Toendepi Shonhe; Edith Phwasana and Milicent Chimwanda
The dominant Eurocentric thinking is that agriculture’s role in economic development is diminishing globally, yet emerging evidence from our study shows that Africa’s prospects to catch up with the rest of the world rest on this sector.
Land and agriculture are intricately connected to the broader economic growth and accumulation trajectories of African economies. None other than the World Bank, upon whose database we rely for this study, shows that as of 2021, 58.2% of the African population’s livelihoods are still reliant on agriculture, accounting for the sector’s continued importance.
Moreover, the sector employs 54.2% Africa’s workforce at various levels of agricultural commodity value chains.
Thus, the post-colonial African state continues to be concerned with agricultural production, commodity circulation and their impact of peasant production, accumulation as well as on national development, as the continent strives to catch up with the Global North.
The patterns of alteration in agriculture’s contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) varies across regions and nations.
Whereas the contribution of agriculture in the world rose from 3.8% to 4.3% between 1995 to 2021, its contribution in sub-Saharan Africa increased by a wider margin from 15.9% to 17.2% from 1995 to 2021. Thus, sub-Saharan Africa experienced 1.3% rise in agricultural contribution to the GDP, compared to 0.5% rise for the whole world.
This is contrary to South Asia which experienced a decline in agricultural contribution to the GDP from 22.4% to 16.7% and North America where a decline from 1.2% to 1% was experienced over the same period.
Thus, the data shows an increasing importance of agriculture in Africa and the world notwithstanding its declining significance in the North as well as in South Asia, where technological advancement is much more pronounced. Compared to other sectors, agricultural contribution to the world GDP rose from 3.8% to 4.3% between 1995 to 2021 while industry and manufacturing sectors’ total contribution dropped from 45.5% to 44.2%.
While North America dropped from 25.24% to 19.87% during that period, showing a decrease of 5.37% and Europe’s industry had a massive drop from 31.77% to 24.93%, representing a 6.84% drop, the world industrial and manufacturing contribution rose by 1.54% between 1995 to 2015.
This rise in industrial and manufacturing world contribution to the GDP was mainly driven by sub-Saharan Africa (0.35%) and South Asia (8.24%) achieved over the same period.The service sector is increasing in importance across the world even though this is more differentiated across countries and regions.
For example, in North America, total contribution by the service sector to total employment increased by 5.87% between 1995 and 2015, compared to 7.61% by Latin America and the Caribbean, 7.66% by South Asia, 8.01% by the sub-Saharan Africa and 12.05% in Europe.
Globally, the service sector contribution to the creation of employment rose by 10.62% to 48.02% over the same period. Put simply, the modernization pathway from agriculture to the service sector is significant globally, having risen by 10.62%.
Revealingly, even though Europe leads at 12.05%, it is sub-Saharan Africa that comes second at 8.01%. Thus, despite the sustained importance of agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, the region is equally improving in the industry and service sectors. The data also reveals a consistent relationship between agriculture’s contribution to the GDP, economic growth, and employment over the periods under review.
For example, the sub-Saharan Africa region experienced a rise in the GDP contribution of 1.36% also experienced an economic growth contribution at 3.05% between 1985 and 2021. This notwithstanding, the service sector experienced a commendable rise in its contribution of 8.01% between 1995 and 2015.
Put simply, the improvement in the performance of other sectors being experienced in sub-Saharan Africa does not reflect a corresponding decline in the importance of agriculture. However, in North America, while the sector provides 5.87% in employment contribution, it has the least contribution to the GDP (1%) and economic growth (-178%).
Following COVID-19, sub-Saharan Africa experienced a growth in its contribution to the GDP, from 2.8% to 3.1% in 2020 and 2021. South Asia also had a positive contribution of 3.4% and 3.0% in 2020 and 2021.
Latin America also maintained a positive contribution over the same period, being 0.4% and 1.1% respectively. Quite to the contrary, North America and Europe experienced a negative contribution in 2021.
