Orienting Higher Education to Support Africa's Agricultural Development

Agriculture is Africa’s largest economic sector, representing 15 percent of the total GDP (or more than $100 billion annually). This pivotal sector just like the broader economy is resurging from a lull of no growth that marked the 1970’s to early 1990’s. Agriculture is one of the growth poles for the continent needed to both sustain current GDP growth rates, meet the continent’s present and future demands and supply global goods as well. The Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) is the strategic framework to achieve this goal. Some fundamental questions to ask are, “what role could universities play in supporting agricultural growth processes in the continent?”, “Have universities been part of growth processes taking place in the continent?” There are no straight answers to these questions. However, in this paper, we show that indeed the African university has contributed to the current growth, albeit at very low levels. The African university will however need to intensify its efforts to integrate into Africa’s development agenda, and to champion change. The dismal role of universities in development processes is attributed in part, to low levels of investments which unlike is the rest of the general African economy, only begun to receive fragmented support more recently. The general consensus however, is that what Africa has and will have to offer is both its young human resource and agricultural products, has great implications for educational, research and marketing institutions. To be sure, Africa’s higher education institutions especially the Universities are well placed to contribute immensely to delivering Africa’s offer to the global market. Currently, the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM), a consortium of 30 Agricultural Universities in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa is marshaling University capacity to support technological progress within the agricultural sector. In this paper we highlight examples of how that has been done by strengthening innovation capacity, farm productivity, labour productivity and competitiveness of smallholder based farming. Efforts taken to rebuild capacity of universities to engage in development agenda via home grown solutions are also discussed. The key lessons from past and ongoing initiatives as well as future perspectives are discussed within the context of strategic partnerships.