Support Systems for Agricultural Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Poor agricultural growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is sometimes attributed to the absence of major technological breakthrough. It must be recognized that there is enough scope to raise agricultural production under the prevailing technological environment by removing many deficiencies in the agricultural output marketing and input supply systems. The importance of this strategy cannot be overemphasized as it will improve the agricultural performance in the short-run and facilitate the spread of new technologies when they become available. This brief paper is based on the experiences of Asian countries in tackling the deficiencies in support systems for agricultural development. The three major arguments are as follows. First, an objective assessment of the slack in the existing production system may be crucially important in generating meaningful policy responses. Second, it seems useful to distinguish between marketing systems for food vis-à-vis commercial crops like cotton, tobacco, coffee and cocoa. Although deficiencies in all these systems may be similar, their origins and solutions could be quite different. Third, the questions of how to remove various deficiencies in policies seems much larger and far more complex than just of government’s direct involvement in these systems and “faulty” price policies.