Agriculture in Africa, the largest economic sector

,Representing 15% of Africa’s total GDP, Agriculture is Africa’s largest economic sector.

Africa’s agro-ecological prospective is enormously bigger than its current output. The sad factor is that the massive potential for growth in the agriculture sector is only expanding moderately – more than one-quarter of the world’s arable land lies in this continent, yet it generates only 10% of global agricultural output.

4 challenges concerning agricultural output in Africa –

1. Fragmentation: With 85% of Africa’s farms occupying less than two hectares, production is highly fragmented.
2. Interdependence and complexity: A successful agricultural system requires reliable access to financing, as well as high-quality seeds, fertilizer, and water. Other essentials include access to robust markets, a solid postharvest value chain for the output of farmers, and programs to train them in best practices so that they can raise productivity. Africa has diverse agro-ecological conditions, so countries need to adopt diverse farming models to create an African green revolution.
3. Under-investment: To make the agricultural system work better, industry leaders guesstimate, sub-Saharan Africa alone requires additional annual investments of as much as $50 billion. African agriculture therefore needs business models that can significantly increase the level of investment from the private and public sectors, as well as donors.
4. Enabling conditions: A successful agricultural transformation requires some basics to be in place—transportation and other kinds of infrastructure, stable business and economic conditions, and trained business and scientific talent.

Fun fact: Egypt and Nigeria alone represent one-third of total agricultural output in Africa and the top ten countries gene

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