Celebrating African Agriculture

“The first work of mankind is farming.”
Bamana proverb, Mali

Long, Rich History of African Agriculture

Daniel Kalii, a 50-year-old farmer in southeastern Kenya, is testing 17 different varieties of cassava on his farm. The difference in the plants is noticeable: some are nearly four feet tall, others less than two feet. Kalii’s innovative approach, like that of farmers from Mali to Malawi, continues a long history of experimentation, adaptation and change by Africa’s farmers.

Present-day challenges faced by Africa’s small-scale farmers should not obscure this history, which has given the world some of its most important crops, while also taking crops from other world regions and adapting them to African conditions.

Diversity of crops, conditions and cultures

For thousands of years, African groups have cultivated indigenous grains and roots. From the Ethiopian highlands have come varieties of wheat, barley, lentil and sorghum—as well as coffee. From tropical West Africa have come African rice, yams, and cowpeas. Tillers of African soils have long grown melons, beans, groundnuts, nuts, vegetables and spices. Others have herded cattle, sheep and goats, or have mixed livestock and crop farming for a nutritious mix of milk, meat and food crops.

African farmers also have adopted new crops from distant lands, adding to farm lands banana and plantain from Southeast Asia, maize, cassava and potatoes from the Americas, and most recently, an interbreeding of Asian and African rice varieties created NERICA (New Rice for Africa), a variety that blends the strengths of both.

This great diversity of crops is a result of the great diversity of landscapes, soils, climates and cultures, including thousands of ethnic groups who speak no less than 800 languages and live across 53 African nations. But, nearly everywhere, African peoples farm, and they have acquired a deep knowledge of both farming and the environment.

While some of this knowledge has been lost, it has never been more necessary, as Africa’s small-scale farmers today struggle to combine old and new technologies under harsh conditions that are dramatically different from any time in the past. To regain the self-sufficiency in agricultural production that African societies had not so long ago means relying on African history, knowledge and creativity and applying the best that science has to offer.