In North America, agricultural contribution fell from 11.5% to -17.8% while in Europe it fell from -0.03% to -0.5%. This is to say, COVID 19 had a more significant negative impact on the North compared to the South. The nature of agrarian change in Africa remains crucial in understanding the character of industrialization and economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Since the reliance on agriculture subsists for most of the Global South, tendencies for some African countries to experience repeasantisation can be obvious. Accumulation pathways can also be understood in the same vein since Africa’s development cannot be reducible to the Europe-American experience which was associated with land concentration, mass proletarianisation, migration to colonies and transfers of raw materials to the centre.
To be sure, industrialization and economic growth in Europe were fostered by the deprivation and exportation of raw materials from the developing countries, which is not reproducible for contemporary Africa.
Primarily, domestic economies are undermined by pervasive exploitation and exportation of unprocessed primary commodities which constitutes the export of value and employment opportunities.
Governments in Africa ought to limit primitive accumulation through cutting down on raw materials so that the domestic economies can gain the most out of the primary commodities. Agriculture in Africa relies on primary production which when combined with fuels and mining accounts for the greater share of exports, undergirded by persisting primitive capital accumulation.
Africa needs to break free from the Eurocentric view and trust more in the African thought and learn from Asia as it can improve the chances for a genuine Africa rise.
Several scholars conclude that sub-Saharan Africa’s agricultural production is dominated by small scale family farming even though these tend to generate a variety of paths of accumulation.
As Sam Moyo observed, Africa was converging towards the creation of a ‘trimodal agrarian structure in which small scale family farms predominate’ even though they exist alongside expanding large-scale commercial farms and plantations.
In Zimbabwe’s case, following the imposition of sanctions by Europe and North America in response to the ‘violent and chaotic’ 2000 land reforms, the emergent process of de-industrialisation resulted in urban to rural migration and in turn repeasantisation of the countryside.
Other scholars argue that despite the introduction of neoliberal policies that force governments to reduce support towards small scale family farms, they have remained resilient.
According to Mkandawire, the introduction of neoliberal policies led to reduced budgetary allocation towards the support of enabling variables such as technological, organisational and institutional support as well as other infrastructures.
Small scale family farm production also faced some challenges due to increasing land acquisitions especially in response to the food crisis of 2007. A high rate of urbanisation and the associated changes in food preferences resulting in higher demand for protein foods.
Large scale commercial farms exist in former settler economies such as South Africa, Namibia and now to lesser extent in Zimbabwe as has been the case in Kenya for a longer period in most of the African countries where small-scale family farms predominate.
However they are highly integrated into global commodities. Earlier on Mkandawire had predicted that the commodification of land through the creation of land markets would force changes in the African traditional land tenure systems thereby impacting the production systems and African accumulation.
In Zimbabwe’s case, the initial rise in small family farms cereal food crop production in the early post-independence period regressed in the mid-2000s due to several factors including a debilitating economic crisis and the accompanying markets collapse.
However, the success of the tobacco industry in the first two decades after the land reform positively transformed the role and contribution of small-scale farmers tilling customary and resettled lands. The land reform programme has reinforced African traditional land tenure systems despite the individualisation of title.
Put simply, contract farming has imbued agricultural capitalisation without tenure reform in countries such as Zimbabwe where tobacco farming leads the process.
In conclusion, the contribution of agricultural production to the national economic growth of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia remains high (above 3%). This is in contrasts with trends of agricultural contribution to economic growth elsewhere, where in some cases it has been negative.
The role of agriculture in propelling economic transformation remains firm and the role of the state in providing much needed support is crucial for African countries resulting in differentiated access to land, farming inputs and markets across classes of farmers.
However, state policy seems to outrank the peasantry leading to amplified social differentiation in rural areas. In the end, only a few connected elites tend to accumulate, creating ‘islands of relative prosperity in a sea of increasing marginalisation’ as observed by Mkandawire.
A genuine policy re-orientation to reverse these challenges should be prioritised as we argued in our paper.
