An Outlook on Harnessing Technological Innovative Competence in Sustainably Transforming African Agriculture

Abstract

Agricultural value chains worldwide provide essential support to livelihoods, ecosystem services, and the growing bioeconomy. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic slowed down or reversed decades of agricultural growth and exposed the vulnerabilities of farmers and the food insecure in Africa, thus reiterating the need to build resilience, agility, and adaptability for a sustainable agriculture. Existing social, political, environmental, and economic challenges demonstrate that a path to faster sustainable growth is increased productivity through improved input quality, of which technical inputs are a part. This work presents a perspective calling for African innovative competence in technological and methodological applications and solutions as part of the most critical area of a holistic organization for social progress. It finds that while performances of previous agricultural transformation efforts offer insights for future directions, novel pathways fitting to the diversity of situations and contexts on the continent are needed. These may include vertical agriculture in land-constrained regions to grow high-value products, ocean or sea farming in coastal regions, development of multiple-harvesting crops, and self-replicating plants. Developing standards that integrate current scientific methodologies and technologies with indigenous knowledge for agricultural growth and disaster management will bring the complementary benefits of both worlds into optimal development.

Keywords: agricultural productivity and food security; digital technologies; indigenous knowledge; pandemic; resilience; system shocks.

Figure 1

Sources of growth output for cereal yield in Sub‐Saharan Africa and other world regions.^{[ 10} , ^{20 ]}

Figure 2

Sources of agricultural output growth in Sub‐Saharan Africa and developing countries.^{[ 11} , ^{21 ]}

Figure 3

Sources of agricultural growth output.^{[ 24 ]} Increased Total Factor Productivity (TFP) is a result of the adoption of new technologies by existing farms and increased efficient resource use by farms (including the expansion of the most productive farms).

Figure 4

Schematic showing the integration of technologies and methodologies for transforming Africa agri‐food systems.