How Promising is the Rice Green Revolution in Sub‐Saharan Africa? Evidence from Case Studies in Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, and Ghana1

• Date: 01 March 2015
• Author: Keijiro Otsuka
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.18278/wfp.2.1.3
• Published date: 01 March 2015

36

World Food Policy - Volume 2, Number 1 - Spring 2015

1 - Introduction

While the population continues

to grow rapidly, the pace of

area expansion has slowed

down considerably in Sub-Saharan Africa

(SSA) due to the gradual exhaustion

of uncultivated areas. On an average,

cultivated land per farming population

has declined by about 40% since the

1960s and the value added per worker

now averages around 12% below 1980

levels. Investments in the development of

new technologies have declined in recent

years, even though their adoption rates

are low compared to other regions. In

order to reduce widespread and persistent

rural poverty in SSA, it is imperative to

increase food production by increasing

the productivity per unit of land (World

Bank 2012).

We believe that what is urgently

needed in SSA is a Green Revolution,

which has successfully increased rice

and wheat yields in tropical Asia over

the last several decades. In Asia, small

farmers actively adopted new improved

technologies (David and Otsuka 1994),

and there is no reason to assume that

small farmers in SSA will not adopt

new protable technologies (Otsuka

While the population continues to grow rapidly, the pace of area expansion

has slowed down considerably in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) due to the

gradual exhaustion of uncultivated areas. In order to reduce the widespread

and persistent rural poverty in SSA, it is imperative to increase the food

production by increasing the productivity per unit of land or achieving the

Green Revolution. is article attempts to demonstrate that lowland rice

is a promising crop for SSA importantly because Asian Green Revolution

technology can be directly transferable to SSA and that a major constraint

on the rice Green Revolution is the lack of strong extension systems.

Keywords: population pressure, rural poverty, Sub-Saharan Africa, high-

yielding rice varieties, rice GreenRevolution

Keijiro OtsukaA

How Promising is the Rice Green Revolution in

Sub-Saharan Africa? Evidence from Case Studies in

Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, and Ghana1

1 is is a result of a research project being conducted at JICA Research Institute to empirically analyze

how best the CARD initiative can serve to increase rice productivity and reduce poverty. I am heavily

indebted to its members, namely Yoko Kijima, Kei Kajisa, Yuko Nakano, and Takeshi Sakurai. I would

also like to thank JICA Research Institute for various supports it has provided for this project.

A National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.

37

2006; Otsuka and Kijima 2010). Yet the

appropriate strategies to realize a Green

Revolution in SSA are still unclear. Recent

studies edited by Otsuka and Larson

(2013), which compare the experience of

the Asian Green Revolution with current

grain farming in SSA, suggest that lowland

rice is the most promising grain. is

is essentially because high-yielding rice

technology can be directly transferable

from tropical Asia to SSA (Estudillo and

Otsuka 2013; Nakano and Kajisa 2012).

is is illustrated by Figure 1,

which compares changes in grain yields

over time in India and SSA and their

dierences between the two regions. India

is chosen for comparison because among

Asian countries India is agro-climatically

similar to SSA and, hence, cropping

patterns are not so dierent (Tsusaka and

Otsuka 2013a; 2013b).2 Several important

observations can be made. Firstly, grain

yields were generally similar between

India and SSA in the early 1960s before

the Green Revolution began, which

indicates that the dierence in agro-

climatic conditions alone cannot explain

the large yield dierence between the two

regions at present. Secondly, the yields of

sorghum and millet did not increase much

even in India and the yield gap between

the two regions is nil, which suggests that

the potential of a Green Revolution in

these crops is limited in SSA. irdly, the

current yield gap is substantial in the case

of wheat and rice, even though their yields

increased appreciably in SSA. Since wheat

can be produced primarily in a temperate

zone, its potential production area is

more limited than rice in SSA due to the

dominance of a tropical climate. us,

rice is likely to be critically important for

the expansion of grain production in SSA.

Furthermore, rice consumption has been

increasing dramatically in this region in

the last few decades. Lastly, the yield gap is

only modest in maize, even though maize

is the most important crop in SSA in both

production and consumption. It is likely

that the productivity gain in the maize

sector in SSA from a technology transfer

from Asia will not be large.

Although rice looks a promising

crop from the aggregate data, micro-level

evidence is needed to substantiate the

argument that rice is the most promising

crop in SSA. e rst purpose of this study

is to analyze the potential of the rice Green

Revolution in SSA based on recently

completed case studies of rice-growing

households in Mozambique, Tanzania,

Uganda, and Ghana.3 e second purpose

is to draw up the implications of an

eective strategy for rice Green Revolution

in SSA. We believe that, if successful, the

rice Green Revolution can be a role model

for Green Revolutions in other grains,

particularly in maize production.

How Promising is the Rice Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa?

2 For example, sorghum and millet are grown in many countries in SSA but primarily in India in Asia.

Analytically, however, a comparison between tropical Asia as a whole and SSA does not lead to major

changes in our discussion (Estudillo and Otsuka 2013).

3 Senegal is also included in this project but the data collection has been delayed, so its analytical

results will be reported later. Note, however, that according to our preliminary survey, the average

irrigated rice yield in the Senegal River basin exceeds 5 tons per hectare, which is comparable to the

irrigated yields in Asia.