African Agricultural Futures: Opportunities, Challenges & Priorities - Dr Siwa Msangi, Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and AIFSC Project Coordinator for "Strategic Foresight for African Agriculture"

1. African Agricultural Futures:
Opportunities, Challenges & Priorities
Siwa Msangi
Environment & Production Technology Division, IFPRI

2. In this presentation, I will…
 Provide brief overview of the important drivers of
change in African agriculture
 Make an argument for future-oriented assessments
and point to the kinds of studies that have been done
 Show why they have not given an adequate treatment
of African agriculture
 Point to some key areas of uncertainty that remain
about Africa’s agricultural future
 Discuss some insights from Africa-focused studies
and an expert assessment on foresight for Africa
 Draw some final conclusions and recommendations
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3. Why do future studies for agriculture?
To explore areas of uncertainty to better understand
which might be the real ‘game changers’ in future
 In the business world – foresight is used as a way
of challenging assumptions about future growth
potential
 The future of agriculture will be shaped by
uncertain driving forces of supply and demand
 Focus on the most important drivers of change to
see their influence under alternative trajectories
 Helps in the process of planning and prioritizing
investments that take a long time to have effect
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4. Important
drivers of
change in
agriculture &
food systems

5. Key drivers of future agriculture
Some drivers of change act on a short and fast time
scale – while others act over a longer time period
 Short-term drivers (export bans, crop
failures) lead to near-term ‘blips’ and market
shocks that allow limited time for adjustment
 More substantial changes in policies (shift in
trade regime) take time to implement will
exert effects w/in a longer time frame
 The very slow-moving drivers (climate
change & the impacts of ag R&D) will take
much longer to be felt – and need a much
longer-term perspective for analysis
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6. Characterizing drivers of change
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7. The type of assessment varies by timescale
Studies will differ according to whether they want to
consider shorter- or longer-term forces of change
 Short-term outlooks might consider outcomes
over a year or two ahead (market intelligence)
 Medium-term outlooks will consider a ‘baseline’
trend over 10-15 years under current policies and
contrast that with alternative policy impacts
(OECD-FAO, FAPRI, USDA outlooks)
 Longer-term studies of 20-30 years look at effects
of more gradual drivers of change w/in complex
storylines of political-economic change (GEO-4,
Millennium Assessment, IAASTD, IPCC)
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8. What do these assessments say about Africa?
Many of these global assessments tend to be rather
coarse in their treatment of agriculture in SS Africa
 Since Africa’s share of global trade is
relatively small – it tends to get highly
aggregated (single region or part of RoW)
 Coverage of data in SS Africa tends to be
relatively poor compared to other regions
 The underlying driving forces and production
systems tend not to be well understood
 The tremendous heterogeneity w/in SS
Africa tends to get missed in these studies
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9. Key messages from IFPRI assessments
IFPRI has undertaken more detailed medium- to long-
term outlooks of African agriculture & its key drivers
 Reflects a steady growth in cereals consumption
patterns – mostly as food (incl coarse grains like
millet & sorghum which are feed elsewhere)
 Lots of un-tapped potential for irrigation remains –
requires more to come from rainfed production
 Meat consumption also projected to grow steadily,
although from lower per capita levels compared with
other regions of the world
 Calorie availability improves to 2030 and beyond (with
acceleration after 2015) – overall reduction in
malnutrition progress (but not as fast as in Asia)
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10. Changing population – both size and
composition
Total population
growth
(2000-2030)
Urbanization
growth
(2000-2030)

11. Food consumption growth to 2030
Total cereals consumption
Total meat consumption
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12. Production growth to 2030
Cereals production
Meat production
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13. Sources of cereal production growth to 2030
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14. Key sources of uncertainty in African Ag
There are a number of key areas of uncertainty that
need exploration in the future of African agriculture
 The implications for urbanization and wider
socio-economic growth on diets & demand
 The effects that agribusiness & commercial
interests will have on value chains & the rural
sector (‘land grabs’, farm size trends)
 How important will Africa’s internal trade be
in future compared to exchange with RoW?
 The impacts of climate change & incr
variability on various regions of SS Africa
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15. Exploration of African agricultural futures
Held a recent expert consultation to discuss some
critical future drivers of change & their implications
 Get a perspective of major issues driving
change in Eastern, Southern & West Africa
 Identify some common challenges faced in
quantifying African agricultural futures in
terms of data and methodology
 In addition to the issues of urbanization,
agribusiness and climate change
• The importance of the informal sector
• The needed ‘pull’ of non-agricultural sectors
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16. Some insights from Southern Africa
Consistent demand growth expected
Consumption Growth in demand for potatoes (18%) and wheat-based
patterns products (20%) -- while maize meal demand remains stagnant
Demand for beef expected to grow at annual rate of 3% p.a.,
Resource use Resource constraints will continue to heavily revolve around
patterns land and water availability
Production Sources of increased production likely to come from
patterns intensification and not land expansion
Close linkage b/w dynamics of commodity and energy markets
Slowed domestic and global economic growth will keep SA rand
Market
strong with very gradual depreciation in exchange rate
environment
Uncertainty will persist over policy environment with market
deregulation and changes in trade tariff regime
From BFAP 2012 Outlook
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17. Important messages for AIFSC
 There are gains to be made in improving ag performance in
SS Africa – that ACIAR & partners can contribute towards
• Low-hanging fruit remains in terms of closing yield gaps
• Better market connections can help farmers to do this
• More irrigation potential can be exploited but more will still
need to come from rainfed production
 Patterns of urbanization & socio-economic growth will
provide important sources of future demand
 Some of Africa’s best market potential in future will be
within its own borders and between neighbors – regional
bodies (ECOWAS, COMESA, EAC) can help
 Agribusiness (foreign & domestic) will continue to be an
important player in shaping value chains w/in Africa

18. THANK YOU!