A panel discussion on Africa-Asia partnerships featuring AFDB Group President Akinwumi Adesina, Benin President Patrice Talon, Vice President of Cote d'Ivoire Daniel Kablan Duncan and Hellen Hai of Made in Africa Initiative. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
AHMEDABAD, India, May 29 2017 (IPS)

There are nearly 420 million young Africans between the ages of 15 and 35 today. And it is estimated that within ten years, Africa will be home to one-fifth of all young people worldwide.

These millions of young people could be a source of ingenuity and engines of productivity that could ignite a new age of inclusive prosperity.“If we don’t change the labour composition of agriculture in Africa, in the next twenty years, there will be no farmers.” --AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina

But there are no guarantees. Although the continent has shown consistent economic growth in the last decade, it has failed in creating the number of quality jobs needed to absorb the 10-12 million young people entering the labour market each year.

And this, according to AfDB Vice President for Agriculture, Human and Social Development, Jennifer Blanke, is a time bomb waiting to explode.

“While the youth population is Africa’s asset, it can also easily become a liability, and this is the whole question about demographic dividends,” observes Blanke. “Let us be clear, it is only the existence of opportunity and the young person’s belief that they can access that opportunity that prevents pessimism and political unrest…inaction is not an option, young people without opportunity, and more importantly without belief in their leaders’ ability to provide opportunity are a certain source of civil unrest and we are seeing it every day.”

‘Transforming Agriculture for wealth creation in Africa’ was therefore the major theme of the 52^nd AfDB Annual Meetings held in Ahmedabad, India from 22-26 May 2017.

Experts here agreed that transforming Africa’s agriculture requires a business approach that would incentivize youth who still see farming as way of life for the poor. As a result of this scenario, the average age of farmers in Africa is 60, and Akinwumi Adesina, AfDB Group President, fears that “If we don’t change the labour composition of agriculture in Africa, in the next twenty years, there will be no farmers.”

To get youth involved, Adesina believes, “We need to change the mindset about agriculture—agriculture is not a social sector, agriculture is not a way of life, it is a business.”

But the how question is crucial, and he points to finance among other incentives. “There are opportunities for youth but certain things have to be put in place to realize them, such as financing…our young people are doing amazing things with ICT—they are providing weather index insurance, extension services and a host of other things.”

For its part, the Bank has provided a roadmap for the growth of agriculture in Africa with a plan to inject nearly 2.4 billion dollars every year for 10 years to build roads, irrigation infrastructure and storage facilities to attract high-value investors.

With this kind of investment, AfDB wants to transform Agriculture into a money-making business for those involved, highlighting that Africa should position itself to benefit from the growth of agricultural food markets which are set to grow to a trillion-dollar business portfolio by 2030.

The figure is huge and appetising. But certain steps have to be taken, and one of those steps is closing the infrastructure gap.

According to Thomas Silberhorn, Germany Parliamentary State Secretary, “It is important to close the infrastructure gap on the African continent, not just somehow, but in the spirit of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, by building sustainable infrastructure especially in the energy sector,” he said, adding that it was for this reason that his government was advocating for more support to the African Renewable Initiative of the African Union whose secretariat is hosted at the African Development Bank.

While ICT is usually seen as a sure way of getting youth involved, there is another door to young people’s hearts which agricultural policy makers and implementers have not paid attention to—the film industry.  In Africa, the movie industry is dominated by young people and is emerging as an important contributor to gross domestic product and employment in countries like Nigeria.

However, the entertainment industry–especially the film industry—too often offers unflattering narratives of agriculture and the rural life, showing that real economic opportunities are only found in big cities. Such negative portrayal perpetuates the perception that agriculture is simply a way of surviving for the poor.

To tap into the power and influence of the movie industry, and change these perceptions by projecting agriculture as a profitable and viable economic sector, AfDB brought together Nollywood (Nigerian) and Bollywood (Indian) film makers to this year’s annual meetings to chart the way forward on how to market agriculture as a lucrative business through movies.

Nigerian filmmakers Omoni Oboli and Omotola Jalade Ekeinde represented Nollywood while Rajendrakumar Mohan Raney, a director and producer, and Rekha Rana, Indian and international award-winning actress, represented Bollywood.

Oboli and Omotola pledged to do everything in their power to tell the African agricultural transformation story and change the negative perceptions, especially among young people.

“We have learnt a lot about agriculture and are ready to change the state of affairs through filmmaking,” said Oboli during the Indian Cultural Night and AfDB Impact Awards ceremony where she was a guest presenter alongside BBC’s Lerato Mbele.

As Adesina noted, with 65 percent of the world’s uncultivated land, “What Africa does with agriculture is not only important for Africa: it will shape the future of food in the world.”

A disused cemetery in the heart of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been transformed into a profitable urban garden. Relying on compost they make themselves on the site, a small group of gardeners are enjoying plentiful returns.

IPS visited the eight-hectare site in the Kasa-Vubu commune, where market gardeners are growing a variety of vegetables, including amaranth, tomatoes, cabbage, spinach, and sorrel.

Antoine Musho, from the National Seed Service, explained that there are two rainy seasons in Kinshasa. But with strong demand for vegetables year-round in this city of more than ten million, the group in the Kasa-Vubu cemetery have made growing vegetables their main activity, even in the dry season. Access to water on the site comes from wells the farmers have dug every 300 metres.

There is a police station here responsible for security in this part of the commune. “The police have granted this space to the market gardeners so they can take care of it,” Captain Denis Ngombo, the station commander, told IPS.

Despite the presence of the police, the gardeners keep their tools – hoes, rakes, watering cans – at home. At dawn each day, they come with bags and basins to wait for customers who come to buy vegetables. Others bring organic waste to the site to sell to the gardeners for compost.

Richard Biemo, an engineer from the National Service for Fertiliser and Related Inputs, told IPS that the soil in Kasa-Vubu is very sandy and that crops won’t do well without fertiliser.

Biemo said the compost is essential for growing vegetables, which should be produced and harvested naturally, without using chemical fertilisers.

The gardeners learned to use compost from Cornellie Niongo, an agriculture technician from the National Service for Peri-urban Horticulture. “I’ve trained this group of gardeners since 2011. I encouraged them to always use this kind of fertiliser because it poses no health risks.”

Adolphine Misenga supervises purchases of organic waste for making compost. She told IPS she buys dried cassava leaves and stalks, and shikwang (a popular dish of fermented cassava) from households and restaurants for around five dollars a cart-load.

She agreed that compost makes a huge contribution to the harvest here. Where previously the gardeners had to wait more than six weeks to harvest 10 tonnes of amaranth per hectare, since the composting started in 2011, they have been able to harvest 25 to 30 tonnes in just four weeks.

Nathalie Mayato, who has a dozen plant beds, told IPS that when she started out, she had to wait six or seven weeks to harvest and sell her produce.

“Now, four weeks is enough to bring several beds of amaranth to maturity, each worth 20 dollars. The compost has also allowed me to increase my tomato harvest, which has risen from one tonne between 2009 and 2011, to two and a half tonnes today,” said Mayato.

She told IPS the Kasa-Vubu site is a “green gold mine” because it allows her to earn a good income.

Philémon Mulekita, who is in charge of the group’s relations with the police, feels the same way. “I don’t regret abandoning my former job, making business trips into the countryside, since my new work is more profitable,” he said.

“Other than the buyers who come for our produce from the municipal markets around the city, we are also exporting around five tonnes of vegetables to Paris and Brussels every month,” he told IPS.

But there is one cloud on the horizon. “The site is wanted by wealthy developers who want to build a shopping complex. But we’re here for the moment, and we’re taking advantage of the favour the police have done us to profit from our work,” said Mulekita

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, May 10 2012 (IPS)

While women constitute the majority of food producers, processors and marketers in Africa, their role in the agricultural sector still remains a minor one because of cultural and social barriers.

Jane Karuku, the new AGRA boss, dreams of seeing smallholder farmers become the drivers in Africa's quest for food security. Credit: Courtesy: AGRA

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), women are the majority of the world’s agricultural producers, supplying more than 50 percent of the food that is grown globally. And in sub-Saharan Africa the number is higher, as women grow 80 to 90 percent of the food in the region.

FAO says that although across the globe women are responsible for providing the food for their families, they do this in the face of constraints and attitudes that conspire to undervalue their work and responsibilities and hinder their participation in decision and policy making.

But it is a situation that the new Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) boss, Jane Karuku, says must change in order for Africa to feed itself.

Karuku, a Kenyan business leader with a career spanning over 20 years, became the first female president of the organisation in April.

