Agriculture and trade in Sub-Saharan Africa - A review

Savanna Africa is characterized by smallholding agricultural systems that produce a mixture of food and cash crops in a single season. Crops can be rotated, intermixed, or grown in specialized plots. In the former rainforests nearer the equator, crops such as cassava and maize are sown in close proximity to cocoa and oil palms, while tea is sometimes grown in specialized plots or in plantations. Traditionally, the cash crops of the savanna have been cotton and groundnuts, with cocoa, oil palm and tea in the forest areas. Various UNCTAD and FAO reports have recently drawn attention to the declining terms of trade for these products and the serious impact this has been having on the African economies concerned through loss of foreign-exchange earnings and the lack of replacement exports. UNCTAD now proposes that this dependence on a few basic exports should be overcome by domestic programmes of diversification and product development sponsored directly by African governments, as well as by international measures to reduce fluctuations in export earnings. This paper questions how these proposals might affect the various systems of smallholder agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa.