Moving towards a green productive agriculture in Africa: The role of ICTs

A putting additional strain on scarce foreign exchange reserves. Acknowledging the rapid uptake of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Africa and building upon the mitigated success of the green revolution in Asia, the paper discusses the potential of ICTs to transform Africa's agriculture in an inclusive and sustainable way, by benefitting smallholders, addressing land reform issues, providing adequate financial services, price and market information as well as by boosting global value chains. The study goes further by providing policy recommendations for African governments and the private sector on how ICTs usage could be further leveraged to enhance productivityand promote a green agriculture in Africa. griculture remains an important source of livelihood for the majority of Africans but the sector is still very unproductive, resulting in food insecurity and large imports of staple foods, 2 Chief Economist Complex AEB Volume 7 Issue 7 2016 of chemical fertilizers, Africa's soils vary by region and need a more tailored approach (Nin Pratt and McBride, 2014;  2008) Africa's low use of irrigation and overwhelming dependence on often insufficient rain fed agriculture also hinder the continent's low agricultural productivity. As a matter of fact, Malawi which has efficiently managed its available water supply since the launch of the Green Belt Initiative in 2012 (Grow Africa Secretariat, 2014) became the second top food crops producer in Africa in 2013 (World Bank, online) Limited funding in the agriculture sector by African governments and development partners has also prevented the provision of adequate institutional support and suitable business environment, in turn hindering private sector participation and investment in agriculture (WEF et al. 2015; Voortman, 2013) For instance, Rwanda which is endowed with a good business environment (62nd out of 189 countries according to the World Bank's Doing Business Report 2016) has witnessed increasing private investments in its agriculture sector amounting $512 million between 2000 and 2013 as well as growing diversification in agricultural sub sectors with promising growth potential like beverages and horticulture (Grow Africa Secretariat, 2014) Increasing agriculture productivity in Africa would support structural transformation process and economic diversification as reliance on subsistence production and weak productivity growth in the agriculture sector prevents the workforce from moving out of this sector into manufacturing and services (Bah, 2011 and Herrendorf et al. 2014) It is also expected to promote inclusive growth, especially given that the sector provides employment to half of the labor force, including to a high percentage of smallholder farmers (representing 80 percent of total farmers) and female workers (AfDB, 2014a) A substantial body of the literature finds that agriculture led growth has greater impact on poverty and inequality reduction than growth driven by other sectors (Thirtle et al. 2003; Salami et al. 2010) Furthermore, building upon the mitigated success of the green revolution in Asia, African countries need to ensure that agricultural productivity be raised in a sustainable way (WEF et al. 2015) Indeed, although Asian countries doubled cereal production between 1970 and 1995 while the total land area cultivated with cereals increased by only 4 percent (World Bank, 2008) this success has been lessened in the long run by the increasing dependence and poor management in the use of agrochemicals. According to Lappe et al. (1998) misused of agrochemicals has resulted in adverse environmental consequences, including on water supply, soil quality and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as subsequent stagnation in crop production and rising cost of agricultural inputs. The adverse effect of the green revolution on the environment in Asia eventually led a large number of smallholder Asian farmers ending up indebted, landless and poor (Lappe et al. 1998) Taking into account these challenges, the paper discusses the potential of Information and Communication Technologies as a tool to transform Africa's agriculture in a sustainable way and provides recommendations not only to enhance agriculture productivity but also to promote a green agriculture in Africa. The next section gives an overview of the rapid uptake of ICTs in Africa. Section 3 analyzes the multiple ways ICTs can transform agriculture and benefit smallholders, by addressing land reform issues, providing adequate financial services, price and market information as well as by boosting global value chains in the agriculture sector. Section 4 provides some policy recommenda tions and the last section concludes. 2 The rapid uptake of ICTs in Africa The ICTs are a heterogeneous set of goods and services used to produce, process, distribute and transform information. The empirical literature acknowledges the benefits of ICTs on economic growth. In various countries, studies have demons trat ed that investment in ICTs, be it in Internet, mobile telephone or fixed line broadband penetration, positively correlates with Gross Domestic Product (The Boston Consulting Group, 2009; Fuss et al. 2005; Qiang and Rossotto, 2009) Returns on ICTs investment also include increased compe titiveness and trade, private sector development, innovation and job creation (Katz et al. 2009) as well as poverty reduction (Adera, 2014) Indeed, ICTs act as a multiplier for connecting people and places, improving supply chains, collaboration and financial transactions while making pricing more dynamic and processes more transparent. It unlocks new efficiencies and capabilities in various economic sectors, including in education, e governance, finance and healthcare (World Economic Forum, 2009) Regarding women empowerment, ICTs in agriculture could help women save time, physical effort and have access to finance in addition to supporting the monitoring of equal access to agriculture programs. ICTs are a valued tool, especially in rural areas, to expand money transfer services and governments should ensure that these services be accessible to women (Van Zyl et al. 2012) Technologies with low infrastructure requirements and low costs like radio continue to be the most used on the continent, including when compared to other traditional mass medium like television, newspapers and broadband fixed lines (see Table 1) AEB Volume 7 Issue 7 2016 Chief Economist Complex 3 However Geographic information systems (GIS) satellite imagery technologies, Internet and mobile telephony are expanding in Africa (Balancing Act, 2008) despite many obstacles such as infrastructure, affordability, computer literacy and language skills (International Telecommunication Union, 2003) For instance, African countries still lack good GSM networks and electrification infrastructure, especially in rural areas (Torero, 2014) Further more, literacy still is at a low rate of 59.3 per cent of Sub Saharan people aged 15 and above in 2010 (World Bank, online) and this constitutes a crucial obstacle to access and exchange information through technology (Adomi, 2011) Africa also has the lowest rate of Internet usage in the world, although the latter has been on the rise throughout the continent, with an annual growth rate going from 0.5 percent in 2000 to 16.9 percent in 2013  Mobile Internet broadband presents great potential as the number of cellular subscriptions has grown exponentially between 2000 and 2013 in Africa  By contrast, fixed broadband subscriptions have remained very low in SubSaharan Africa, at 0.3 per 100 people in 2013 (World Bank, online) Table 1 Proportion of households with selected ICT medium for selected years and sub Saharan African countries Source: Authors, based on International Telecommunication Union (ITU, online) Proportion of households with Radio Year of data TV Year of data Fixed line telephone Year of data Mobilecellular telephone Year of data Computer Year of data Internet access at home Year of data Congo (Rep. 54.3 2011 46.8 2011 81.