Do you have any potential research outcomes and missing links for Africa to become a net food and agricultural products importer, despite it has vast agricultural potential?
How can Africa use its potential for agro-food industry and Agri-business development?
I did not understand the question in any particular criteria for inclusion
I believe that African people can build a better economy when they export value added goods to more developed economies. The advantage Africa has is having ability to develop tropical products for the developed economies which have African heritage. For the ability to get added value one might consider that Africa could focus on differentiated tropical markets by offering certified organic products. Another approach would be focus on producing products which have tropical products but is differentiated in other ways.
Thank you for sharing this interesting discussion point Dr. Shimelis Admassu Emire
There are too many challenges to the African Agro-procesing development. The fact that African agricultural production is done at small holder farms and it is extremely difficult to maintain uniformity of raw materials. This creates difficulty in manufacturing processed products with fairly acceptable consistency.
The other challenge is that many african food and other consumer goods do not have good market and rewarding returns. One of the reasons for the later challenge is the limited purchasing capacity of majority of the populations. This means that the market nature doesn't encourage innovations, compared to situations elsewhere.
The basence of incentives and enabling policyies as well as political stabilities scare off the international and multi-national Agro-processing firms from investing in many African regions. The absence of highly trained and skilled manpower in African is also another problem. For instance the agro-processing technology related fields have started about a decade or two ago in many African nations.
I believe also that there are numerious country and region-specific factors contributing to the limited growth of Agro-processing and perhaps many other economic sectors as well.
I think Africacan countries where,less is the ecological disturbance and good strength in NRM. Now everywhere, organic Farming concept is popularized where, as per my knowledge most of the area virgin and there is loy of scope for Organic Farming. There is great demand of organic certfied material or product in European country
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