Africa must stem the academic “brain drain” and increase investments in maintaining the continent’s human and scientific capacity to achieve its agricultural potential and drive and sustain a fundamentally transformation of agriculture.
During remarks at the Ministerial Conference on Higher Education in Agriculture in Africa in Kampala conference of ministers of education, agriculture and finance from over a dozen African countries, Dr Namanga Ngongi of AGRA and Sir Gordon Conway of Imperial College and former DFID chief scientist noted that meeting Africa’s food security challenges today and in the 21st century will require greater investments in its human capital.
Both are members of the Montpellier Panel, a group of ten African and European experts from the fields of agriculture, sustainable development, trade, policy, and global development convened with support by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
According to Ngongi, there are only 70 agricultural researchers per million people in Africa, compared to 2,640 in North America and 4,380 in Japan. Only one in four African researchers holds a Ph.D., compared with nearly two thirds in India.
Africa would benefit from higher education through faster take up new technologies, higher salaries, and a more competitive workforce.
According to Conway, making agriculture more attractive to young people and women is critical. The number of African agricultural researchers working on the ground has declined by half in over the last 20 years due to limited or non-existent funding of tertiary agricultural education. Currently, more than half of the agricultural researchers working today are due to retire in the next 5 years.
Participants at the Conference called for urgent action to redress Africa’s shortfall in high-caliber human capacity in agriculture, which hinders growth and undermines the foundation for sustainable development.
There was strong support for African governments to invest 10 percent of the agricultural budget allocations to capacity building in Africa’s tertiary education system. This increase could make the sector more attractive to European donors and potentially unlock new sources of funds needed to build a new cadre of innovators to lead Africa forward.
“CAADP cannot be implemented if Africa does not have the human and institutional capacity to put the plans into action,” noted Dr Ngongi.
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