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Roundup: African agriculturists appeal for financial support for farmers

Xinhua, June 15, 2016 Adjust font size:

Africa will require massive financial support to enable poor peasant farmers to practice viable commercial farming in order to fully get rid of hunger and poverty, said participants at the 7th Africa Agriculture science week.

Rwanda hosts a four-day high level meeting which has attracted about 1,000 delegates from Africa and beyond under the theme "Apply Science, Impact Livelihoods".

"Farming in poor rural areas is not about throwing few seeds around and expecting that it would grow into crops for harvesting. Peasant farmers who cultivate these crops need financial support to nurture their crop fields in order to get substantial harvests," said Dr. yemi akinbamijo, executive director, Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA).

He noted majority African farmers are in dire need of financial support to boost their agricultural activities which has fell on deaf ears of their government's leadership and development partners.

Africa spends more than 35 billion U.S. dollars every year on imported food stuffs due to insufficient food produced on the continent, according to the African Development Bank (AfDB).

"Farmers have the capacity to analyze their agricultural problems and act on this analysis by making appropriate changes to their farming system, however due to lack of financial means, their produce remains very low," said Louis Butare, director general of Rwanda Agriculture Board.

He observed that the over reliance on development partners by African leaders to fund agriculture research could partly be blamed for the poor state of Agriculture in Africa.

Butare called on African leaders to revise their approach towards agriculture finance in order to ensure food sustainability for the people of the continent.

However on Monday, the AfDB president Dr. Akinwumi Adesina announced the bank's plan to invest 24 billion U.S. dollars in Agriculture in Africa in the next 10 years in a bid to boost agriculture transformation on the continent.

Agriculture in most African countries is characterized by a subsistence farming sector, revolving around staple food crop production.

The overall productivity of African agriculture has remained low for centuries, both in the food production and export sector.

Agriculture science week is an opportunity for Africa to understand how science, technologies and innovations can be used to transform agricultural sector. Endit