| Happy New Year from the Heart of AAAE! |
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Dear AAAE Members,
Happy New Year! As we welcome 2025, we’re thrilled to embark on another year of advancing agricultural economics across Africa with you. This year promises exciting opportunities to connect, learn, and contribute to meaningful change. Be sure to renew your membership to continue accessing valuable resources, networks, and events tailored to our community. We also want to hear from you! Share your stories, research, and accomplishments with us so we can feature them in upcoming newsletters and celebrate your impact together. Here’s to a fruitful and inspiring year ahead!
Warm regards, The AAAE Board
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| Opinion: 2025, a year for Africa's pivot to sustainable agriculture |
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2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for Africa’s agricultural transformation. With robust frameworks and evolving technologies, the continent is well-positioned to drive a shift toward sustainable, resilient, and inclusive food systems. Africa stands on the cusp of a transformative era, with several robust frameworks poised to reshape its food systems. The upcoming African Union’s Extraordinary Summit, scheduled for Jan. 9-11, 2025, will play a critical role in this journey as leaders convene to adopt the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme, or CAADP, strategy and action plan for 2026-2035. This landmark event aims to set in motion a 10-year agenda to build strong and resilient agrifood systems that drive agricultural growth, transformation, and improved livelihoods across the continent. Read More
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| 2025 Women in Agrimedia Visibility Challenge: Unmute Your Mic! |
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Calling all extraordinary women to share their powerful journeys! Deadline:15th January , 2025
Are you a woman in agribusiness with a powerful story to share? Do you want to inspire change and showcase the incredible impact of women on agribusiness? The world is ready to witness your efforts, celebrate your journey, and feel your impact. Seize the moment! Let your voice be heard.
Join the 2025 Women in Agrimedia Visibility Challenge! The story of agribusiness is incomplete without the voices of women. While women produce 70% of Africa’s food, their stories are often underrepresented in mainstream media. The Women in Agrimedia Visibility Challenge seeks to bridge this gap by inspiring women to share their narratives, highlight their innovations, and challenge stereotypes.
What’s in it for you? - Media Training: Learn how to effectively communicate your story and engage with diverse audiences.
- Exposure: Get featured in leading agribusiness media platforms and connect with global networks.
- Mentorship: Receive guidance from top Agribusiness and media experts.
- Personalised Media Kit: Create a polished media package, including articles, videos, and pitches to promote your work.
- Opportunities to present your story at high-profile agribusiness events.
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| Drought and farming: how women in South Africa are using Indigenous knowledge to cope |
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Africa’s small-scale farmers make up nearly 80% of all farms in the agriculture sector. In South Africa, there are about 2 million small-scale farmers, predominantly Black and based in the eastern summer rainfall region of the country. A small-scale farmer produces food for their family on land that is generally smaller than five hectares. Small-scale farmers sell their excess produce but have limited access to resources, technology and big markets. Africa’s small-scale farming sector is hit hard when there’s a drought because these farmers rely on rainwater. South Africa has been affected by major drought episodes over the years. However, 2015 stands out as the driest period on record since 1904, with drought affecting 2.7 million households, including small-scale farmers.Read More
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| Delivering regenerative agriculture through digitalization and AI |
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Farmers who adopt these regenerative and precision agricultural methods may gain substantial financial benefits over time, with some studies suggesting profit increases as high as 120%. Expanding these sustainable practices to cover 40% of the world's farmland could play a crucial role in limiting climate change, strengthening the resilience of our food production systems and protecting both ecological diversity and the economic well-being of farming communities. At its core, regenerative agriculture is about working with nature, not against it. And now we have digital tools and smart farming technologies to help us do so more effectively. Read more
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| BSV solutions empower African farmers, boost food security |
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Agriculture is the backbone of Africa’s economy, employing nearly 60% of the continent’s population of over 800 million, most of whom are small-scale farmers. Despite their critical role in feeding the continent, these farmers often face numerous barriers, including limited access to financial services, high-quality inputs, and competitive markets. Leveraging digital identity solutions built on the BSV blockchain can offer a massively transformative approach to addressing these challenges and fostering food security across the region. A digital identity provides farmers a secure, verifiable, and portable way to prove their identity and access critical services. This is especially significant for small-scale farmers in Africa, who often lack formal identification, making it difficult for them to benefit from subsidies, credit, and other support mechanisms. It is estimated that over 40% of the sub-Saharan African population lacks any form of identification. Read More
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| Farmer voices shaping co-design of innovations for sustainable mixed farming systems in Malawi |
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Engaging smallholder farmers in the co-design of agronomic innovations that improve decision-making and diversify farming systems is central to the Mixed Farming Systems (MFS) initiative in Malawi. The initiative focuses on intercropping systems with legumes—often regarded as “women’s crops”—to enhance both nutrition and soil fertility. Despite their significant contributions to farm labor, women often have limited control over land, assets, and key decisions. By recognizing farmers’ voices, especially those of women, the MFS initiative integrates social and gender dimensions, promoting whole-farm solutions that enhance livelihoods while protecting the environment.Read more
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| Can Angola, the second largest oil producer in Sub-Saharan Africa, transform itself from a food insecure country to a regional food hub? |
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Walking around Luanda, the capital of Angola, it's easy to marvel at the large, modern buildings, but also to wonder why this oil-rich country has so many people begging for food in the streets. Besides being the second-largest oil producer in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), just behind Nigeria, Angola also has vast arable land, plentiful water resources, and good climatic conditions to produce enough food to not only feed its population but also to sell to other countries. But the reality we see on the ground is not what we expect. Despite the country importing a significant amount of food and agricultural goods – having spent around $3.5 billion on food import in 2023, primarily from the European Union, Brazil, and the United States – about one-third of Angolans are currently experiencing hunger and often go one or more days to bed without eating due to a lack of food.
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| Harnessing the benefits of digital agriculture for smallholder farmers in East Africa |
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Mobile phone-based extension programmes can be used to disseminate information about modern inputs and management practices to smallholder farmers in low-income countries who would be difficult to reach through in-person visits. This column reports on an evaluation of six different text message-based agricultural extension programmes that collectively reached over 128,000 farmers in Kenya and Rwanda. The findings show that while the impacts of text messages are modest, their low cost means they can be an extremely cost-effective way of influencing individual behaviour. Read more
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| Contribution of agriculture, forestry, and fishing sector to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Africa as of 2023, by country |
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Agriculture remains a pillar of Africa’s economy Despite the significant variations across countries, agriculture is a key sector in Africa. In 2022, it represented around 17 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP, growing by over two percentage points compared to 2011. The agricultural industry also strongly contributes to the continent’s job market. The number of people employed in the primary sector in Africa grew from around 197 million in 2011 to 230 million in 2021. In proportion, agriculture employed approximately 43 percent of Africa’s working population in 2021. Agricultural activities attracted a large share of the labor force in Central, East, and West Africa, which registered percentages over the regional average. On the other hand, North Africa recorded the lowest share of employment in agriculture, as the regional economy relies significantly on the industrial and service sectors. Read More
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Becoming an AAAE member: The African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE) is a nonprofit association serving the professional interests of those working in agricultural and broadly related fields of development economics. Becoming a member of AAAE brings together people who work in the same industry and/or share common interests and goals. Please subscribe today and become a member to help in advocating for our shared purpose. |
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African Association of Agricultural Economists c/o University of Nairobi, C.A.V.S, Upper Kabete Campus Loresho Ridge Road, Nairobi, Kenya |
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