By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
July 20, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]
The need to drastically transform agriculture in Africa, in order to make the land yield its equivalent in food production like many a technologically advanced Western country, cannot be gainsaid. And so it is very much in order for Mr. Kofi Annan to call for the rapid transformation in farming methods on the African continent (See "Boost Investment in African-Led Research - Kofi Annan" TV3Network.com 7/17/14).
Where I differ with the celebrated former United Nations Secretary-General regards the question of whether, indeed, it is the West that ought to take the radical initiative in partnering with Africans in order to bring about such direly needed revolution in food production. Unlike Mr. Annan, I like to believe that it is us, Africans, who have to take the bold initiative of making food production, and timely distribution, as well, the centerpiece of our economic development agenda.
No development of any form or shape can be foisted on a reluctant partner with any remarkable degree of success. And so far, most African leaders have not shown the kind of dedication and respect that are the fundamental ingredients of propelling our level of food production, silage and distribution to the highest level attainable. And here ought to be vividly recalled that mnemonically indelible scandal over food farming that erupted during the otherwise largely progressive tenure of President John Agyekum-Kufuor, when a cabinet appointee was widely reported to have said that for farming to acquire the requisite dignity as an enterprise worthy of the attention of highly educated Ghanaians, more highly placed government officials needed to involve themselves in the same.
What provoked the ire of many Ghanaians around the globe was not this otherwise laudable suggestion itself, but the inexcusably cynical motive that attneded the same. It well appeared then that the ministerial appointee who made the aforesaid suggestion - I believe it was Mr. Kwamena Bartels - was actually intent on acquiring a large tract of state-owned arable land at a virtual giveaway price for the purpose. Had deafening public outcry not gone up, the entire proposal would have ended up as a crony affair, whereby such unconscionable land-grab fit would almost have exclusively become the especial preserve of ministerial appointees.
Then there was the massive importation of tractors which had been earmarked for the boosting of commercial agriculture. We would shortly learn that the overwhelming bulk of these tractors, which were scheduled to be sold by the government, at heavily subsidized prices to big- and medium-scale farmers, had ended up in the hands of ministerial appointees who had then decided to criminally lease them out to the original beneficiaries at exorbitant rental rates.
What I am trying to suggest here is that contrary to the widely accepted theory hereabouts, in Africa, it is not the Western governments' routine policy of heavily subsidizing farmers that is stifling the healthy competitive takeoff of its continental African industrial counterpart. Rather, African leaders are the number one enemy, or bane, of salutary agricultural transformation on the continent. And this is where any discourse on the remarkable transformation of food production ought to begin.
Indeed, if, as Mr. Annan aptly maintains, a hungry man is not a liberated person, in Africa the primary cause of such nutritional deprivation is none other than the African politician.
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