With such a double star stroke in streak, Vietnam made a dramatic recovery through government policy in providing the enabling environment and resources; and showed immense resilience in returning the country to normalcy, thanks to a well-cut investment in smallholder agriculture for banana, cassava, rice, etc, production.
All preindustrial societies across the world, Africa included, engaged in agrarian practices, and in such basic related extractive industries, to accumulate wealth towards diversified portfolios and modernisation of their economies, today.
And remarkably, these were attained through significant contributions from smallholder farmers in consumer-producer societies, at the time, playing a key role of developing initiatives and sophisticated approaches towards fantastic outcomes. Smallholder farmers provided the platform for a smooth flow of food products at affordable local prices from their surpluses. Further, smallholders ensured food security from reserved stock or storage, even during hard times like drought or famine situations.
Most countries did succeed indeed from such humble beginnings, and have since developed advanced economies, except Africa, which didn’t participate in colonisation or came with an innovative contribution during the industrial revolution. And these countries succeeded through the implementation of rigorous regulatory regimes on land tenure systems, agriculture labour laws, conducting market research and surveys across the globe, and by providing special packages of incentives to ameliorate the high risk of investment in agriculture.
Like it has been said repeatedly, when the fundamentals are weak, it exposes the infirmity of any superstructure placed atop it. In this sense, this is a call to fix the economies of African countries by first taking a critical look at getting the fundamentals of its food security right.
On a premise, that the building blocks of any compound, complex or sophisticated system begins with simple and primary units, let’s assume the case of the current subject of observation, where smallholder farmers are the formidable indispensable basic unit of measure in the industry.
For practical illustration purposes, let’s look at Vietnam, for example. In many ways, the political history and the political economy of the South East Asian country has a lot in common with several African countries. But Vietnam distinguished itself in many ways by first engaging in its liberation struggles through war to remove the yoke of French colonisation.
After this salvo with French imperialism, the Americans engaged the Vietnamese in what became known as the vietkong war; in which Vietnam, once again, humiliated the Yankees with an embarrassing defeat that sent them packing as reminiscent recently with their retreat from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, to mention but a few.
With such a double star stroke in streak, Vietnam made a dramatic recovery through government policy in providing the enabling environment and resources; and showed immense resilience in returning the country to normalcy, thanks to a well-cut investment in smallholder agriculture for banana, cassava, rice, etc, production.
Also, it [Vietnam] showed leadership in the area of harvesting seafoods such as fish, lobsters, shrimps, sprawns, etc. The government made good money from exports to balance its imports cover, shore foreign reserves and created surpluses.
Today, agriculture in Vietnam has been revolutionised and modernised, now employing directly 4% of the population to do the job with increased efficiency. The rest of the population is engaged in other economic activities, which have helped shape the economy of the country to become one of the fastest growing in the region and a model for Africa.
In another example, let’s take a look at recent events that came to focus, when Russia embarked on a demilitarisation and denazification special operations in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The Western world admitted in overwhelmed error, that Russia is a critical and a major world supplier of grains and organic fertilisers.
In addition, these western economies and their allies blame the hikes in prices of food on what they term as the Russian-Ukrainian war. Russia, to its credit, is a major exporter in other highly demanded traded commodities and industrial equipment, machinery and hardwares.
This means, that Russian engagement in global agriculture has enhanced its status of an autarkic economy, where it is self-reliant and self-sufficient through its evolved graduated smallholder programmes. This is a pointer to governments in Africa interested in decolonisation to pursue a dedicated commitment to increased food production for domestic consumption, and export surpluses for foreign exchange in support of Balance of Payments.
In his decolonisation of Ghana, which he linked to every country on the African continent, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah under the First Republic, showed top priority to food production in Ghana. It was carefully laid out in articulate plan from a scientific and commercial interest management perspective – with elaborate structures to promote diversity in increased crop and livestock production and research.
Having established a Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, a Food Research Institute was developed out of it and incorporated to purpose. Also, a separate entity – Management Development and Productivity Institute – was established to augment in this area of human capital and resource requirement.
Thereafter, the entire country was rezoned to reflect diversity in accordance with various potentials a community held, making the rezoning impactful in project engagement and in project planning. The idea of rezoning made it easier to gather and share data, which informed with accuracy and precision the nature of a required particular technical service, such as agric extension services, or another.
For a rain-fed agriculture, field reports from, for instance, Field Officers to Zonal Offices made management of the sector efficient and allowed room for creative and innovative administrative processes and procedures at District, Regional and National Offices of the Ministry of [Food and] Agriculture.
It was on the premise of such reports of rainfall activities and locations of water bodies, which recommended the construction of numerous irrigation dams in the country. The period under consideration saw the introduction of Workers Brigade, which engaged youth energy in cash crop and food production to meet country consumption and industrial requirements.
It goes without saying, that a record in high yielding cocoa beans variety and production culture, and the entire procurement and supply management structure were achieved through adequate attention and planning in research (of a rare kind at the time, which scored Ghana as a leading producer.
These programme of activities opened the country up in human capital and resources development through training and equipment in instructions and skills development. It paved way in targeted job creation and improved wages and salaries, leading to a glut that invited migrant workers who flooded the country.
It is obvious from current trends and measured strengths and weaknesses of African countries, that no such anticipated rapid results in research and development in science, engineering and technology holds any potential to upset current trends and catapult Africa or an African country to the levels attained by countries described as developed countries or the First World.
Also, no African country has the opportunity to exploit another country on or outside the continent as a colony, or making it subservient as pertained in the relative past, when Europe amassed great wealth on the blind side of Africa and Africans.
Thus, Africa, and for that matter, African leaders who want to avoid another bout of 500 or more years of domination must begin to think, and think hard on this model of decolonisation process.
*Shmuel Ja’Mba Abm has extensive scholarly publications that establish him as a leading academic expert in regional geopolitical dynamics and diplomatic relations in Africa. Author of e-monographs on geopolitics, ethnic conflicts, and political philosophy.