AGRA is a partnership that works on the African continent to improve food security and enhance the economic empowerment of millions of smallholder farmers and their families. It does this through nearly 100 programmes in 14 countries.

Karuku joins AGRA from Telkom Kenya, a subsidiary of France Telecom-Orange, where she was the deputy chief executive.

She told IPS about her dream of seeing smallholder farmers become the drivers in Africa’s quest for food security. Excerpts of the interview follow.

Q: Do you see your appointment as a milestone for women farmers in Africa?

A: As AGRA’s first female president, it is a great honour to advocate on behalf of the tireless women who are sowing seeds and working in fields across Africa. They are the real heroines in this story, and I hope to highlight their important contributions for a food-secure future.

Q: Do food security policies recognise the role of women farmers in the production, processing and marketing of food in agriculture?

A: Across Africa there are great signs of progress when it comes to smallholder farmers, the majority of whom are women who are building prosperous lives for themselves and their families.

Success for smallholders, however, has been lopsided. Women smallholders and rural entrepreneurs on the continent are neither participating fully nor deriving benefits in equal measure in the agri-economy owning to gender obstacles driven by cultural and societal norms. This must change if Africa is to transform the capacity to feed itself and realise the quality of life envisioned for rural households and communities in sub-Saharan Africa.

Q: In your appointment speech you said: “Smallholder farming is a way of life in Africa, full of challenges and equally full of huge opportunities.” What will you do to strike a balance for food security?

A: My focus is to work to remove the obstacles that prevent smallholder farmers across Africa from significantly boosting productivity and income, while safeguarding the environment and promoting equity. I am committed to ensuring farmers have a full range of choices when it comes to approaching their work.

Q: Smallholder farmers hold the key to food security in Africa. What is your vision for improving their situation?

A: My vision is a food-secure and prosperous Africa achieved through rapid and sustainable agricultural growth that is based on smallholder farmers who produce staple food crops. AGRA’s mission is to trigger a uniquely “African Green Revolution” that transforms agriculture into a highly productive, efficient, competitive and sustainable system to ensure food security and lift millions out of poverty.

Q: Where do you see the role of AGRA in advocating assistance for smallholder farmers to cope with the impact that climate change has on food security?

A: AGRA and its partners work together to determine the kinds of environmental safeguards farmers need to increase their yields and improve their livelihoods. By focusing on sustainable development practices, AGRA reduces environmental degradation and conserves biodiversity.

Rebuilding soil health and enabling Africa’s smallholder farmers to grow more on less land should reduce the pressure to clear and cultivate forests and savannahs, thus helping conserve the environment and biodiversity.

AGRA’s sustainable agricultural practices include improving soil health through integrated soil fertility management. We do this through using a combination of fertilisers and organic inputs, and techniques that are appropriate for local conditions and resources. Through advocating the use of agro- ecologically sound approaches to soil and crop management, such as fertiliser micro-dosing in arid areas, AGRA will guard against potential overuse of fertilisers that could harm the environment.

Q: Research is key to food security; what is your take on the current investment in agricultural research in Africa?

A: Research is critical to making the most of the full agricultural value chain – from seed to harvest. While food productivity has increased globally by 140 percent in recent decades, the figures for sub- Saharan Africa over the same period of time show a reduction. This is because farming across much of the continent has changed little in generations. The role of research is critically important.

Q: What major impact has AGRA had in Africa, and how do you plan to build on it?

A: AGRA takes a uniquely integrated approach to helping smallholder farmers overcome hunger and poverty. By focusing on seeds, soil, market access, policy and partnership and innovative financing, the programme is transforming subsistence farming into sustainable, viable commercial activities that will increase yields across the continent. I hope to continue to look for intersections and innovative opportunities to improve farmers’ lives.

Excerpt:

Cashew nut growers in the southern Senegalese region of Casamance are complaining bitterly that intermediaries are cutting them out of a fair share of the profits.

The Casamance region produced 40 million dollars worth of cashews in 2011 – 40,000 tonnes – and employed more than 220,000 people, according to figures from the Chamber of Commerce in Ziguinchor, the regional capital.

But as of April this year, production stood at only 8,000 tonnes, more than 15,000 tonnes less than at the same point last year, says Ismaëla Diémé, the president of the Casamance Agricultural Producers’ Cooperative. The sharp drop has been attributed to unfavourable growing conditions, a decrease in rainfall, conflict in Casamance – where anti-personnel mines have been laid on farms – and producers discouraged by low prices.

Almost all of Senegal’s cashew harvest – gathered between April and June as the dry season draws to a close – is sold on in the form of unprocessed nuts for export. Large-scale Indian buyers come to the capital, Dakar, and contract local traders to actually purchase cashews; these traders in turn dispatch freelance agents to the often remote villages where farmers have nuts for sale.

Producers told IPS they faced numerous obstacles with respect to storage and transporting their crop from their villages to urban centres. They also said traders offered them laughably low prices for cashews, and argued that they were exploited by intermediaries who depress prices only to resell the nuts for far more to Indian exporters.

Idrissa Diatta, a farmer from Diattacounda, some 80 kilometres from Ziguinchor, said traders offer the equivalent of 60 U.S. cents per kilo at the farm gate, but are reselling it to exporters for nearly three times more, around 1.70 dollars.

He believes the best way to overcome this is to deal directly with the Indians, but says the middlemen have blocked all attempts so far. “The Indians will never come to see us here. They pass the work on to intermediaries. We’re thinking of getting ourselves organised and sending a delegation to the buyers in Dakar (the Senegalese capital) to discuss things,” he said.

Abdoulaye Diatta, another planter, says traders sometimes claim prices are low because supply exceeds demand, or foreign currency exchange rates are unfavourable. “But if the dollar exchange rate has shifted, or there’s really an oversupply, then we wouldn’t see a single cashew nut plucked from the bush. But no: every nut’s sold. Right now, they’re trying to swap us a sack of rice for two sacks of cashews: it’s ridiculous.”

But Jean-Marie Badji, one of the much-maligned middlemen, says the price of unprocessed cashews varies according to changes in the world market, and traders are trying to make ends meet, not trying to dupe growers.

“Look, we have to travel out to these villages to collect cashews. The roads are in terrible condition, and the truckers charge us heavily to transport goods over them. And we’re talking about completely isolated villages. If we pay more than 250 or 300 CFA (less than a dollar), we risk going bankrupt,” he told IPS.

Badji says that sometimes it is growers themselves who undercut prices. “In the first week of April, we were out in a village called Koundump. We came across a producer who hadn’t sold his nuts because of the utter isolation of the place. When he saw us, he offered us his entire stock for 200 CFA per kilo. I couldn’t refuse it,” he said.

Elimane Dramé, who employs 43 people at a facility that can process 250 tonnes of cashew nuts a year, says the sector has struggled to access operating capital. He says banks are typically willing to loan them only a third of what they need, causing delays in payment and leaving small producers in difficulty.

He told IPS that producers’ need for financing is seasonal. A farmer needs money to put up a storehouse immediately to safely hold the incoming harvest, but the bank often refuses to loan him money and he may be forced to sell hastily, reducing his ability to negotiate prices from a position of strength.

Ibra Fall, who works in the office of the governor of Ziguinchor, has a different take. He says producers are also in difficulty because they fail to fully exploit their resource locally.

“With local processing capacity able to handle less than five percent of the harvest, the only alternative for producers is to sell unprocessed nuts to exporters – with no real power to negotiate. Also, the cashew apples are falling unused beneath the trees, with only a small amount used to make cashew wine.”

Diémé with the Casamance Agricultural Producers’ Cooperative told IPS the problems facing producers ultimately stem from a lack of coordination that prevents them from defending their interests against those of others in the value chain.

“Because we are so poorly organised that it’s hard for a partner, no matter who it is, to meet us halfway, and because we have not improved our growing techniques, our yields. Basically, we don’t inspire confidence.”

Farmers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are embracing a new variety of cassava which, in combination with improved agricultural techniques, easily outperforms yields from other popular types of this important crop.

Farmers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are embracing a new variety of cassava. Credit: Credit: André Thiel/Flickr

Cassava is a staple food in many parts of DRC, and farmers disappointed with harvests of the popular F100 variety, which has proved vulnerable to a plant disease called mosaic, have turned to a newer strain with great success.

“We produced 58 tonnes of TME 419 cassava from a two hectare field in 2011,” said 27-year-old Romain Twarita. “That’s a yield of 29 tonnes per hectare, compared to the 10 or 12 tonnes per hectare of F100 that we harvested in 2010.”

