Agriculture looms large in national economies throughout Eastern and Central Africa, accounting for roughly 40 percent of regional gross domestic product (GDP). Agricultural productivity growth, however, has stagnated in recent years. Average yields for most crops currently fall well below levels elsewhere in Africa. In most countries of Eastern and Central Africa, agricultural growth has not kept pace with population growth. Given that the bulk of the region's population resides in rural areas and depends on agriculture for income and sustenance, hunger and malnutrition have deepened in recent years. The countries of Eastern and Central Africa are, therefore, progressively less able to meet the needs of their burgeoning populations.
Here are some of the pressing questions that the countries of the region face:
- Why was Uganda unable to export most of its bumper maize harvest in 2001, leading to drastic falls in domestic prices, even as neighboring Kenya and nearby Ethiopia were experiencing supply shortfalls?
- Why do smallholder farmers across Eastern and Central Africa pursue diversified subsistence-oriented production strategies in apparent disregard for more profitable specialized, market-oriented strategies?
- Why does research-based information play so small a role in Eastern and Central Africa's food and agricultural policy processes?
- Why do so few Eastern and Central African farmers use technologies that conserve or replenish natural resources, even as their yields fall year after year owing to natural resource degradation?