What's New

Agriculture in West Africa faces numerous challenges, including soil degradation, market instability, and significant threats from climate change. In response to these obstacles, many adaptation strategies, such as production of non-traditional crop varieties, have been encouraged. It remains less clear, however, what actually drives farmers’ decisions to adopt (or not adopt) these strategies. For example, a farmer may choose to plant a new crop variety in response to a short-term drought or as part of a longer term strategy to adapt to climate change.

FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning Systems (GIEWS) has released several new country briefs for Africa south of the Sahara. This series of briefs provides an overview of the food security situation in prioritized countries, focusing on the current agricultural season, harvest prospects for staple food crops and livestock, estimates and forecasts of cereal production, and food price and food policy trends.

Agricultural Productivity in Africa

As a growing population fuels increased demand for food, the pressure on Africa’s agricultural sector also grows. However, agricultural productivity in the region remains low. A new IFPRI book, Agricultural productivity in Africa: Trends, patterns, and determinants, provides an extensive study of the current condition of agricultural productivity in Africa, arguing that the region’s ongoing economic development gives hope for the sustainable expansion of the agricultural sector.

Urbanization rates have exploded across Africa over the past 20 years. According to the African Development Bank, between 1982 and 2012, African cities grew at a rate of 3.5 percent per year, and experts only forecast this trend to continue. The World Bank expects the share of Africans living in urban areas to reach 50 percent by 2030.

Cautiously Optimistic Outlook for African Agriculture