# **1. Introduction**

The goal of boosting productivity on smallholder farms is a central pillar in the rural development strategies of most African governments. There are many reasons for the broad support given to African smallholders, but two are most often cited. First, the vast natural resources in the hands of Sub-Saharan African smallholder farmers can be used more productively to feed a growing global population, a quarter of whom will live in Africa. Second, increasing agricultural incomes through improved technologies offers the shortest path to poverty reduction in rural areas, where poverty has been most persistent. In this essay, we argue that while it is the second argument that is especially compelling for policy, finding ways to boost smallholder productivity in Africa offers the best chance to achieve both objectives.

On average, smallholder farmers in Africa would earn higher incomes working in sectors other than agriculture. And in countries where agriculture productivity is highest, farms are usually larger than they are in Africa. Further, as economies develop, the share of workers in agriculture declines and a larger share of the population lives in cities. So, why should rural development strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa remain focused on smallholder farms?

The answer has to do with the slow pace of this archetypical economic transformation. For many reasons, the reallocation of labor from agriculture to other sectors is constrained and occurs over generations, even when income gaps are large and sustained. The pace of farm restructuring is slower still, so farms tend to remain small even as agriculture’s share of employment declines. Consequently, policies designed to reduce poverty for this generation of rural poor must work largely within the constraints of small farms. In the case of Asia’s Green Revolution, new technologies were developed and quickly adopted that did just that. What is more, productivity growth rates were sustained even though farms remained small. Ultimately, Asia’s success significantly influenced Sub-Saharan African policies, where most strategies to boost productivity have three common elements: a focus on smallholders; an emphasis on staple crops, mostly maize and rice; and a reliance on improved technologies, most often based on fertilizer-responsive high-yielding seeds.

Nevertheless, while the need to drive rural development through improved smallholder productivity is clear, the task is harder in Sub-Saharan Africa than it was in Asia. Specifically, the agroclimatic and market conditions that predicate the success of new technologies is more varied in Africa than it was in Asia at the start of its Green Revolution. Consequently, the portfolio of technologies needed to launch a transformational African Green Revolution is larger and the task of identifying what work best locally is more difficult. It also means that the seed-fertilizer-focused technologies that work well in Asia, though important, are unlikely to solve all of the key constraints faced by African farmers. This, in turns, holds back sector-wide productivity growth and explains why successes to date have been local rather than sectoral. Part of the solution is to design and deploy a larger set of targeted technologies with local constraints in mind. Toward this goal, we draw on a set of farm studies originally published in Otsuka, Larson (2016) to show how resource-management based technologies can supplement conventional highyielding seed-fertilizer technologies to improve smallholder productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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