack’ approach to get agriculturemoving. But by only focusing on technical and institutional issues, thesecommentaries, like so many others, skirted the more complex intersections ofpolicy and politics in Africa.

Exceptfor a few general references to the need for ‘good governance’, thecontributors shied away from the practical and political difficulties ofimplementing effective agricultural policy in Africa. This issue should haveasked:

• Whyhave past efforts to achieve food security failed?
• Whydo these ‘new’ solutions look so familiar, even if dressed up with a newlanguage?
• Whatnew directions can help to make the grand claims and ambitions a reality on theground?

Contributorsto the recent Institute of Development Studies (IDS) Bulletin ‘New Directionsfor African Agriculture’ (Volume 36: 2) argued that politics and policyprocesses need a far greater focus in our deliberations on future directionsfor agriculture in Africa. Hiding behind technical, market or institutionalfixes is insufficient for making progress towards achieving food securityacross the continent.

Anexample is fertiliser policy, highlighted by two articles in id21 insights #61.There has been much discussion recently of the need to boost soil fertility.Jeffrey Sachs and Pedro Sanchez of the Millennium Project talk of the need formassive increases in fertiliser use to replenish degraded soils. No one deniesthat nutrients are scarce and often limiting in small-scale farming systems inAfrica, but blanket solutions to this problem have failed in the past. Endlessfertiliser projects, allied to a strong tradition of ‘fertiliser aid’, havefoundered on policy and implementation issues. Are the same mistakes going tobe made again?

Numerousstudies (for example by IDS and partners) show that farmers manage soils andfertility inputs in complex ways. For example, where water control is notfeasible or economic, farmers want to avoid wasting precious inputs and mayleave the area to the vagaries of nature. Target-driven, package-definedtechnical solutions eradicate such specificity in favour of generalisedsolutions. This often undermines incentives to use inputs more efficiently throughnew application approaches and fertility input combinations.

Whyare these blanket solutions continually promoted inthe face of accumulated evidence that they almost always fail? This question requiresa closer examination of how and why policy processes work. Studies of policyprocesses in Africa show that simple narratives –storylines of how the world is and should be – often drive major developmentinitiatives. Organisations support these ‘blueprint’ visions with money, actionplans, programmes and targets. These visions then develop a momentum of theirown, often immune to criticism or reflection.

Theyneed forceful and well-connected backers to keep going, of course. The largelyforgotten Soil Fertility Initiative was launched a decade ago with greatfanfare by the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization and many othermajor global organisations. It was also backed by the fertiliser industry, keento see development support for their businesses under the veil ofpublic-private partnerships. Yet the initiative faltered when it encounteredrealities on the ground. A decade on, the same people and organisations arepromoting ‘new’ initiatives such as the Millennium Villages Project. This yearalso see the African Fertiliser Summit in Abuja, which aims to restart the wholeprocess once again.

Thissceptical appraisal does not suggest that we should abandon all efforts toaddress the challenges of soil fertility in Africa: far from it. It is simply aplea to think more carefully about how to develop solutions from the ground up:to understand how farmers see soil fertility challenges; to explore theincentives to invest more at greatest efficiency (chemical fertilisers are oftenexpensive and, given the reliance on fossil fuels, unlikely to get cheaper); todevelop the institutions – public and private – that can deliver the best results.Such solutions must be context specific, based upon the particularagro-ecological, social and political circumstances of different places. A keychallenge is to increase the capacity for locally-attuned dialogue and deliberationaround policy solutions, and avoid the temptations of allowing commissions andcommittees to make all the decisions.

TheFuture Agricultures Consortium is beginning to address some of these challenges.This project convenes processes of research, reflection and dialogue on keyagricultural policy issues in Ethiopia, Kenya and Malawi. The aim is to examine(and challenge where necessary) conventional policy thinking and explore newoptions through dialogue and debate that is rooted in local contexts. Forexample, consortium partners are asking:

• what should a Ministry of Agriculture look like inthe twenty-first century?
• Howshould a push for agricultural growth be linked to the challenges of povertyreduction and social protection?
• Howcan the commercialisation of agriculture benefit the majority, not just thefew?
• Howcan technology development really work for poor people?

Answersto any such questions require a long, searching look at the politics of policyprocesses in different settings. In addressing the challenges of Africanagriculture, this should be both the starting and ending point. Without this,the grand ambitions of NEPAD and others will, like earlier attempts, come to little. Mirroring much current development thinking, thisissue of id21 insights provided little insight into such issues, keeping to thesafer, more sanitised ground of the technical domain. This was a missedopportunity.