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In this conversation with the FT’s Africa editor David Pilling, Wandile Sihlobo, a member of South Africa’s Presidential Economic Advisory Council, talks about the value of the free market in improving farmers’ incentives, cuts to farming and food aid and the resistance to GMOs.
David Pilling: We tend to think of aid as funding health systems, but there’s a lot in the realm of food and agriculture too. What has been the impact of cuts?
Wandile Sihlobo: If you look at the budget of the World Food Programme, about half comes from USAID. That raises a question about where the money will come from in times of disasters. The second layer is that USAID funded a lot of research and farming assistance in terms of fertiliser inputs or carrying out regional studies. This year the sub-Saharan African region received excellent rains, so farmers were able to have a double-digit increase in yields. That provides a cushion. You’ll see the real impact of [aid cuts] in a year or two.
DP: Yields, with some exceptions such as South Africa, tend to be very low on the continent. Why has it been so difficult to raise them?
WS: If you consider staple grains such as maize, the yield has been stagnant for the past three decades at about one tonne per hectare. In South Africa it’s about six per hectare, and this is all because of differences in seed cultivars and adoption of genetically modified organisms. People say, it’s OK — Africa is increasing its production. But that production comes at the cost of cutting down trees and using more land instead of saying, “How do we increase productivity on the area we already farm, how do we maintain the biodiversity of the continent?”
DP: What have been the main obstacles to raising yields?
WS: The main obstacle is African governments. When William Ruto became president of Kenya [in 2022] he advocated a policy of embracing technology and adopting hybrid seeds, genetically modified crops, you name it. But then the NGOs and the activists took him to court and Kenya ended up not adopting those things.
What separates South Africa from the rest of the African continent is not the climate, it’s not the rains, it is the fact that the South African government puts its foot down when the NGOs say “ban hybrid seeds, ban the adoption of genetically modified seeds”.
DP: Why are GMOs so controversial?
WS: One dimension is the long history of colonisation as well as a suspicion of outsiders’ motives. People say, once you bring in those seeds, you no longer have your own indigenous seeds, and you will depend on buying seeds year after year. And therefore, if the multinational that sells you the seeds decides to pull out of Africa, what will happen to your country?
And in an environment like today, with Trump’s policies and this fragmentation of the world trading system, that voice actually finds fertile ground in countries that say, “No, no, we have to be self-sufficient.” That’s the politics of Africa.
And this hesitancy is not something we can just dismiss. The multinational seed companies have to explain how they are going to work with local authorities on seed breeding and skills transfer so that there are still seed-breeding capabilities within that country. Because I do think that there are some well-founded concerns.
DP: Are there other obstacles?
WS: There are many other issues. The difficulty of moving crops from one region to another and the fact that farmers have a lack of storage, grain silos, so you get large harvest losses.
You also have governments that set caps on prices, which sometimes disadvantages the farmer because you procure your inputs at a certain price and then you are told you can’t sell at market prices. The same issue is affecting cocoa farmers in Ivory Coast where farmers are not benefiting from higher prices because the Cocoa Board sets the price. It keeps these communities poor. So you need a policy reset to deregulate the pricing mechanism and open it up on a free-market basis.
The second obstacle is public infrastructure — roads and the railway lines as well as on-farm infrastructure such as silos and pack houses for farmers that are producing either flowers or fruits.
If you look at sub-Saharan Africa, with the exception of South Africa, 80 per cent of all of the land in rural areas has no deeds. In an environment like that, you will never be able to have large-scale farmers. And you do need big farmers in the system.
DP: What about agricultural extension services [services that provide advice and training]?
WS: That’s a huge part of it especially for animal diseases. You need extension services to farmers to teach them how to manage this. If it’s not well managed, it blocks countries from exporting livestock, or even food or grains, elsewhere.
DP: Many say technology can fill the gap left by the absence of adequate extension services. Do you agree?
WS: Not everyone can read English, not everyone can operate a mobile phone. If you go to villages, there are many seniors, some of whom are unable to navigate this technology. It requires a period of generational transition before the full benefits of this arrive.
DP: What is the potential conflict between growing cash crops for export and the need to feed the continent’s growing population. Is there a tension there?
WS: I think you can have both. If you produce mangoes on a large scale because the UK needs these, you will end up producing more for the domestic market too. In South Africa, about 55 per cent of what we produce goes to export markets. Last year, that was valued at $13.7bn. But when we improved, for example, the quality of grapes, because the EU says, we need this standard, you improve the quality for everyone. Then you go to [South African supermarkets such as] Woolworths or Pick ‘N Pay and eat the same quality produce that get delivered to Belgium.
The vital thing is the market. If there’s local demand, that raises the price and profitability for a farmer, so the farmer responds by planting more. We should let these market forces play out.
Wandile Sihlobo is a senior lecturer at the department of agricultural economics at Stellenbosch university