East Africa: Recommendations for Urgent Action On Productivity Growth

By Jessica Agnew, Ph.D., Associate Director, CALS Global, Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

TFP Growth in East Africa reached its peak between 1991 and 2000. Since then, it has declined, reaching negative growth between 2011 and 2020. Irrigation extension has changed little over the past six decades, while input intensification growth has surged since 1991. Land expansion continues to be the primary driver of agricultural output growth; however, during the last decade, there has been a cooling off in the region’s output growth rate.

On June 23, 2022, the Global Agricultural Productivity Initiative at Virginia Tech held a multi-sectoral event in Nairobi, Kenya, to discuss the need and potential pathways for increasing agricultural productivity, especially among smallholder farmers, in East Africa. Leaders and experts from the public sector, industry, academia, research institutes, NGOs, and farmer organizations participated in panel discussions and an interactive workshop to discuss the way forward.

In his keynote address, Tim Njagi, Research Fellow at Egerton University’s Tegemeo Institute in Nairobi, emphasized that “for sustainable growth, Kenya and the region must rely on increasing productivity on available land.” He outlined the importance of investment in agricultural research and development given demonstrated success in addressing emergent challenges such as the adverse effects of climate change and weather variability, increased pest and disease outbreaks, lack of household resilience to production shocks, and limited value addition and agro-processing scalability.

The event’s fireside chat with Dr. Canisius Kanangire, Executive Director of the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), and Dr. Jason Grant, W.G. Wysor Professor of Agriculture at Virginia Tech, explored the potential of technology and trade to contribute to productivity growth in East Africa. Dr. Kanangire highlighted access to finance as a significant challenge to smallholder producer productivity growth. “Farmers are trapped in that inability to access the available technologies,” he remarked. Further, he emphasized that access to technologies has not been inclusive in the region, favoring male, middle-aged, medium to large-scale producers. As a result, women and youth have not had equal opportunities to adopt new technologies because of numerous and interacting structural barriers.

“We have the potential. We have the people. We have the land. Africa can become a supplier of global food needs, which will contribute to resilient food and nutrition security on a global scale.”

— Dr. Canisius Kanangire, Executive Director, AATF

Three working groups convened in the collaborative workshop portion of the agenda to discuss urgent action items for accelerating productivity growth in Kenya. The key recommendations are summarized below.

Key Technologies and Innovations for Accelerating Productivity Growth

1. Prioritize improved inputs.
2. Technologies and innovations that consider the environmental contexts and constraints are imperative for adapting to climate change and reducing the risk of investment.
3. Improved processes and procedures in the agri-food system are as important as improved inputs, and as such need to be prioritized and invested in taking to scale.
4. Access to information and technology needs to consider more than just convincing farmers or other value chain actors to adopt digital solutions. Data governance, granularity, platformization, realistic role of machine learning and artificial intelligence, etc. need to be thoughtfully considered with a clear plan for scale.
5. Disruptive innovation needs to be harnessed for the East African context, with clear implementation frameworks defined from the outset and guidance for R&D investment. Circular economy, controlled environment agriculture, vertical agriculture, and others have only been explored to a very limited extent.

Priorities for Improving Access to Finance, Markets and Information, Transportation, Storage, and ICT

1. The affordability of ICTs must be improved, digital literacy will rapidly follow.
2. Partnerships between academia, scientists, and the private sector must be harnessed to reduce the cost and time it takes to reach scale.
3. Develop and implement monitoring systems for standards, regulations, and incentives.
4. Strengthen the system of cooperatives, with checks and balances for good governance and transparency.
5. Invest in R&D on packaging, shelf-life, and value addition processes to maximize market demand.

Barriers Preventing Smallholders from Accessing Productivity Enhancing Solutions

1. Affordability and availability of productivity-enhancing solutions
2. Policies and policy setting environments
3. Market structure
4. Lack of incentive and reward structure for R&D
5. Lack of communication network in participatory systems
6. Lack of access to affordable financing
7. Centralization of R&D systems
8. Fragmented data systems

Recommended Actions for Policymakers and Legislators to Create a More Robust Enabling Environment for Productivity Growth

1. Strengthen existing policies. This will require a review, evaluation, and participatory development process that includes county governments and other governance stakeholders. For example, the Kenya National Extension Policy needs to be strengthened and redeployed.
2. Policies that incentivize private sector investment and for a farm to be able to act as a business.
3. Create policies that are evidence-informed and data-driven. Policymakers are looking for trustworthy sources of data and evidence, accompanied by strong recommendations backed by science and demonstrated return on policy change.
4. Roles between the federal and county governments need to be clearly defined, embraced, financed, and executed.
5. Country and county involvement in all interventions and projects implemented by donors to ensure harmonization and prevent redundancy.
6. Strengthen the system for monitoring and compliance of standards and regulations by resourcing and building the capacity of relevant regulatory bodies.

What Actions, Policies, and Investments, Can Be Taken in the Next 12 to 36 Months to Accelerate TFP Growth in the Region?

1. Achieve consensus on the critical evidence gaps, mobilize investment to fill them (not only financial, but could include a commitment of partners to deploy through interventions and programming), and create partnerships in the enabling environment to scale proven innovations and solutions.
2. Conduct a risk and vulnerability assessment to prioritize action.
3. Develop compelling regulatory and legal frameworks that will ensure the implementation of existing policies and policy changes. How will they be implemented, monitored, and enforced? In which governmental body will the policies be anchored?
4. A policy brief is urgently needed to brief policymakers on the scope, scale, and sources of the challenges at hand and the barriers to accelerated agricultural productivity growth.
5. Take an active role in advocacy.
6. Build capacity on data-driven and evidence-informed policy setting.
7. Investment in the capacity of the farmer is needed to understand how to improve productivity and improve the resilience of agricultural livelihoods.
8. Invest in infrastructure that will mobilize the adoption of technology, access to information, and getting the product to the end consumer (domestic and foreign).

What Would Change in East Africa if a Sustainable Rate of TFP Growth Could Be Achieved?

1. Livelihoods would be improved. Basic needs would be met.
2. An economic multiplier effect would activate, leading to prosperity and regional resilience.
3. With the appropriate complementary and integrated actions, inclusivity would be achieved, increasing the participation of women and youth in the agri-food system.
4. Stabilization of food prices, conflict and crime, and economic growth.
5. Significant progress would be made on Vision 2030, SDGs, and Vision 2063.