Agricultural resources in Africa and the roles of agricultural engineering in
food security
Africa is naturally blessed with land, water, agricultural and climatic resources. Agricultural
production of both arable and tree crops and livestock is equally high. Africa is the second largest
continent in the world after Asia with a total land area of more than 3025.8 million hectares (ha).
Its landmass is more than three times that of the United States of America (UNEP 2007). Twenty
seven per cent of the world’s population is in Africa (OAU 2003). Africa is an agrarian continent
and especially very rich in crop, forest, wild life, fish and animal resources, such as cocoa, maize,
cassava, coffee, cotton, groundnut, peanut, millet, yam, goat, sheep, camel, donkey, cattle, tilapia
and wood (Blaikie 1989, Kiss 1990).
Agriculture is the dominant economic sector in Africa. For example, Kenya has over 80%
of the population dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. (SHDI 2006). In Morocco, the
agricultural sector was worth US$7,000 million in 2002, of which US$1,000 million was export
earnings (World Bank 2003).
Despite the numerous agricultural resources, Africa is still bedevilled with the problems of
droughts, floods, runoff, water scarcity / sanitation, health and diseases (OAU 2003;,World Bank
2003). The number of undernourished Africans rose steeply during the 1990s, while the total number
of undernourished people worldwide has fallen. Twenty five African countries have problems
of food emergencies because of drought, civil strife, internal displacement, economic disruption,
refugees, and adverse weather (OAU 2003). The aforementioned problems bedevilling Africa are
mostly caused by political instability, corruption, low levels of technology and misplacement of
priorities as identified by Adewumi (2006).
Major areas of the continent are rural and the primary occupation of the majority of the people is
in agriculture. Unfortunately, the land mass, water resources, favourable climate and man power
are under utilised and there is the need to still increase agricultural production because of the
increasing rate of population growth in Africa. There is also the need to industrialise Africa via
mechanised agriculture.
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One of the greatest challenges to food production in Africa is the post harvest mechanisation and
handling of agricultural products. Generally, storage practices are poor and there is an inadequacy
in the availability of food processing machinery (Adewumi and Oduwole 1995, Adewumi 1998,
Ogunlowo et al. 2005, Okunola et al. 2007).