Why can't we transform traditional agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa?

While population continues to grow rapidly in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), uncultivated land has been largely exhausted. Since the yield of food grain per unit of land has remained largely unchanged for more than several decades, per capita food production in the region has been declining. Therefore, there are growing worldwide concerns regarding the widespread and persistent or even worsening poverty and food shortages in SSA. This is in sharp contrast to the experience in developing countries in Asia. Rice and wheat yields began to grow dramatically in the late 1960s, due to the development of fertilizer-responsive, high-yielding modern rice and wheat varieties (MVs), which is heralded as the ‘Green Revolution’. Grain yield more than doubled and the per capita grain production significantly increased in tropical Asia over the last four decades. The question is why we failed to repeat the Asian Green Revolution in SSA. This poses a serious challenge for development economists, because it is widely believed that Schultz provides an accurate characterization of traditional agriculture and proposes an appropriate prescription to transform it into a modern agricultural sector. This short article attempts to assess the relevance of the Schultz thesis for the development of agriculture in SSA.