Agricultural Growth, Rural Poverty and Hunger In Africa

The long-term reduction of hunger and poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa remains one of the great challenges for the International development community. Poverty in Africa is predominately rural, majority of the poor people live in rural areas and are dependent on food production through farming or livestock keeping for most of their livelihood. It is estimated that over two hundred million people in Sub-Saharan Africa live in extreme poverty and among these are the rural poor in Eastern and Southern Africa where the worlds highest concentration of poor people are found. Given Agriculture’s central role in the region’s economies, can agriculture play a major role in poverty alleviation? How can Africa’s role in poverty reduction be enhanced? What could be done to boost agricultural production, economic growth and the incomes of the rural poor to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals especially that of cutting poverty in half by 2015. These are some of the questions the author addresses in the paper - A roadmap that is considered extremely useful and timely.