One in a series of guest blog posts from leading voices in global development on achieving long-term sustainability and growth while ending hunger, poverty, and malnutrition.
Agricultural cooperation was one of the main topics at the recent 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). The summit’s action plan stressed the importance of helping Africa achieve general food security by 2030, and proposed for the first time that China work with African countries to formulate and implement a program to promote China-Africa cooperation on agricultural modernization. This just shows how important agricultural development is to the future of the continent.
Yinuo Li
To get an idea of the scale of the challenge, look at the trajectory of Africa’s population growth. In the newly-released Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation report Goalkeepers: The Stories Behind the Data 2018, Bill and Melinda warn that “one of the obstacles the continent faces is rapid population growth. Africa as a whole is projected to nearly double in size by 2050, which means that even if the percentage of poor people on the continent is cut in half, the number of poor people stays the same.” The United Nations estimates that by 2050, 86 percent of the world’s population living in extreme poverty will be concentrated in Africa South of the Sahara.
The solution to this pressing yet often neglected challenge isn’t hitting certain population targets. Instead, focusing on agriculture has proven to be one of the more promising strategies. By improving agricultural productivity, we increase smallholder farmers’ income, boost consumptions, create jobs and drive local economic growth.
China’s agricultural experience is particularly relevant to Africa. In China, agricultural development has been primarily driven by smallholder farmers moving from lower to higher levels of productivity. China has a proven track record in elevating agricultural productivity and turning it into a driving force for economic development. Such experience can be invaluable to many African countries.
In recent years, China Agricultural University has been carrying out a pilot program in the Morogoro Region of Tanzania, with the goal of scaling up China’s labor-intensive approach to maize growing. Coupled with the adoption of locally sourced quality seeds, this approach has helped double, and in some cases triple, the region’s maize yield. This in turn has led to increased farmer incomes and job opportunities in local communities. It also lays the foundation for the creation of a more robust industry value chain for maize production and processing in the longer term.
Agricultural development has always been a priority for the Gates Foundation. We focus on facilitating inclusive agricultural transformation in partnership with public and private sector players as well as country governments through investment in R&D and innovation, technology extension, policy advocacy, and industry value chain development. Our ultimate goal is to raise incomes, improve nutrition, and empower women.
We are firm believers in the potential of China-Africa cooperation to advance the above goals. Our vision is threefold: China as a knowledge partner, sharing its lessons and experiences from its own agricultural transformation process; China as an innovation partner, transferring cutting-edge, appropriate technologies to African countries and helping them increase their own capacity for innovation; China as an advocacy partner, leveraging its voice on bilateral and multilateral platforms to mobilize more resources to support Africa’s agricultural development.
We have been working with the China Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) to support two Agricultural Technology Demonstration Centers in Mozambique and Zambia, with the goal of more effectively driving sustainable agricultural development. We are also honored to be partnering with IFPRI to draft a China-Africa agricultural cooperation plan, aiming to lay out a ten-year roadmap for agricultural modernization in Africa.
In short, our goal is to support Africa in realizing its full potential by leveraging China’s experience, technology and influence. We believe this is an effective approach to ending hunger and poverty in many African countries.
This is also a win-win solution. As China helps Africa address the challenges, it creates opportunities for its own agricultural sector to benefit from the increasing trade and investment activities between China and Africa.
We believe that both FOCAC and the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s ambitious investment program to improve regional and commercial links with 65 countries, set the stage for further unlocking the agricultural potential of African countries and deepening the strategic cooperation between China and Africa.
With challenges come opportunities. This too applies to Africa’s population growth. Agricultural development offers us a pathway to turn population pressures into human capital. It will allow African countries to break the cycle of poverty—and thus bring profound, positive changes to the continent and its people.
Yinou Li is China Director for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
