How India’s South-South cooperation in Africa’s agricultural sector is a win-win game

Gurjit Singh

Exciting things were happening in Nairobi at the end of February. Indian models for Global South cooperation were in focus over a few days. This was particularly evident at the 11th Sankalp Africa summit session on scaling agricultural innovation through South-South collaboration.

As many as 1500 people with ideas for impacting the development of their communities gathered at this annual event from across Africa. Investors and impact financiers looked at them and interacted to find solutions. Many sessions focused on possible solutions using the success of models in different countries, particularly India.Advertisement

The agriculture and South-South cooperation session aimed at creating a deeper understanding of the challenges that agriculture value chains face in Africa. The role of agricultural innovations and how targeted interventions and sustainable development approaches could positively impact them and consequently benefit small farmers were emphasised. These have particular relevance for an enhanced understanding of the enabling aspects, barriers to technology transfers, and their adaptability.You May LikeElevate your wellness journey with our Full Body Health PackageTata 1mgBook Now  by Taboola Sponsored Links 

One of the areas that was focused on was South-South collaboration through innovative agricultural enterprises, which could perhaps foster cross-border partnerships. This is relevant as the East African Community expands to include more countries and the Africa Continental Free Trade Area takes more steps towards implementation.

A focused discussion brought together major stakeholders like development partners, policymakers, representatives of farmers, innovative agricultural enterprises, and investors. The Indian model of a bustling innovative agricultural ecosystem, which has been impacted by innovative enterprises serving 15 million farmers, was in focus.Advertisement

The context was set by discussing how India-Africa cooperation has traditionally focused on the private sector and heavily on agriculture. Even bilateral cooperation at the government-to-government level and through the India-Africa summits has had agriculture at its core. Agriculture features in PM Modi’s 10-point action plan for Africa, enunciated in Uganda in 2018.Advertisement

Yet, do government-to-government initiatives always work? As per a recent book, The Harambee Factor, many of these initiatives, like seed demonstration centres, rural technology centres, farm science centres, and the like, were offered by India to African countries, but these were not easily absorbed by African governments. Wherever the private sector or civil society is involved, the absorption is better and more conducive to backward integration. This approach was then discussed with several partners at the session.Advertisement

There were two entrepreneurs: Giraffe Bioenergy and Everest Enterprises. They were complimented by investing companies, the Delta 40 and the Katapult VC. The World Bank and the Gates Foundation also participated, as did the CEO of the Cereal Growers Association of Kenya, which brings together half a million cereal growers for better marketing.Advertisement

Giraffe Bioenergy is developing a focus on three aspects of sustainable development: food security, renewable energy, and creating jobs for women. They focus on this by creating a cassava value chain, which is used for creating edible oils. They help smallholder farmers achieve commercial success and generate efforts for biofuels to be created from the expanding cassava crop. They have scaled up to 500 acres and are looking at commercial success with a 100 per cent female workforce. Their challenges were better seed and production support. If the smallholder farmers could get some financial support, the poverty they could alleviate would be immense.Advertisement

The Delta 40 Investment Company has worked across the chain in Africa in climate-related business accelerators and incubators. They too look at Indian success stories, much as the cassava food chain looked at parallel food chains in India. The Cereal Growers Association, with half a million member farmers having different sizes of landholdings, said that Kenya lacks India’s variety of cereals. The Indian model helps small farmers if they adopt technology, take production support, and gain better access to inputs.Advertisement

How to do this remains a challenge because remunerative prices are inadequate to deal with these requirements. This is where impact projects, which will help small farmers through investments and support programmes, which are the focus of the Sankalp Africa summit, become relevant.

Similarly, Everest enterprises have an agri-business base of 6,000 smallholder farmers. They provide credit and technical processing for good practices, with a greater emphasis on women. They pointed out that only 1 per cent of Kenyan women have their own title deed to land, which restricts access to credit facilities. This is again where the impact assessment model of funds that is succeeding in India comes up, and if you add technology to it, then women can actually go into agri-tech businesses rather than only become cultivators.Advertisement

The importance of these discussions basically led to what the Gates Foundation representative called the generation of ‘impatient optimists’ looking for transformative levers across agricultural supply chains. A focus on women, on tech transfers for farmers, and ensuring that technology is not only a facilitator for investors becomes important.

Technology applications need to be simple, rather than sophisticated, if they are to be accepted by smallholder farmers. They can also benefit from new soil assessments and better marketing facilities.Advertisement

This led to the question of why India’s example of commodity exchanges had not been fully followed up in Africa. There is a commodity exchange in Ethiopia modelled on the MCX experience, but in the more market-oriented economies of Africa, commodity exchanges have not caught on. This reduces marketing opportunities.

South-South cooperation received a further boost under India’s G20 presidency in 2023. It is the leitmotif of the India-Africa Forum Summit processes. The Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Programme and lines-of-credit succeeded. Now is the time to support the private sector more fully so they can integrate the South-South development cooperation aspect into investment and business formats that will be better sustained and long-lasting.Advertisement

The demand for engaging India through its agriculture-related experience, capacity building, investment, and partnership is high among smaller organisations and enterprises in Africa. New vehicles for engaging them through impact investing funds trilaterally with G7 country partners are perhaps the way ahead.

The writer is a former ambassador to Germany, Indonesia, Ethiopia, ASEAN and the African Union. He tweets @AmbGurjitSingh. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.