Twarita, the coordinator of Action Jeunes Pour le Développement de Nkara (AJDN), an association of 22 young farmers at Nkara, 90 kilometres from Kikwit, the capital of the southwestern DRC province of Bandundu, says the 2011 crop brought in more than 25,000 dollars for AJDN, against 10,000 dollars the year before, and just 3,000 dollars in 2009, the year the association was established.

He said AJDN has also adopted “binage”, a new method of hoeing which maximises the benefits of irrigation –”worth two waterings”, as Twarita put it. Binage calls for the surface of the soil to be broken up, to allow more rain to soak into it. The young farmers also use compost and manure to enrich the soil with organic and mineral matter.

“The big problem is a shortage of farm implements, and the lack of understanding from landowners who ask so much money for a plot – 40 or 50 dollars for half a hectare, depending on location,” he told IPS.

“The cassava is bought from farms here by traders, then sent to the capital, Kinshasa, where it sells fast,” said Jacques Mitini, president of the provincial network of small farmers’ organisations in Bandundu, which includes 255 smallholder associations, nearly a third of these representing young farmers between the ages of 21 and 33.

In the west of DRC, in Bas-Congo province, the Comité de Développement de Kakongo (CDK) is planting trees to create windbreaks and maintain soil moisture, boosting production of other crops on a three-hectare plot.

“We are using intercropping, that’s why there are these wind-breaks of moringa trees which also fertilise the earth without us needing to use chemical fertilisers. Irrigation is also important,” said Espérance Nzuzi, president of Force Paysanne du Bas-Congo, a network of 264 smallholder farmers associations, including 87 created by youth.

“The 84 tonnes of TME 419 cassava harvested last year earned us 39,960 dollars, compared to just 6,160 dollars from 14 tonnes of F100 in 2010,” said Nzuzi.

On two hectares on the outskirts of Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, another youth association, Jeunes Dynamiques de Malulku (JDM), has also found success with the adoption of new techniques.

“We’ve only been practicing binage since we started this venture in 2010. We produced 15 tonnes of TME 419 from a single hectare that year, but in 2011 we harvested 28 tonnes from a hectare and a half, applying a little bit of chemical fertiliser,” said Anne Mburabata, 32, president of the association.

“Before we started popularising TME 419 cassava, we tested it carefully,” said Didier Mboma, who heads the technical innovation service at the Impresa Servizi Coordinati (ISCO), an Italian NGO which is making free cuttings of the new cassava variety available to farmers.

“Since the tests in 2008, we have planted 3,000 cuttings, and we have harvested 30,000.”

Mboma said that young farmers are strongly establishing themselves as productive farmers, while contributing to the country’s food security.

“Young farmers must move towards professionalisation, and take control of the entire value chain from production, to processing, to marketing,” said Dr. Christophe Arthur Mampuya, from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fishing and Livestock.

“The TME 419 variety is a high-yielding one. It’s also among the best varieties being promoted,” he said.

Mampuya said emerging young farmers must also plant woodlots, as adoption of the new cassava variety is scaled up.

“TME 419 is more popular in the west of DRC than in the east, but step by step, the variety could spread across the country,” said Paluku Mivimba, president of the National Confederation of Agricultural Producers of Congo.

Olivier Forgha Koumbou washes some freshly picked carrots in a small brook and eats them with relish. His thriving farm in Santa, in Cameroon’s North West region, looks like a miracle in the midst of surrounding farms where carrots, lettuce, potatoes and leeks have withered and died.

Olivier Forgha Koumbou’s son waters his thriving farm in Santa, in Cameroon’s North West region. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

Rains fell lightly here in early March, but it was not enough to prevent the sun from withering the crops as traditional methods of irrigation failed because of the low rainfall. In the North West region the average annual rainfall stands at just 380 mm, but it is meant to be between 1,000 to 2,000 mm. “The farms have failed me this year,” 43-year-old farmer, Tembene Tangwan, tells IPS.

He explains that because of the low rainfall he cannot use his traditional method of irrigating his crops.

“We used to pipe water from a higher altitude to our farms, and used sprinklers for irrigation. But now, the water sources are drying up, and the low pressure in the system cannot carry water through the pipes,” he says.

“We can only pray that the rains will come back,” he adds.

But his neighbour, 32-year-old Koumbou, is not sitting back and putting his hands together in prayer to ask that the rains return. As he weeds through his crop of carrots, he proudly says: “We develop new strategies when we are faced with an additional challenge.”

Instead of standing back and watching his crop wither, Koumbou began water harvesting.

“I discovered that during the night, the volume of water in the nearby stream increases. So I bought containers to store water in, and at night I take my farm workers to collect it. The water is then used during the day to irrigate the crops,” he tells IPS.

Koumbou is already setting a trend, and other farmers are now starting to follow his methods. “It’s the only way out,” says Christopher Neba, who has also begun water harvesting.

Koumbou has been cultivating carrots, potatoes, cabbages, lettuce and leeks for the past 25 years. He says that his mother introduced him to farming at a tender age.

“When I turned seven, I began accompanying my parents to the farm. I have remained a farmer ever since.”

Today, he makes an average profit of just under 5,000 dollars annually. But this year he believes he will make even more.

“The fact that many farmers lost hope and abandoned their farms means that prices will rise significantly this year, and that means more profit for me. I do sympathise with my neighbours, but that is how things stand for now,” he says.

While there are no concrete figures available of how many farmers have given up on farming, it is not a welcome development in a country that largely relies on food imports.

Cameroon spends an average of 122 million dollars a year to import rice, sorghum, and millet. Last year, shortfalls in rice production led to the importation of 80,000 tonnes, which cost 240 million dollars.

This comes amid rising food insecurity in the country. The United Nations World Food Programme says that 400,000 people in Cameroon’s north require 40,000 tonnes of food aid to avoid going hungry.

Meanwhile, the North West regional delegate for agriculture, Cletus Awah, blames the water shortages on reckless agricultural practices.

“We have told farmers to limit their farmlands to at least 15 metres away from water sources. But very often, they farm right on the riverbeds, destroying the vegetation that protects these water sources and, therefore, water levels are bound to drop,” he tells IPS. Awah believes a solution to the dwindling water supply will come when farmers begin to protect water sources. “Farmers must immediately stop farming too close to streams, brooks or wetlands,” he says.

Koumbou has heeded the appeal.

“It is our fault that water sources are drying up,” he says. “We discovered that the marshy lands here were so fertile that we cultivated them without thinking of the consequences. Gradually, the water receded, and now we are paying the price. This year, I did not cultivate the marshy land on my farm and that is why I still have some water.”

Meanwhile, the regional department for agriculture also believes water harvesting is a short-term solution for farmers.

“As a matter of urgency, we plan to construct water storage facilities so that the little available water can be harvested and stored for eventual use by farmers to irrigate their crops,” Awah says. He adds that a long-term strategy is to plant trees that can help protect water sources.

In an almost ceremonial manner, Selinah Mncwango opens her big plastic bag and pulls out several smaller packets, each filled with different types of seeds: sorghum, bean, pumpkin, and maize. They are her pride, her wealth, the “pillar of my family,” says the farmer from a village in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province.

Farmer Selinah Mncwango is proud of her traditional sorghum seeds. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

Sixty-five-year-old Mncwango comes from a family of smallholder farmers in the village of Ingwawuma in the east coast province. The crops she grows today are from seeds that have been handed down from generation to generation, over decades, she says. Other seeds come from exchanges with neighbouring farmers. “My seeds are very important to me. I hope the day will never come when I have to buy seeds from a shop,” says the farmer, whose five children and eight grandchildren largely depend on her harvest. She is keenly aware of the fact that seed saving, storing and exchanging promotes crop diversity, saves money and provides smallholder farmers with a safety net in case of harvest failures.

But the traditional farming methods of smallholder farmers – which, researchers say, also help to fight soil depletion, reduce irrigation needs and adapt to climate change – may soon disappear. They are being wiped out by governments focused on promoting commercial monocultures that they hope will bring fast, high yields in order to boost national agricultural sales on global markets.

“The sector is dominated by commercial seed companies and industrial agricultural production,” explains Rachel Wynberg, policy analyst at the Environmental Evaluation Unit of the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Small-scale farmers have been systematically pushed out of the system by those who put profits before food security and biodiversity, she says.

“There is a poor understanding of small farmers’ rights. Traditional agricultural practices have thus been eroded over decades,” she adds.

In South Africa, and in most other countries on the continent, the rights of small-scale farmers are regularly violated by governments and commercial entities that push genetically modified (GM) and hybrid seeds – which have been cross-pollinated in controlled environments – on them.

