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FERTINEWS-April 2024 Edition
(2024)
The April 2024 edition of FertiNews provides comprehensive insights into the fertilizer market dynamics across Africa, focusing on both West Africa and East/Southern Africa regions. It highlights national fertilizer market comments from various African countries, discussing supply, demand, pricing trends, and government interventions. Additionally, it covers international fertilizer market comments, showcasing market trends, prices, and major developments in selected countries. The edition also features the announcement of the Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit 2024 in Nairobi, Kenya, along with details of a critical side event on investing in fertilizer and soil health data. Moreover, it includes the release of the 2024 edition of the SSA Fertilizer Plant Register and offers informative articles on topics such as green ammonia and fertilizer quality control. Overall, the edition aims to provide stakeholders with valuable insights to enhance decision-making and promote sustainable agriculture in Africa.
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Harvesting Prosperity: Technology and Productivity Growth in Agriculture; Investing in Innovation
(2020)
Agriculture's sustainability and productivity depend heavily on research and development (R&D) efforts to overcome resource limitations and adapt to changing environmental conditions. This paper examines the role of innovation policies in shaping agricultural R&D investments and their impact on productivity growth, especially in the context of evolving global markets and technological advancements. Key factors influencing agricultural innovation include the need for local adaptation, challenges in technology dissemination, and addressing market failures. The paper emphasizes the importance of public investment in R&D, private sector engagement, and international collaborations to enhance agricultural productivity. It also highlights the significance of creating an enabling environment and building human capital to support innovation in agriculture.
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Feeding Africa’s soils: Fertilizer policy
(2019) Joseph Rusike; Oumou Camara
Fertilizer production and utilization in Africa are profoundly influenced by governmental policies at both national and regional levels. These policies have extensive ramifications across the fertilizer value chain, including finance availability, pricing, institutional arrangements, infrastructure development, and market dynamics. Despite substantial investments and policy efforts, Africa still faces challenges in achieving agricultural transformation through improved fertilizer use. This chapter explores the significance of policy and regulatory frameworks in shaping fertilizer industries, detailing policy formulation processes and implementation experiences across selected countries in Africa. It highlights the prevalence of subsidies as a key policy tool but also delves into the myriad challenges, including bureaucratic hurdles, financial constraints, market inefficiencies, and regulatory shortcomings. The chapter emphasizes the need for private sector involvement, market competitiveness, and policy reform to address these obstacles and enhance fertilizer accessibility, quality, and affordability for smallholder farmers. Furthermore, it examines the complexities of policy development and implementation, emphasizing the technical and political dimensions involved. The chapter concludes with insights into specific country experiences, offering a comprehensive overview of fertilizer policy landscapes, regulatory mechanisms, and ongoing challenges in Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Malawi.
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Feeding Africa’s soils: Fertilizer subsidies
(2019) Mahamadou Nassirou Ba; Marie Claire Kalihangabo; Joseph Rusike; Oumou Camara
Fertilizer promotion programs in Africa have undergone significant evolution since their inception in the 1970s. Initially characterized by direct government expenditures and interventions to stimulate fertilizer demand and usage, these programs faced challenges of sustainability and effectiveness. Structural adjustment programs in the 1990s led to the discontinuation of many of these programs, only to witness a resurgence following the 2006 Abuja Declaration on Fertilizers. This resurgence saw the implementation of targeted subsidy programs across several African countries, aimed at increasing agricultural productivity. The phases of evolution encompassed top-down government management, liberalization, private sector expansion, and recent shifts towards market-based systems. Today, most sub-Saharan African countries have some form of subsidy program in place, albeit with varying degrees of government involvement and private sector participation. As governments transition towards regulatory roles, the focus is on improving subsidy program design, implementation, and performance. Smart subsidy programs, private sector involvement, investment in supporting infrastructure, and complementary measures are highlighted as key strategies for enhancing the effectiveness and sustainability of fertilizer subsidy programs in Africa.
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UDP Technology and Rice Yields Among Farmer Beneficiaries of Rainfed Lowland Project Areas in Myanmar
(2018) D. Kyaw; Grahame Hunter
Since its inception in 2014, the Fertilizer Sector Improvement (FSI) project in Myanmar has introduced urea deep placement (UDP) fertilizer technology, aimed at improving yields and fertilizer use efficiency among rice farmers in its project intervention areas. For this purpose, selected farmers from three major rice-growing regions of Myanmar, located in Yangon, Bago, and Ayeyarwady were given training through effective farm demonstrations and other extension services to promote the use of technology along with other improved inputs. Extensive data were collected among project beneficiaries to determine the effect of UDP technology on yields in comparison to the traditional use of fertilization methods. In this paper, we have made an attempt to use part of the data documented to estimate the factors responsible for variability in productivity levels of rice with the adoption of UDP technology under rainfed conditions during the 2016 wet season. A log linear regression model was employed for empirical estimation to determine the effect of UDP along with other external factors that jointly influence the rice yields in the intervention areas. Our analytical results indicate a significant and positive impact of UDP technology use on rice yields; improved crop intensification practices adopted by farmers also played a crucial role in improving the rice yields. In addition to these factors, male farmers were very successful in adopting the technology and in realizing higher yields in their plots compared to their female counterparts. Other variables, such as area allocated for rice, resulted in yield reduction, implying lack of purchasing power among farmers for additional input use. Along with low credit access, this results in underuse of external inputs. From a policy perspective, these results have wider implications. For instance, limited opportunities exist for crop land expansion in the intervention areas; thus, any increase in yields should come from the effective and efficient use of agro-input technologies, such as high-yielding varieties (HYVs), UDP, and other crop management techniques. The evidence from our empirical analysis further suggests increased and focused government efforts are needed toward promoting the use of efficient soil and fertilizer management technologies, such as UDP, and promoting crop intensification practices among farmers in the lowland rainfed rice cropping system in Myanmar to achieve higher yields and profits from limited expansion of cropping land. The gross margin results also indicate the likely and positive effect of increased access to technologies and participation by women farmers in extension programs for greater benefits to society as a whole.