Media

Chicago Council on Global Affairs – Raising Agricultural Productivity in Africa 

This article by Sylvain Roy, CEO and president of Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture (CNFA), was originally featured by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. 

Today, millions of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa face a range of ongoing threats to their nutritional and economic security. West African farmers, for instance—whose livelihood typically depends on staple crops such as maize, millet, or sorghum often produced on about five acres of marginal land—operate on a small scale and have limited access to markets. 

With their socioeconomic power already restricted by low literacy, lack of transportation options, and limited access to credit, these farmers also face low productivity because of soil degradation, difficulty in accessing high-quality inputs, and lack of mechanization. Read more