This is common despite a 2006 United Nations International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (IT- PGRFA) that protects farmers’ indigenous knowledge, demands rewards for their contribution to maintaining crop diversity, ensures their participation in decision-making about genetic resources, and guarantees their rights to save, use, exchange and sell seeds.

South Africa and many other African U.N. member states never signed the treaty, however.

“South Africa’s policy framework on farmers’ rights is fragmented and unclear,” says Wynberg. “Commercial programmes are promoted that contradict and undermine traditional farming practices.”

According to Wynberg, government support of small-scale farmers is incoherent and insufficiently funded, lacks capacity and often ignores the needs of farmers. “Government is unfortunately often not delivering,” she adds.

Smallholders agree. Mncwango, who has actively tried in cooperation with many rural farmers in her community to protect their traditional farming methods, says she is appalled at the South African government’s drive to sideline them.

“The Department of Agriculture regularly comes to give workshops. They hand out GM and hybrid seeds and tell us to throw away our traditional seeds. They also tell us to use pesticides and chemical fertilisers,” the farmer laments. “By corrupting our traditional seeds, they make us lose our seed banks and force us into dependency.”

According to Mncwango, farmers often realise too late that GM seeds cannot be saved for the next season, and that they contaminate traditional seeds. Farmers have had to learn the hard way that hybrid seeds are of inferior quality. “They don’t store well and they rot easily and have less nutritional value,” she says.

“The government keeps forcing seeds on us. Even though we tell them we don’t want seeds. We’d rather have support with fencing, farming equipment and better access to markets,” she explains. “But they just don’t listen.”

Researchers like Wynberg confirm the large disconnect between agricultural policies that are deemed “progressive” and farmers’ needs. “High yields are traded for long-term food security,” she says.

Lawrence Mkhaliphi, agro-ecology manager at Biowatch, a non-governmental organisation promoting sustainable agriculture, has been working with small-scale farmers in KwaZulu-Natal province for many years. He takes the argument a step further.

“Many agro-chemical companies offer governments incentives for pushing their products onto farmers,” Mkhaliphi claims. “They want farmers to buy seeds, not save them. It’s a huge business. Instead of serving the people, departments of agriculture have become the agents of agro-chemical companies.”

South Africa’s Department of Agriculture denies these accusations.

“Replacing traditional seeds with commercial varieties is not an official government policy,” says Julian Jaftha, the department’s director of genetic resources. “The government does not own shares in GM seeds.”

The Department of Agriculture supports both traditional and commercial farming methods, Jaftha says. It ran a national programme to reintroduce traditional seeds in rural areas and has a Plant Genetic Resources Centre in South Africa’s capital Pretoria, to conserve traditional seeds.

“GM (seeds) should never be a farmer’s only choice,” says Jaftha. “They should be another option made available to farmers who wish to use those seeds. We expect that there are democratic processes in place for farmers to voice their concerns and make choices.”

Jaftha acknowledges, however, that national policy has not always been implemented correctly. “Unfortunately, it does happen at provincial level that farmers are not given a choice,” he admits. “We know that there is still a lot of work that needs to be undertaken.”

Explosives, high-watt light bulbs, monofilament nets, and poison: these are a few methods fisherfolk are using to catch ever-dwindling fish stocks off Ghana’s shores.

Thomas Essuman says Ghanaian fisherfolk know that using poison, dynamite and illegal nets to catch fish is doing long-term damage. Credit: Jessica McDiarmid/IPS

“Before, your boat was full,” says Thomas Essuman, a 20-year veteran of the seas around Takoradi- Sekondi, a city in western Ghana. “Now, you don’t get fish like before.”

As the number of fish continues to decline in this West African nation, those who rely on the sea say they have no choice if they want to catch enough to survive.

“If you don’t use those things, your net will be empty,” says Essuman.

He says that many use light to attract fish. Others use the pesticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) to poison fish, or dynamite, to kill large numbers that can be scooped up.

Fisherpeople know the practices are harmful, Essuman says. “They will destroy the country because fishing brings life. If you spoil the sea, the fish don’t come, and how are you going to earn money?”

Samson Falae, who has been fishing in western Ghana for 30 years, says dynamite scares fish out to deeper waters, and boat owners have to use more and more fuel to follow them.

“If you go far out and you don’t get enough fish, you can’t afford to go the next day,” says Falae.

Ghana released regulations to govern fishing in 2010, prohibiting many of these common practices. The regulations also restrict mesh sizes and types of nets, areas where fishing is permitted and sizes of fish that can be caught.

Alex Sabah, the director of the fisheries department in Ghana’s Western Region, says fish stocks are in danger of collapse. There are an estimated 200,000 Ghanaian pirogues now fishing, as the fisherfolk strain to feed an ever-larger population. Boats are going about three times further out to sea than 10 years ago to find fish.

And, he says, they are catching baby fish, small fish that serve as food for larger species, and are decimating sensitive areas such as estuaries. Only one of 30 common fish species in Ghana’s waters is not considered threatened, he says.

“They are destroying the stocks. If the stocks collapse…The little pain now of regulation is better than the bigger pain later.”

But, Sabah says, “We are having a hell of a time stopping it.”

Shortly after the regulations came out, fisheries officers, police and the navy cracked down, making arrests, seizing equipment and laying charges.

Fisherfolk did not take kindly to the new measures, and the situation deteriorated into violence and demonstrations.

“There have been clashes with the navy,” says Sabah. “We arrested a number of them and put them before the courts.”

He says enforcement is hindered by a lack of political will and, at times, interference by politicians eager for votes from the millions who rely on fishing in this West African nation of 25 million people. Politicians have phoned the department and ordered enforcement efforts to stop, says Sabah.

“In that situation, we are helpless,” he says.

Sabah says the introduction of regulations should have been handled differently, and that they are working on a new strategy. The department, he adds, needs to do more to educate fisherpeople on the effects of illegal fishing practices and to win their support for conservation efforts.

The fisheries sector sustains millions of West Africans – as much as a quarter of the workforce, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), a London-based charity focused on environmental abuse.

EJF notes fish stocks are under siege from foreign boats illegally harvesting off the coast. The group estimates that sub-Saharan Africa loses about one billion dollars to illegal fishing annually.

But Sabah does not attribute all of Ghana’s troubles to foreign boats. “We cannot blame it all on them,” he says. “Our local fisherfolk are using the wrong procedures.”

Kofi Agbogah, deputy director and programmes coordinator at the Coastal Resources Center in Tadoradi-Sekondi, says regulation measures need to include fisherpeople and provide “enabling conditions”.

“They understand the issues, they know that something must happen,” said Agbogah, whose organisation is implementing a USAID (the government agency providing United States economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide) programme on coastal and fisheries governance.

“But if something happens, will he (the fisherman) get food to eat tomorrow morning? Once you take the net from the guy, he will be prepared to die.”

In the eastern Sierra Leonean community of Lambayama, rice paddies are carved far into the landscape before being abruptly halted by distant hills. Aside from a paved road that draws a grey line through the green, swampy valley, it looks much as it did a century ago.

Emmanuel Kargbo, a 26-year-old farmer, pushes a motorised soil tiller recently given to his farming cooperative. Credit: Damon Van der Linde/IPS

But under the sound of leaves rustling in the wind and chirping insects is the distant low hum of tilling machinery, a signal of the gradually changing way farmers are growing and selling this West African nation’s staple food.

The Smallholder Commercialisation Programme (SCP) is trying to put local farmers back in control of the country’s most-consumed crop. This government-run programme is in its fifth year of operation, and farmers say they are just beginning to discover there is money to be made in agriculture. Some components of the SCP are supported by the European Union and other development partners.

“Before, there was no profit. We had enough to eat, but not enough to sell,” said Zainab Makabu, who started farming rice to support her four children. “Now, we harvest, we sell some, we pay our children’s school fees and we eat some. Without this farming, we couldn’t educate our children.”

People in Sierra Leone often say that if they have not eaten rice, it is as if they have not eaten at all. Data from the 2009 “Economics of Rice Production in Sierra Leone” report, funded by the Soros Economic Development Fund, states that at least 40 percent is still imported from other countries like Pakistan, Thailand and neighbouring Guinea.

Increasing local rice production not only helps keep prices more stable, but also promotes national food security. Agriculture contributes about 50 percent of the country’s GDP and employs over 75 percent of the national work force. Still, most of the small farming in Sierra Leone is for sustenance – the farmers who produce it consume it or trade it without much money ever changing hands.

