CID Working Paper No. 037, January 2000

African Land Ecology: Opportunities and Constraints for Agricultural Development

R.L. Voortman, B.G.J.S. Sonneveld, and M.A. Keyzer

Abstract

Current agriculture in Sub-Sahara Africa is undeveloped and the Green Revolution has left the continent largely untouched. Poor performance is often related to a number of socio-economic factors. In this paper we argue that there are also some specifities of natural resources, namely local homogeneity and spatial diversity of the pre-dominant Basement Complex soils, that imply that simple fertilizer strategies may not produce the yield increases obtained elsewhere.

Keywords: Sub-Sahara Africa, agro-ecology, land use, land resources, Basement Complex, green revolution, micronutrients, fertilizer policy

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*An earlier version of this paper, as a background paper, was presented at the Workshop on "Explaining African Economic Growth Performance," held at Harvard University, March 26-27, 1999. The workshop was sponsored by the African Economic Research Consortium and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

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