Agricultural researchers in Africa have been urged to come up with more innovations in agriculture, through research, to accelerate transformation of the sector across the continent. 

The call was made yesterday by the Prime Minister, Anastase Murekezi, while opening the 7th Africa Agriculture Science Week and the General Assembly of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) in Kigali.

“Agriculture Science Week is an opportunity for Africa to understand more how science, technologies and innovations can be used to transform the sector which employs many people on the continent but is still largely subsistence-based.

‘‘This sector plays a very important role in Africa’s socio-economic transformation. As a business, agriculture should not base on subsistence. To transform agriculture from subsistence to market oriented business in this era of climate change, technological and innovative research registered at academic level should add value to agricultural value chains,” the Prime Minister said.

Dr Charity Kruger, the chairperson of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), said promotion of modern, commercial agriculture is the key to transforming African economies and the livelihoods of its people, particularly the rural poor by eliminating extreme poverty, ending hunger and malnutrition, achieving food self-sufficiency and turning Africa into a net food exporter, and setting Africa in step with global commodity and agricultural value chains.

Dr Martial de Paul Ikounga, Commissioner for Human Resources, Science and Technology at the African Union Commission (AUC), echoed the same call to improve technology so that the continent can be able to feed its fast growing population.

“We are well aware that the agricultural sector plays a pivotal role in Africa’s social and economic development and yet it faces daunting challenges related to fast growing population.’’

‘‘This is a major challenge in the agricultural sector in Africa which will have to produce more food on lands which really need to be managed sparingly to face growing phenomena like modern housing, and with increasingly scarce water and labor. Our challenge is how to make our Agrifood systems competitive and we should scale the big hurdle of the elaboration of a sustainable financing mechanism for our institutions and wean them from haphazard and unpredictable financing modalities,” Ikounga noted.

According to the United Nations’ 2015 World Population Prospect Report, more than half of the global population growth between now and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa. The report also states that of the 2.4 billion people projected to be added to the global population between 2015 and 2050, 1.3 billion will be in Africa. It also predicts that after 2050, Africa is projected to be the only major area that would have a continually growing population, housing 39 per cent of the global population in 2100, yet in 1950, only 9 per cent of the world’s population was African.

Dr Akinwumi Adesina, the president of African Development Bank (AfDB), said Africa needs to invest more in agricultural research and innovations to achieve real agriculture modernization and transformation.

“To transform our agriculture requires a lot more and a research system, including policies, comprehensive investments, infrastructure development, transformation of financial sector to ensure that we transform subsistence based agriculture to market oriented. Yet, all of these should be research-based,” he said.

“We need to invest more in agricultural research so that our agriculture can be efficient and let Africa to be a processing centre instead of a consumption centre”.

The Science Week and General Assembly of FARA is a triennial event, which is the principal forum for all stakeholders in African Agriculture Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) to reflect on their achievements and craft strategies and actions aimed at enhancing the contribution of agriculture STI towards accelerating the continent’s socio-economic transformation.