The SCP is trying to change the way farmers operate in three ways: by mechanising production, organising individuals, and promoting business. Through the programme, farmers are given seeds, machines, fertilisers, and training. The goal is to increase the crop yield and provide mechanisms that facilitate selling the product on the market.

“On the local level, small scale farmers are trying to expand on their production level, which is the thrust of the policy objective – to increase productivity through the farmer-based organisation. In the past, they were not getting the kind of requisite training that would help them increase their production levels. But now we see the farmers are getting the requisite training,” said Joseph Tholly, the District Agricultural Officer for the Lambayama community.

He added that previously farmers would just plant crops for their own consumption.

“They weren’t business-minded,” said Tholly. “In the past, you would only see old people involved in agriculture, but now we also see youth going into all different components of the business.”

Sierra Leone’s 1991-2002 civil war hit small farmers hard. Most of the fighting took place in rural areas, forcing many farmers to flee their land for Freetown, the capital city. But the city is congested with traffic and people, and there is not enough work to go around.

Tholly says the SCP programme tries to draw people back to the countryside with the potential of better pay and a higher quality of life. And it may be working. When the programme began, about 10 percent of people in his district earned their living from agriculture. Today, the number is closer to 60 percent.

“I’ve learned how to work this machinery and at the end of the day, I’m making a bigger profit for myself and my family,” said Emmanuel Kargbo, a 26-year-old farmer. “I don’t plan to do any other kind of work.”

On a local level, the hub of the SCP is the Agricultural Business Centre (ABC). These clusters of buildings house the machinery to harvest and process crops, store the rice before selling it, and act as the administrative centre for farming collectives.

Each farmer makes a contribution of rice every year, which the ABC sells, putting the money in an account to be used for things like equipment maintenance. In Lambayama, Joseph Fecah manages the finances for one of the country’s 108 ABCs. He says they have not only been able to make a profit through the commercialisation programme, but have used this money to build an additional storeroom with no assistance from the government.

“It is an expansion on traditional farming. Initially they were doing it on a small scale but the government is encouraging us to do farming on a larger scale,” said Fecah. “We have money going in constantly. We’re doing well, for now.”

The EU has supported development initiatives in Sierra Leone for the past 40 years, and has been involved in the small-scale agriculture programme since its inception. Through the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD), the EU provides 16 million euros a year in donations for training and investment in initiatives like the SCP.

The programme has had its challenges, and with a 25-year plan, there is a long way to go. Farmers say they need more donations in the form of transportation to move their products, and better packaging to further increase the commercial viability.

**The original story that moved on Apr. 12 has been re-issued with new sources.

Sam Kojo stands in a thigh-high pile of brown seaweed that blankets a beach in western Ghana. Behind him, a decomposing mound of Sargassum stretches down the shore past the fishing village of Beyin.

Sam Kojo, chief fisherman of a village in western Ghana, says an influx of seaweed has crippled the fishing industry for months. Credit: Jessica McDiarmid/IPS

“Ever since I was born, I have not seen this,” says Kojo, holding a clump of the seaweed in his hand. He has been fishing since he was 10 years old, but since the weed began washing in about three months ago, he has been unable to work.

“We have a big problem because when we cast our nets, all the weeds would come inside the net and we would catch nothing,” says Kojo, through a translator. “So we decided not to continue fishing.”

Sargassum is the algae after which the Sargasso Sea – an elongated region in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean – is named due to the large accumulations there. In the past year, it has been showing up in unprecedented quantities on beaches from the Caribbean to West Africa, wreaking havoc on tourism and fishing industries.

It started collecting on the beaches of western Ghana about three months ago, locals say. And in Beyin, it is bringing this small fishing village of a few hundred people to its knees.

Kojo says that with the boats kept ashore, people are going hungry and families can no longer pay their children’s school fees. He says theft is increasing along with the desperation.

His son Raymond says they saw the Sargassum floating on the water a few days before it hit the shores.

“For months now, we haven’t gone to sea,” says Raymond. “We’re hungry. Here, there are no other jobs.”

Beyin has a fledgling tourism industry. It serves as the launch point for trips to Nzulezu, a stilt village in the area that draws several thousand visitors a year. But fishing remains the main source of income.

Ernst Peebles, an associate professor of biological oceanography at the University of South Florida, says in an email that mats of Sargassum accumulate wherever ocean currents take them. The influx in Africa and elsewhere probably does not reflect increased local growth of Sargassum.

“More than likely, it is an indication that oceanic currents or eddies are closer to shore than usual. Persistent onshore winds can also help create such accumulations,” he adds.

In 2011, the eastern Caribbean was ridden with Sargassum, which plastered beaches at popular tourist destinations such as Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and St. Martin. Some resorts closed down while tonnes of the algae were removed. In some areas people were warned not to swim due to the risk of getting tangled in the weeds. Sierra Leone, northwest of Ghana, also experienced an influx in 2011.

Brian LaPointe, who has studied the algae since the 1980s, said Sargassum circulates continuously between the Sargasso Sea, the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, where it is picked up by the Gulf Stream current and can move east to the Azores, and even to West Africa.

Scientists are not sure what has led to the recent increase in the amount of Sargassum in circulation, said LaPointe, an expert at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University in the United States.

“This is a very widespread phenomenon,” says LaPointe. “Almost every corner of the North Atlantic is reporting really large amounts of Sargassum.”

Nutrient levels in the ocean, particularly near shore, are increasing due to human activities such as fertilisation and the dumping of sewage, which in turn lead to faster algae growth.

The 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may also play a role, says LaPointe, by further increasing nutrients the algae feed on. Hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spewed into the water after BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on Apr. 20, 2010.

“Last year, following the Deepwater Horizon spill, is when we saw this mass influx of Sargassum to a number of areas.”

LaPointe also points to a 2010 temporary change in currents in the Gulf of Mexico. A current “short circuited,” creating the Franklin Eddy, which meant outflow from the Gulf virtually stopped for months.

A blessing for those scrambling to contain the oil spill, the eddy also may have served as a “big incubator” for Sargassum, says LaPointe.

About six months after the eddy broke down, reports of large amounts of Sargassum began coming in.

“This could contribute more Sargassum not just to the west of the Atlantic, but the Azores and Africa as well,” he says.

LaPointe is working with researchers at the University of South Florida to monitor Sargassum movement via satellite imaging, in order to alert local managers of an imminent landing.

Back in Beyin, Ghana, the shore at Tenack Beach Resort is piled high with foul-smelling Sargassum, interlaced with the usual debris: plastic bags, flip-flop sandals, bottles, and other rubbish.

Hotel manager Nana Awuku says customers have complained about the seaweed.

“We tried to clean it but this is beyond us,” says Awuku. “It has to be tackled at a national level.”

He is quick to point out that, while Sargassum is affecting the resort, it is the fisherpeople who are really suffering.

“The bulk of the people in this area rely on the sea for their livelihood, which is fishing,” says Awuku.

Some fishers with deep-water boats are going far out to sea to get beyond the algae, but the added cost of fuel for the longer trip is crippling.

Kofi Agbogah, deputy director and programme coordinator at the Coastal Resources Center in Takoradi, a city about 160 kilometres from Beyin, calls the algae a “food security issue.” The centre studies a more common form of green algae that is also damaging local fishing.

“If fishermen cannot fish because of the presence of this green algae, or brown algae, it means that their children are going to go hungry, their pockets are going to be empty, their wives cannot go to the market.”

Awuissa Walla has no regrets over choosing farming as a profession. He earned a degree in agronomy a decade ago, and borrowing money from friends, set himself up on an 18-hectare plot at Badja, some 50 kilometres from Lomé, the Togolese capital.

“We often say here that you can never go wrong with the land, and I can confirm this as I’m in the business myself,” the 40-year-old Walla told IPS.

“I grow a wide range of things to try to get the most from my farm,” he said. His land is dotted with all sorts of fruit, especially oranges, lemons, mandarins, bananas and pineapple.

Part of the land is dedicated to coconut and oil palms, and there is a stand of teak and heaps for yams in another corner, but his main crop is maize.

“I grow maize on eight hectares and I usually harvest four tonnes per season – around 40 sacks of maize,” he said. He plants maize twice a year, harvesting it three months later and earning about 1,250 dollars from each crop.

Walla has hired sharecroppers who use modern methods to increase their production, including a tractor. Some of the crops are irrigated using water from a borehole on the property.

He is also a beneficiary of a programme set up by the Togolese government to supply farmers with fertiliser, the 1.3 billion dollar National Investment Programme in Agriculture (PNIASA).

