Africa's Agricultural Renaissance

Africa's Agricultural Renaissance PDF Author: Ayodele Odusola
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030657485
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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Book Description
This book addresses the paradox between preponderance of hunger in a continent that is well endowed with fertile agricultural land, plenty of fresh water and a vibrant labor force. As some statistics show, close to 60% of arable land in the world is located in Africa which also has several rivers flowing in all seasons and plenty of underground water. The bulk of its labor force thrives on agriculture, yet the continent’s largest import item is food. 23 of 36 the most malnourished countries also belong in Africa. This has caused significant needless human suffering. This book goes beyond providing the traditional framework of supplying policy recommendations to delivering an applied, innovative framework upon which policymakers, the private sector and international institutions can take clear and deliberate action to stimulate Africa's agricultural sector, thus responding to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Africa's Agricultural Renaissance

Africa's Agricultural Renaissance PDF Author: Ayodele Odusola
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030657485
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 508

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book addresses the paradox between preponderance of hunger in a continent that is well endowed with fertile agricultural land, plenty of fresh water and a vibrant labor force. As some statistics show, close to 60% of arable land in the world is located in Africa which also has several rivers flowing in all seasons and plenty of underground water. The bulk of its labor force thrives on agriculture, yet the continent’s largest import item is food. 23 of 36 the most malnourished countries also belong in Africa. This has caused significant needless human suffering. This book goes beyond providing the traditional framework of supplying policy recommendations to delivering an applied, innovative framework upon which policymakers, the private sector and international institutions can take clear and deliberate action to stimulate Africa's agricultural sector, thus responding to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Maize and Grace

Maize and Grace PDF Author: James C. McCann
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674040740
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Sometime around 1500 AD, an African farmer planted a maize seed imported from the New World. That act set in motion the remarkable saga of one of the world’s most influential crops—one that would transform the future of Africa and of the Atlantic world. Africa’s experience with maize is distinctive but also instructive from a global perspective: experts predict that by 2020 maize will become the world’s most cultivated crop. James C. McCann moves easily from the village level to the continental scale, from the medieval to the modern, as he explains the science of maize production and explores how the crop has imprinted itself on Africa’s agrarian and urban landscapes. Today, maize accounts for more than half the calories people consume in many African countries. During the twentieth century, a tidal wave of maize engulfed the continent, and supplanted Africa’s own historical grain crops—sorghum, millet, and rice. In the metamorphosis of maize from an exotic visitor into a quintessentially African crop, in its transformation from vegetable to grain, and from curiosity to staple, lies a revealing story of cultural adaptation. As it unfolds, we see how this sixteenth-century stranger has become indispensable to Africa’s fields, storehouses, and diets, and has embedded itself in Africa’s political, economic, and social relations. The recent spread of maize has been alarmingly fast, with implications largely overlooked by the media and policymakers. McCann’s compelling history offers insight into the profound influence of a single crop on African culture, health, technological innovation, and the future of the world’s food supply.

Black Rice

Black Rice PDF Author: Judith A. Carney
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674029216
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Few Americans identify slavery with the cultivation of rice, yet rice was a major plantation crop during the first three centuries of settlement in the Americas. Rice accompanied African slaves across the Middle Passage throughout the New World to Brazil, the Caribbean, and the southern United States. By the middle of the eighteenth century, rice plantations in South Carolina and the black slaves who worked them had created one of the most profitable economies in the world. Black Rice tells the story of the true provenance of rice in the Americas. It establishes, through agricultural and historical evidence, the vital significance of rice in West African society for a millennium before Europeans arrived and the slave trade began. The standard belief that Europeans introduced rice to West Africa and then brought the knowledge of its cultivation to the Americas is a fundamental fallacy, one which succeeds in effacing the origins of the crop and the role of Africans and African-American slaves in transferring the seed, the cultivation skills, and the cultural practices necessary for establishing it in the New World. In this vivid interpretation of rice and slaves in the Atlantic world, Judith Carney reveals how racism has shaped our historical memory and neglected this critical African contribution to the making of the Americas.

Lost Crops of Africa

Lost Crops of Africa PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309164540
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
This report is the second in a series of three evaluating underexploited African plant resources that could help broaden and secure Africa's food supply. The volume describes the characteristics of 18 little-known indigenous African vegetables (including tubers and legumes) that have potential as food- and cash-crops but are typically overlooked by scientists and policymakers and in the world at large. The book assesses the potential of each vegetable to help overcome malnutrition, boost food security, foster rural development, and create sustainable landcare in Africa. Each species is described in a separate chapter, based on information gathered from and verified by a pool of experts throughout the world. Volume I describes African grains and Volume III African fruits.

Africa Emerges

Africa Emerges PDF Author: Robert Rotberg
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745670458
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Sub-Saharan Africa is no longer a troubled ‘dark continent.’ Most of its constituent countries are now enjoying significant economic growth and political progress. The new Africa has begun to banish the miseries of the past, and appears ready to play an important role in world affairs. Thanks to shifts in leadership and governance, an African renaissance could be at hand. Yet the road ahead is not without obstacles. As world renowned expert on African affairs, Robert Rotberg, expertly shows, Africa today maybe poised to deliver real rewards to its long suffering citizens but it faces critical new crises as well as abundant new opportunities. Africa Emerges draws on a wealth of empirical data to explore the key challenges Africa must overcome in the coming decades. From peacekeeping to health and disease, from energy needs to education, this illuminating analysis diagnoses the remaining impediments Africa will need to surmount if it is to emerge in 2050 as a prosperous, peaceful, dynamic collection of robust large and small nations. Africa Emerges offers an unparalleled guide for all those interested in the dynamics of modern Africa’s political, economic, and social development.

