African Agriculture Offers Key Pathway to Economic Development and Jobs

Africa is home to about two thirds of the world’s uncultivated arable land. It is blessed with an average of 300 days of sunshine annually. At a time when many of the world’s advanced countries are experiencing population stagnation or decline, Africa with 1.6 billion people is the world’s second largest continent. Its population is the fastest growing and the median age is 19.5 years.

About 60% of these people are employed in the agriculture sector and African countries are major producers of cocoa, coffee, tea, cassava, cotton and sweet potatoes.

Economic growth in 2026 is projected at 4% this year and 4.2% next, far above the global forecasts of 2.7% and many of the world’s most rapidly growing economies – Ethiopia, Guinea, Rwanda, Uganda – are in Africa.

The 54 African nations are creating a $3.4 trillion single market, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), designed to pare back internal tariffs and nontariff barriers and lift intra-African trade from its current, disappointing, level of around 15% of total African trade.

Despite these encouraging developments the African agriculture picture is one of unfulfilled promise. According to UNCTAD, 794 million Africans – about 60% of the continent’s population – experience food insecurity. Despite, an abundance of fertile land, over 80% of Africa’s food is imported.

Cereal production has risen 37% over the past decade, but crop yields are only about 40% of the global average. This trend is unlikely to be arrested while prices for fertilizer continue to rise so dramatically. Nitrogen-based fertilizer prices have increased more than 30% since the outbreak of war in the Middle East while urea prices have jumped by 47% since the end of February.

African governments, the African Union and the African Development Bank are all keenly aware of this troubling situation. The problem is not a lack of will or even of resources. What is lacking is a global approach to the problem, one through which African governments, farmers, forest managers and fishers can develop programmes tailored to their specific strengths and needs. Each of the 54 African countries has different economic, political and social conditions. No single approach will adequately address the needs of all countries which is why it is important that every African country be empowered to develop its own programs, supported by partner institutions.

This is where the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) can play a pivotal role in improving agriculture policy in Africa and around the world. FAO is uniquely positioned to support such programmes by providing technical, political and strategic support. The FAO can draw on expertise and resources from its 193 member states while facilitating and enhancing co-ordination between African policymakers and international bodies like the World Bank, the European Union, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations.

If I am chosen to lead this important organization, one of my first priorities will be to de-centralize its operations, put more FAO boots on the ground in Africa and across the developing world where problems can be readily identified.

Enhancing food security must be at the heart of any action plan. A food insecurity rate of 60% is not acceptable. There can be no political or economic stability if people are hungry.

Many of the most important objectives on the African agricultural agenda – tackling food insecurity and hunger, sustainability, higher value-added production and job creation – are interconnected. Technology provides a common platform for achieving all these goals through improved productivity which raises incomes, creates jobs and fosters greater equity.

Technology also offers the best route for combating climate change. Volatile climate conditions represent a real threat to the livelihoods of African producers. As the world braces for another encounter with El Niño, the periodic weather pattern which brings drought and severe rains, African producers are highly vulnerable as are producers in Latin America. Markets already predict weather induced supply disruption. This is nothing new: in 1982-83 a very strong El Niño led to a 12% drop in cocoa production, while in 2023-24 the system’s return depressed cocoa output by 13%.

It’s not only crops that are threatened. Drought is endangering African forests as well. These forests provide livelihood for more than 500 million people and offer a vital source of carbon dioxide capture.

Promoting the use of solar power in African agriculture is one clear solution. Solar powered water pumps help farmers boost yields while slashing water consumption. In some cases, tech assisted producers have seen yields climb 32%, water usage drop 35% and spending on inputs fall 28%.

Spatial mapping can greatly enhance resource allocation and new and innovative processing techniques can cut energy consumption by 40% and water usage by 35%.

Business to business information platforms provide pricing and other market data to 45 million African farmers. Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can assist farmers with their payments while enabling them to trace their products through all stages of the supply chain.

Better integration into global supply chains and lifting agriculture producers up the value-added ladder are also important goals of African governments. Ghana and the Ivory Coast produce 60% of the world’s supply of raw cocoa but only about a third of Ghana’s output is processed by domestic companies. In the Ivory Coast the figure is also less than 50%. In the $165 billion global chocolate industry, African producers take in only about 6% of the profits. It’s the same story with coffee and tea produced in East Africa, fruits produced in Southern Africa and nuts, oilseeds and spices produced in Nigeria and Sudan.

By lifting value added production African governments help raise incomes and create more jobs – including for women who comprise most of the African agricultural workforce. Cassava processing is a good example. This $5.8 billion industry – in which companies produce high-quality flour, industrial starch and ethanol – directly employs approximately 3.2 million people while indirectly supporting another 8 million jobs. Women entrepreneurs lead 45% of small and medium-scale processing enterprises.

Here too technology plays a key role. In 2023, 35% of medium to large-scale processors implemented automated systems and digital solutions for supply chain management. Among those employing such techniques post-harvest losses have been reduced by 30%.

In Rwanda, AI-powered drone spraying and IoT-enabled irrigation – which can slash water consumption by 30%, by instantly assessing weather conditions and providing the precise amount of water required – and greenhouse tools are spreading across a sector that still employs 60% of the workforce, while digital services like the Smart Nkunganire System are streamlining input distribution.

In Kenya, drones have enabled farmers to cut pesticide use by up to 30% and water needs by 40%. Drones can cover ten acres an hour — ten times more than manual spraying — but only 5-7% of smallholders currently have access to the technology, a reminder of the equity gap still to close.

Innovation is also taking root in the continent’s smaller, more climate-exposed economies: the Seychelles are piloting aquaponics systems that recycle fish waste to fertilise vegetables, easing pressure on its scarce land and water.

The lesson holds across East Africa as it does for the continent as a whole: technology, designed and deployed equitably and backed by patient investment, is what will finally convert agricultural potential into food security, jobs and resilience. Benefit must accrue to all stakeholders including smallholder farmers, women and youth.

Absent the required financial resources none of these efforts will get off the ground. Governments and international aid agencies can, and do, provide funds. The African Union’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) supports farmers through a framework for the delivery of continent-wide technical and financial assistance. In 2025, the AU launched the CAADP Strategy and Action Plan to mobilize over the next decade $100 billion in financing.

Overall, 2022 investment in African agriculture came to $49 billion including public, private, and development financing. This may seem like a lot, but it works out to only about $140 per African farmer per year, versus an annual average of $1,300 for farmers globally. African farmers receive less than 3% of total global development funds and less than 4% of total investments in Africa from all sources combined.

Clearly, private sector partners must be mobilized. It’s a big challenge but there are real investment opportunities on the horizon as the AfCFTA comes online, producers move into higher value products and technology increases yields while lowering costs. The FAO has a role here in bringing together investors and producers.

The world is changing profoundly and at an unprecedented pace. To meet the extraordinary challenges we face, the FAO must change too. The organization must focus political attention on food and nutrition security and its foundational role in global security. We must reform the traditional model of development cooperation to better address not only food and nutrition insecurity but climate variability, economic shocks, supply chain disruptions and rising inequality.

Above all, a new FAO for a new world means placing farmers, rural communities and countries at the very centre of everything it does.