PNIASA has made 30,000 tonnes of fertiliser available to farmers each year at heavily subsidised prices, the programme paying roughly a third of the cost of this vital farm input.

The Togolese government wants to bring the country’s subsistence agriculture sector into a true market economy, and has indicated that improving the quality and availability of seed will be its next priority.

“The government has helped us with seed and fertiliser, which has allowed us to have a good harvest,” said Donné Amémadon, a smallholder in Tsévié, north of Lomé.

Each of the country’s last three growing seasons smashed records for grain production, particularly for maize and sorghum: climbing from around 31,000 tonnes in 2009 to 95,000 tonnes in 2010 and 110,000 tonnes in 2011.

The surplus was sold through the National Food Security Agency (ANSAT) to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) for use in other African countries. At the beginning of this year, WFP bought 8,000 tonnes of maize, as compared to 6,000 last year.

On Apr. 7, WFP and ANSAT signed a new contract under which Togo will supply 10,300 tonnes of maize to famine-stricken Niger, at a cost of 4.8 million dollars which will be paid directly to producers. WFP will also buy a further 6,000 tonnes of grain destined for Ghana.

In addition to the country’s support for smallholders, farmers have been blessed with favourable weather.

“Our country still enjoys excellent rainfall which, in combination with sound agriculture policy, ensures our food security,” said Zackari Nandja, the minister of water. But, he said, if agriculture is truly to serve as a motor for development, then the management of water will have to be taken into account.

Agriculture extension worker Koudjo Kligbé agrees: “We need appropriate technical advice for farmers at all levels, especially regarding water management. We need to start from what farmers already know, from what they are already doing, and then we can see what new things they can learn.”

According to official figures, agriculture employs 70 percent of Togo’s population of six million and represents 40 percent of GDP. Around 10 percent of the national budget is allocated to this sector.

“We have launched many projects, including the Project to Support Agricultural Development, which will help small farmers develop their land and construct storage facilities,” said Messan Kossi Ewovor, the minister of agriculture. He encouraged smallholders to join together in organisations which will strengthen their voices in decision-making in areas that affect them.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is providing 13.5 million dollars in financing for this support programme.

Like many rural youth, Abdoulaye Soumah spent a few years in Conakry, trying his hand at various jobs in the big city. But he has since returned to his home village, transforming a seven-hectare plot of land inherited from his parents into a model of success.

“I produce about three tonnes of rice per hectare, and harvested a total of 20 tonnes in November. I keep a small part to feed my family and sell the rest,” Soumah told IPS during a tour of his fields at Somayah, 50 kilometres from the capital.

“A 100-kilo sack of rice sells for 650,000 Guinean francs (around 100 dollars). My harvest is generally bought up by rural traders and some from the city. They buy unprocessed rice, which they store before reselling it in markets in Conakry,” he said.

Soumah doesn’t own any agricultural machinery. Since setting up his farm in 2008, he has relied on relatives and locals hired on an occasional basis – paying each worker less than a dollar a day – for labour-intensive tasks like planting, weeding and harvesting.

He also enjoys support from local agricultural extension workers like Sékou Mansaré.

“Even though there is abundant rain in the region, we’re practicing irrigated rice cultivation here,” said Mansaré, explaining a system of small embankments and trenches that channel water through the rice fields.

“We sometimes use pumps to adjust the water level as needed during the different stages of growth, or to drain the water before the harvest,” said Mansaré, who also advocates the use of organic fertiliser.

He advises farmers to use locally-available resources wherever possible. He makes fertiliser from agricultural waste like cow dung and chicken manure, and the water for irrigation comes from the nearby Mériyéré River.

Rice is the staple food for Guineans, with national output ranging between 500,000 and 700,000 tonnes per year, according to statistics from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. But the country’s rice harvest is not enough to feed its population of 10.6 million, and Guinea imports between 200,000 and 300,000 tonnes of rice per year.

An initiative launched by the government in 2011 is aimed at reducing the dependence on imports by increasing domestic production by farmers like Soumah.

“I grow a local rice variety called ‘Djoukémé’, which is prized for the way it expands when it’s cooked,” he told IPS.

With his rice farm providing him with an income of roughly 20,000 dollars a year, the 29-year-old has been able to send his children to school, build a house for himself, and even reinvest some of his profits in a small flock of sheep and a motorcycle, which he operates as a local taxi.

“The Soumah farm should be an example for other youth who balk at working the land for a living. They should be inspired by his success,” said Koleya Bangoura, a prominent personality in Somayah.

“Farming is difficult,” he conceded, “and young people don’t always have access to credit to finance their projects.”

Bangoura also noted a growing scarcity of land for aspiring farmers due to urban sprawl from the capital.

In May 2011, Guinea and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) signed an agreement providing 31 million dollars to support the country’s national investment programme in agriculture. The overall objective of the programme is to sustainably boost income and food security for poor rural people in Guinea.

“IFAD, working with Guinea, is investing a lot in response to the challenge of food insecurity,” said Jean Marc Telliano, Guinea’s agriculture minister, in Rome in February.

Visiting Somayah, IPS noted that there is a lack of information among potential beneficiaries as to how to access the new support.

“I heard that the conditions for selection for loans are very rigorous,” Soumah told IPS. “In any case, I don’t want to become dependent on support like this.”

Ibrahima Bangoura, from the Association of Youth for Agricultural Development, based in Conakry, said: “We have to improve the perception of financing amongst role-players in the agriculture sector. This is a key responsibility for the government and donors.”

Bitterness is written all over Boureïma Hamado’s face as he prepares to return home after selling his onion crop at the Katako market in the Nigerien capital, Niamey. He’s taken a big loss on the harvest.

Onion producers in Niger face huge problems selling their crop because the market is saturated. Credit: Sustainable Sanitation/CC BY 2.0

Hamado, 35, tells IPS he brought 20 sacks of onions – 140 kilos in total – to Niamey hoping to sell them for a good price, which would have allowed him to settle his debts with something left over for basic needs.

“I needed to sell each sack for 4,500 francs CFA (around nine dollars), though I was expecting to get at least 6,500 CFA per bag. This venture has cost me more than 100,000 CFA (200 dollars) and I lost out at every point, because just to bring the onions here, I borrowed 15,000 CFA,” he says.

“I bet on high profits from onions – which were selling for more than 25,000 CFA (50 dollars) a bag last year – and increased my production, but I didn’t account for a glut on the market,” he says.

Around 300,000 Nigerien farmers grow onions, generating revenue equivalent to around 100 million dollars a year, according to a Niamey-based smallholders’ organisation, the Federation of Market Garden Cooperatives of Niger (FCMN-Niyya).

This year, onion producers face huge problems selling their crop because the market is saturated, according to FCMN-Niyya president Idrissa Bagnou.

“There was a bumper harvest because farmers have become more professional, have had better access to seeds, and the total number of farmers has gone up. Unfortunately, consumption has not also increased, either locally or in the countries to which our produce is usually exported,” Bagnou told IPS.

“Foreign traders, who usually buy onions throughout the year, hadn’t finished selling off stock harvested in September 2011 from Agadez (in northern Niger) when the December-February crop from other parts of the country came onto the market,” he said. “That’s where the steep fall in the price has come from.”

With an average annual production of 500,000 tonnes, Niger is the leading producer of onions in the West African Economic and Monetary Union area, according to figures from PRODEX, the Agro-Pastoral Export and Market Development Project, based in Niamey.

“Output, more than 70 percent of which is exported to Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Benin and Togo, has shot up this year, thanks to the sharp rise in the price of onions last year – they sold for up to 100,000 CFA (200 dollars) a bag at one point during the 2010-2011 season,” Dr Idé Tahirou, who monitors the onion market for a U.S. NGO with an office in Niamey, International Relief and Development, told IPS.

“It’s this sudden spike in the price which pushed many smallholders to plant onions,” said Tahirou. FCMN-Niyya estimates that this year’s harvest will be over 600,000 tonnes.

Elhadj Amadou Dan-Rani, an onion exporter in Niamey, explained that farmers also face competition from further afield. “Our customers in neighbouring countries still have large stocks of onions, originating not only from Niger but from Burkina Faso, Mali and even a European country like the Netherlands. That’s why exports have slowed.”

While onion producers are in turmoil, consumers are delighted. “In 15 years, I have never seen the price fall so low,” Fatouma Harouna, a Niamey restaurant owner, told IPS.

“A bag of onions which last year cost as much as 40,000 CFA (80 dollars) is now selling for 5,000 CFA. It’s truly a bargain for us,” she said.

