Smallholder Agriculture in East Africa: Trends, Constraints and Opportunities

TLDR

Smallholder agriculture remains a key driver in African agriculture, accounting for roughly 75 % of production and employment in these economies. The study examines trends, challenges, and opportunities for East African smallholder agriculture via case studies of Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Tanzania, and proposes measures such as land access, skills training, technology adoption, and trade barrier removal to boost productivity. The paper finds that smallholder farming contributed little to East Africa’s rapid 2005‑2008 growth, which was instead driven by services, while weak institutions, limited market and credit access, and inadequate infrastructure constrained productivity gains.

Abstract

Adeleke Salami, Abdul B. Kamara and Zuzana Brixiova Smallholder agriculture continues to play a key role in African agriculture. This paper investigates trends, challenges and opportunities of this sub-sector in East Africa through case studies of Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania. In these agriculture-based economies, smallholder farming accounts for about 75 percent of agricultural production and over 75 percent of employment. However, contributions of smallholder farming, and agriculture in general, to the region’s recent rapid growth during 2005 08 have remained limited. Instead, growth was driven by services, in particular trade. This paper finds that at the national level, weak institutions, restricted access to markets and credit. These factors, including inadequate infrastructure, have constrained productivity growth of smallholder farming. Measures needed to improve productivity of smallholder farmers include ease of access to land, training to enhance skills and encourage technology adoption and innovation, and removal of obstacles to trade. At the regional and global levels, international trade barriers need to be addressed.