Change in Agriculture

Change in Agriculture PDF Author: Clarence H. Danhof
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674107700
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
American agriculture changed radically between 1820 and 1870. In turning slowly from subsistence to commercial farming, farmers on the average doubled the portion of their production places on the market, and thereby laid the foundations for today's highly productive agricultural industry. But the modern system was by no means inevitable. It evolved slowly through an intricate process in which innovative and imitative entrepreneurs were the key instruments.

Emerging Africa

Emerging Africa PDF Author: Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141979461
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
A rare and timely intervention from Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, on development in Africa. To many, Africa is the new frontier. As the West lies battered by financial crisis, Africa is seen as offering limitless opportunities for wealth creation in the march of globalization. But what is Africa to today's Africans? Are its economies truly on the rise? And what is its likely future? In this pioneering book, leading international strategist Kingsley Moghalu challenges conventional wisdoms about Africa's quest for growth. Drawing on philosophy, economics and strategy, he ranges from capitalism to technological innovation, finance to foreign investment, and from human capital to world trade to offer a new vision of transformation. Ultimately he demonstrates how Africa's progress in the twenty-first century will require nothing short of the reinvention of the African mindset. 'Africans seriously analyzing Africa's opportunities are all too rare. Kingsley Moghalu writes with insight and authority' Paul Collier 'Savvy . . . distinguished' Mark Malloch-Brown 'Unique in the depth of its insight, the ambition of its scope, and the clarity of its argument. Kingsley Moghalu brings a remarkable intellect and his vast experience to this tour de force on Africa's economic transformation. This is a truly weighty contribution to understanding Africa's developmental dilemma and its quest for a more prosperous future' Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala 'Insightful and analytical . . . sheds instructive light on Africa's position in the world. It is a testament to the palpable optimism that encompasses Africa while frankly addressing the myriad challenges that lie ahead for its economic transformation' Shashi Tharoor Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu is Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. He was the Founder and CEO of Sogato Strategies S.A., a global strategy and risk management consulting firm in Geneva, Switzerland. He has previously worked for the United Nations for 17 years in strategic planning, legal, development finance and executive management. His previous books include Global Justice and Rwanda's Genocide.

Contemporary Issues in Africa's Development

Contemporary Issues in Africa's Development PDF Author: Ehimika A. Ifidon
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527509524
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
This volume reports on the state of crisis in Africa in the early twenty-first century. Africa, on the eve of the ‘independence revolution’, was the continent of hope and high expectations. By the third decade of independence, optimism had been replaced by dismality. African states had been beset by ethno-political squabbles, military rule, civil wars, Islamic and insurgent movements, extreme poverty and disease. With the ascent of redemocratization in the 1990s and of ‘new’ pan-Africanism derived from the formation of the African Union, Africa appeared set to claim its vaunted destiny. This book asks, with hindsight to the first decade of the twenty-first century: how real was the renaissance in African life? If the dismal African condition is a phase in the historical development of Africa, this volume does not see any golden age in the past to which Africa aspires to return. There is clearly a continuation and persistence of crisis, with an absence of good governance, personalisation of state power, widespread disease, and policy failure in education, economy and infrastructural development. Although endowed with abundant human and natural resources, Africa remains the least developed and most indebted continent. Whither then the African Renaissance? The methodologies that underpin the contributions in this book are as diverse as the specialisations of the contributors. The collection questions ideologically protected assumptions and presumptions, presenting Africa as it is, because it is only by knowing where Africa truly stands that a proper direction can be charted for it.

The Rise of China and India in Africa

The Rise of China and India in Africa PDF Author: Fantu Cheru
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 184813827X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
In recent years, China and India have become the most important economic partners of Africa and their footprints are growing by leaps and bounds, transforming Africa's international relations in a dramatic way. Although the overall impact of China and India's engagement in Africa has been positive in the short-term, partly as a result of higher returns from commodity exports fuelled by excessive demands from both countries, little research exists on the actual impact of China and India's growing involvement on Africa's economic transformation. This book examines in detail the opportunities and challenges posed by the increasing presence of China and India in Africa, and proposes critical interventions that African governments must undertake in order to negotiate with China and India from a stronger and more informed platform.

Africa Rise Up!

Africa Rise Up! PDF Author: Chris Landsberg
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781928341307
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
From politics to economics, science and engineering, this book raises the bar on the debate about the place of Africa in the world. As Africa continues the search for relevance, influence, peace, progress, and stability in a highly competitive global system, 'Africa Rise Up!' interrogates the historical and contemporary forces, agency, and factors that combine to affect the location of the continent in the global order. The contributors argue for a paradigm shift in both theory and praxis of national, regional, and continental efforts geared toward the realization of the much-needed African Renaissance. The strength of this book lies in its interpretation of the African condition through the lens of African-centred epistemologies.