Tahirou said the high prices last year were simply due to a temporary shortage. He estimated that the price of a 12-kilo sack of onions in normal times is around 40 dollars.

Responding to the problem, the government met with stakeholders in the onion sector in the central town of Tahoua in early March to look at ways to help distressed producers and to better organise the commercialisation of the crop.

Abdoulsalam Douma, an expert at FCMN-Niyya, says one short-term solution would be for the government to buy part of this year’s harvest directly, paying producers at least 40 dollars a bag.

“But above all,” Douma said, “what’s needed are loans to smallholders to build storage facilities, and the establishment of offices to coordinate commercialisation in all the onion-producing areas and allow farmer associations to better organise their sales over time.”

Mathieu Djessan looks over the four-hectare expanse of fish ponds with satisfaction. The aquaculture enterprise the 29-year-old runs here near the town of Tiassalé in southern Côte d’Ivoire is quickly proving profitable.

“When we harvest them in May, it will be our third batch of fish in 13 months. We sold the first two lots to reach maturity between December 2011 and February 2012: 5,500 carp and 4,900 catfish. Despite major losses of fry – juvenile fish – we pocketed more than five million francs CFA (around 10,000 dollars),” Djessan told IPS.

Djessan manages three fish ponds along with three friends, here 120 kilometres northwest of the Ivorian commercial capital, Abidjan. Each pond holds 6,000 carp and catfish, growing fat on rice bran.

The four partners started the project with money they scraped together between them, combined with 4,000 dollars borrowed from several private benefactors. They say they’ve already repaid their debt.

“We needed to find something to do to make ends meet,” said Chantal Aya, 26, one of Djessan’s project partners. “So we chose to invest in what looked like a promising sector, not just in this region but also in the north, centre and west of the country which often lack fish.”

Even here in the south, much closer to the ocean, over the past two years fish has seldom been available in the markets in places like Tiassalé and Sikensi. When there has been fish, brought in from Abidjan, it was too expensive for most people.

“Carp which normally costs 1,000 CFA (two dollars) was selling for nearly 2,500 CFA here,” Eugènie Logbo, a fish monger at the Tiassalé motor park or transit hub, told IPS.

Logbo’s two large tables are covered with carp. “These don’t come from Abidjan, they’re from the aquaculture ponds right around here. For two or three months now, there’s been a steady supply of fish from the ponds, and the price has become affordable. The cost of a half-kilo carp has fallen back to 1,500 CFA.”

At Bonoua, on the edge of the Aby Lagoon southeast of Abidjan, Williams Yao Brou has built two ponds covering 2.5 hectares. At the moment they’re filled with 3,800 newly-hatched fish.

Through the whole of last year he sold nearly 3,500 fish, but he expects to sell all the fish now maturing in his ponds within the next three months.

“A maintenance problem cost me 300 hatchlings, but I don’t think that will happen again,” said Yao Brou. He says he earns around 6,000 dollars per production cycle.

“This business has become more exciting as other young people start coming to me for training, and to help me… This will allow us to produce enough to make up for the occasional shortages of fish,” he told IPS.

He learned aquaculture techniques in the early 2000s, when he worked at a massive complex of ponds that were built in 1996 at Mahapleu, in the west of the country. That project, set up with finance from the African Development Bank, was abandoned in 2007 for lack of investment in the upkeep of the ponds.

In addition to supplying fishmongers at the local market, the young aquaculturists are looking for new outlets for their output. “Selling fish at the market or at motor parks won’t yield quick profits. We want to find restaurants to supply directly, so we can shift our fish faster,” said Aya, formerly a management student in Abidjan. Unable to find a job in the city, she opted for self-employment in aquaculture.

“Generally, the problem is finding start-up funds,” Yao Brou told IPS. “But young people nowadays understand the need to share their ideas and projects, and together find some small seed capital to get started.”

According to Dramé Sékongo, an agricultural engineer in Tiassalé, aquaculture requires only minimal equipment, money and know-how. “What Ivorian farmers are starting to do – especially the youth – is digging ponds in low-lying areas, alongside rice fields, to earn a bit of money. But some government support would help a bit,” he told IPS.

In March, Côte d’Ivoire and the International Fund for Agricultural Development signed a 22.5 million dollar agreement to finance a project supporting agriculture and commercialisation in three northern regions – Bouaké, Korhogo and Bondoukou.

According to an IFAD press release, the project’s goal is to help improve food security and boost incomes for small producers, particularly rural youth and women.

Co-financed by the Ivorian government, this project will be carried out by the Agriculture Ministry and IFAD expects it will bring direct and indirect benefits to more than 25,000 poor rural families.

Darou Ndoye is the sort of village young people cannot wait to leave in search of better prospects in the city or across the seas in Europe. But 40 youth working on 10 hectares of a 20-heactre farm here in western Senegal show how a little support goes a long way in creating rewarding work in rural Senegal.

The farm, which was rehabilitated in 2008 as part of the government’s Return to Agriculture programme (REVA), boasts a borehole with a diesel pump that feeds a sprinkler network covering 10 hectares; a mini pivot system extends irrigation to a further five hectares.

The Return to Agriculture programme was established in 2006, with the aim of fighting food insecurity and unemployment by promoting private enterprise in agriculture.

Reducing out-migration from rural to urban areas within Senegal, as well as clandestine emigration to Europe was an explicit part of the plan, which has received substantial funding from the Spanish and Moroccan governments as well as from Senegal’s own budget.

The young farmers are divided into two Economic Interest Groups – a form of collective – each producing different vegetables.

“We grow cabbages, tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers and carrots,” said Mbaye Ndiaye, 34, president of the two groups. He said the farm’s produce is sold in local markets as well as in neighbouring countries like Mali and Gambia.

The 40 people working on the farm are successfully using crop rotation techniques and cultivation in the off-season. Ndiaye says that in 2011 the farm produced 80 tonnes of peppers, 150 tonnes of tomatoes, 200 tonnes of cabbage, 250 tonnes of potatoes and 155 tonnes of carrots.

“We took in about 28 million CFA francs (around 55,000 dollars) in net profits, leaving each member with around 700,000 CFA (1,400 dollars) in earnings last year,” he told IPS.

According to Ndiaye, the 2009-2010 season was also a good one, though not all of the farm was in production. “We used about eight hectares, but 2010 marked the real starting point for sales of our output after the rehabilitation of the farm… We sold 20 tonnes of cabbage, 145 tonnes of carrots and 257 tonnes of tomatoes.”

“There weren’t so many of us then – we were just 25 – and we earned around 20 million CFA (roughly 40,000 dollars), with each person earning about 400,000 CFA (800 dollars). A good part of our total revenue was spent on repairing the pump and buying seed,” he said.

Adja Aïda Cissé, a councillor for the area as well as president of a local union for the promotion of rural women, stressed the socioeconomic impacts of the Darou Ndoye farm.

“We’re feeding ourselves; we’re supporting ourselves; we’re sending the kids to school now, thanks to the income from the farm. There is no better way to fight poverty,” Cissé said.

“This village was one of the major points of origin for clandestine migration across the sea to Europe,” she added. “Many youth who would have been considering that are instead employed on the farm.”

Even if the success of the farm is widely recognised, there are also some challenges.

Papa Guèye, who himself tried unsuccessfully to make it to Spain on a small fishing boat, has worked on the farm since the beginning of the project. He complains about the cost of fertiliser. “We need 300 bags of organic manure for each hectare; this costs 1,500 CFA (three dollars) if it’s chicken manure, and 700 CFA (1.40 dollars) if it’s cow dung,” he told IPS.

Another of the farmers, Saliou Mbaye, said that though he earns nearly 1,000 dollars each growing season, he lacks proper implements for hoeing. He also complained about the high cost of diesel to fuel the pump.

“Diesel is expensive. Every four days, we spend 160,000 CFA (around 320 dollars) for 200 litres of diesel,” he said.

“We need tractors and access to more water to expand the size of the farm and increase sales. Our produce is in great demand across the border in Mali, Mauritania and Gambia,” he told IPS.

The head of the Return to Agriculture programme, El Hadji Malick Sarr, says that in its five years of existence, the programme has helped set up teams of young Senegalese on 23 farms who are now producing large quantities of fruits and vegetables, 80 percent of it for export.

A total of 1,700 hectares have been equipped with irrigation systems and 7,000 jobs have been created, he told IPS. “From a hectare of vegetables… in a year, a young producer can earn an income of 1.7 million CFA. But the availability of land is such that we can only give each youth (access to) less than half a hectare.”

During a visit to Senegal in November 2011, Mohamed Béavogui, director of the West and Central Africa Division of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), toured some of REVA’s farms, including the one at Darou Ndoye.

“What we have seen here is a very innovative approach,” he said. “It allows young farmers to not only ensure their own food security, but also to produce for sale and export, generating incomes which allow them to improve their living conditions.”

He said he hoped to find synergies between these farms and other agriculture projects supported by IFAD.

The brightly painted old shipping container with solar panels on its roof and high-specification filtration devices inside looks out of place in this dusty Angolan village of Bom Jesus, 50 kilometres east of the capital Luanda.

Joaquina Xavier – who currently collects water from the river – in front of the new AQUAtap machine in her village. Credit: Louise Redvers/IPS

But it will soon be providing nearly 20,000 litres a day of clean, drinkable water to the area’s 500 residents who currently rely on dirty supplies from the nearby river.

Designed by Canadian technology company Quest Water Solutions, the stainless steel drinking station called “AQUAtap” is being globally piloted in this Southern African nation with a view, if it is successful, to start manufacturing the systems locally to roll out across the region.

Using solar energy stored in large batteries, water from the River Kwanza, 50 metres away, is processed through sand and other filters. Then UV is used to sterilise the water to World Health Organisation (WHO) drinking standards ready for it to be dispensed out of a stainless steel tap at the front.

“It is really very straightforward and simple,” explained Quest’s John Balanko as he gently pushed one of two taps at the front of the block to allow the water to come out into a bottle.

“Yes, it looks a little out of place and rather advanced for here, but it’s not, it’s really quite simple and the beauty is it is very low maintenance.

“The machine itself will only need a service once a month and we are training up some Angolans do be able to do that once we have gone back to Canada.”

The stainless steel taps – which dispense a fixed amount of just over one litre per push – and the aluminium platform, have been designed for easy cleaning and there are drains around the edges to collect any spilt water.

Balanko and his business partner Peter Miele, both from Vancouver, have a background in using technology to solve rural water supply issues in Canada.

A chance meeting four years ago with an Angolan resident in Canada, however, gave them a new African focus.

The AQUAtap has been designed specifically for a rural Angolan community where a lack of clean water and limited sanitation is a major contributor to the country’s high childhood mortality rate, which claims one in five youngsters before their fifth birthday.

Since the end of its three-decade civil war in 2002, the Angolan government has spent millions of dollars repairing infrastructure and providing basic services like water to its population of 19 million.

As part of the “Agua para Todas” (Water for All) scheme taps and boreholes have been installed in communities across the country, although according to the government’s own figures, around half the population is still without access to drinking water.

The village chosen by Quest Water Solutions, which was suggested by the municipal authorities, has one of those government-installed taps, but locals, most of whom are subsistence farmers without formal employment, told IPS it had not worked for over a year.

Carlos de Costa Gabriel, 25, welcomed the new machine and made no secret of the fact he wanted a job as its security guard to watch over it at night and prevent the theft of its solar panels.

He said: “We like this project very much. We have been using river water, which causes a lot of problems like vomiting and diarrhoea.

“I have two young girls aged three and five so I am very pleased that now we can get clean water because it will resolve the health problems.”

Mother-of-five Joaquina Xavier, 38, added: “We are very grateful for this. At the moment the water we use is so dirty and it is hard work bringing it from the river in buckets.

“The children get sick from the water, and some in my family have died because of this, but this machine, it’s really going to help.”

Balanko and Miele are working in conjunction with Angola’s Ministry of Industry, which is in charge of sourcing the equipment for the Agua Para Todas programme.

The device, one of two they shipped to Angola at no cost to the government, is being sold for a once- off fee of 150,000 dollars, which comes with a two-year maintenance guarantee.

“We can’t deny we are a for-profit company with a product to sell,” Balanko explained. “But I think you need to be able to make profit so that you can then give back.

“This is a one-off cost for the government, which they will absorb but the villagers will in return get clean, healthy water for at least the next 15 to 20 years.

“It is also very cost-effective in the long-run because our water works out at around 2.30 dollars for 1,000 litres, while at the moment people are paying as much as 30 dollars for 1,000 litres, which is more than 10 times more.”

The water from the AQUAtap will be free for the villagers, Balanko explained, a decision taken by the authorities.

The Canadians accept there are risks involved with the fact the water will be free, that the machine might be vandalised, or hijacked by people who want to sell the water commercially.

But they said they hoped the village would take pride in the new device to stop that happening. Balanko said: “Time will tell, but we believe it will be taken care of. We are going to have a security guard here and possibly flood lights for added security.

“We have told the villagers this is their machine and they must take care of it and we have engaged some elders and respected members of the community to help spread that message.”

Farmers’ organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo say the country’s new Agriculture Law – enacted last December – could lead to many smallholder farmers losing their land.

Farmers’ organisations in the DR Congo say the country’s new Agriculture Law could lead to many smallholder farmers losing their land. Credit: André Thiel/Flickr

“We have launched a major appeal to the government to modify the law,” Paluku Mivimba, president of FOPAC, the Congo Federation of Smallholder Farmer Organisations, told IPS.

“Several articles of this law create insecurity of tenure for peasant farmers because they eliminate the possibility of peasant farmers becoming owners of land they have been cultivating for many years,” said Mivimba, who is also the head of the federation’s lobbying unit.

Mamie Makuze, is a lawyer and owner of a five hectare plot on the Batéké Plateau, not far from the DRC capital, Kinshasa. “Article 35 of the law weakens small producers and family farmers who don’t have a lot of money. It states that the government will grant agricultural concessions in line with the financial capacity of applicants, who must also be able to carry the cost of developing the land,” she told IPS.

“This is an addition to another article which puts family and subsistence farmers in danger: according to Article 41, which says that if the occupant does not begin developing agricultural land within 18 months of signing a provisional lease, the government has the right to reclaim the land and assign it to someone else.

“The fear is that small producers, who frequently lack resources, run the risk of losing land they’ve acquired – in many cases via inheritance, passed down from generation to generation without official documents.”

Jeanne Botuli, a market gardener in Kisantu, a village in the western province of Bas-Congo is also worried by the new legislation. “For ten years, our group of women have been growing vegetables like amaranth, carrots and onions on small plots of just a few square metres. Even if we don’t have formal title to the land, our presence has long been recognised by the provincial authorities, who no longer have any right to come and take our fields away.”

According to Jean-Baptiste Lubamba, from the National Centre for the Development of Popular Participation, an NGO based in Kinshasa, around 80 percent of Congolese rely on agriculture for their livelihoods.

Repeating the past

Roger Pholo, responsible for communications for the Congolese Smallholders’ Confederation, told IPS, “This law offers no security to poor farmers and thus their land could be seized to the benefit of more affluent farmers or for agribusiness enterprises.”

“The majority of these farmers have not been to school and are not well informed about this law,” said Pholo.

“This Act allows the state to seize land from poor farmers,” said Alphonse Nkuli, a member of the Federation of Congolese Business. “It’s a form of “zaïrianisation” which the country has already experienced – and rejected – when land was expropriated from colonial expatriates and handed over to Congolese, including some who did not have the capacity to put it to productive use.”

Nkuli feels carrying out a similar measure now will lead to slump in national agricultural production and increase poverty.

The policy of zaïrianisation was implemented in 1973 under the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko and consisted of the nationalisation of certain property belonging to white settlers, including parcels of land which, Nkuli said, were redistributed to people close to the regime with little experience in agriculture.

Subsequently, most of this land was sold on to other buyers. In South Kivu, in th east of DRC, there were even cases where other foreigners bought back land that had been nationalised.

Strengthening local control

Agriculture Minister Norbert Basengezi Kantintima acknowledges that there is widespread anxiety, but insists that there will be no return to zaïrianisation-style land seizures. “The small farmer is well protected by the law by means of rural agriculture councils already established in each province to monitor agriculture development in each province,” he told IPS. “And smallholders are part of these councils.”

“The presence of representatives of producers, producer associations, and peasant unions at the heart of the agriculture councils which are present in each sector and at the most local level, is a participatory measure which will allow farmers to ensure the government doesn’t take actions that are unfavourable to them,” Kantitima said.

But Mivimba says these councils do not function effectively, as they are dependent on government which has failed to adequately fund them.

“What’s needed are committees that will manage land, especially in rural areas where the majority of farmers are not aware of their rights and have not been to school. These committees must strengthen advocacy on behalf of smallholders,” Mivimba said.

“We plan to lobby members of the new parliament (sworn in on Feb. 16) and press for the modification of the law to be put on the agenda of the upcoming legislative session.”