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Agricultural mechanization in sub-Saharan Africa: time for a new look









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    Consultative Meeting on Mechanization Strategy: New Models for Sustainable Agricultural Mechanization in sub-Saharan Africa 2017
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    Sustainable agricultural mechanization (SAM) is an essential input for the development of the smallholder farm sector in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The benefits of SAM range from drudgery reduction to improved timeliness of agricultural operations, increased input use efficiency, facilitating sustainable production intensification, ensuring environmental protection, and contributing to make agriculture more ‘climate-smart’. SAM is also important at other levels of the food supply system, for exam ple in post-harvest operations, processing, marketing and transportation. Previously in SSA, mechanization efforts were largely been driven by the public sector. Today there is a need, with appropriate social and natural environmental considerations, to adopt a more holistic view of what mechanization is and learn from the errors made in the past. A cornerstone of SAM is the importance of involving the private sector (especially machinery manufacturers, suppliers and service providers). It needs to be brought to the forefront in SAM development and provision, but without neglecting the important role that the public sector and its institutions can also play. The Consultative Meeting provided a platform to discuss SAM in general, SAM strategies and implementation options, experiences and recommended concrete lines of future action for SSA. Lessons learned from Asia and past experiences in SSA were presented, as well as various models for SAM collaboration and diffusion in SSA. This plat form allowed to better understand appropriate policies that may be required to support and promote the implementation of SAM at regional and national level within SSA. A special focus was placed on three key areas which were the subject of debate and discussion in three working groups. These were: (i) new collaborative models of public-private partnerships; (ii) modalities and approaches for establishing a global SAM knowledge exchange platform and; (iii) the establishment of regional centres or networks for SAM in SSA. The Meeting also received feedback on the on-going FAO-African Union Commission technical cooperation project that is seeking to develop a SAM strategy framework for SSA.
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    Farm power and mechanization for small farms in sub-Saharan Africa 2006
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    In the past, many of the publications concerned with mechanization, draught animal power, hand-tool technology, etc. tended to be rather mono-topical, dealing with only one aspect of the subject. Farm power and mechanization also tended to be separated from the actual processes of crop production and processing; it was a topic created by engineers and was dealt with by engineers. As a result, there is a widespread lack of understanding of the subject, and there are many widely held mis conceptions with regard to the essential contribution of farm power and mechanization to small farmers’ productivity and livelihoods. In recent years, the Farm Power and Mechanization Group in FAO has broken away from this rather narrow approach and has put the different sources of farm power, mechanization, machinery, equipment and tools into a much broader context. We have looked at farm power from the perspective of rural livelihoods and farming systems, as well as the critical area of labour saving in HIV/AIDS and migrationaffected populations. We have purposely avoided taking rigid positions with regard to any one particular type of technology; instead, we have adopted a much wider brief and have been concerned to identify appropriate solutions for a range of situations.
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    Brochure, flyer, fact-sheet
    Adoption of farm inputs, mechanization, irrigation and gender gaps in sub-Saharan Africa: insights from the Rural Livelihoods Information System (RuLIS)
    RuLIS brief
    2021
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    RuLIS is a tool to support policies for reducing rural poverty, jointly developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Statistics Division, the World Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). RuLIS brings together harmonized indicators and comparable data across countries and over time on rural incomes, livelihoods and rural development. Using the RuLIS data, this brief focuses on the observations made in the adoption of agricultural inputs, along with improved technology such as irrigation, and mechanised tools among crop farm households in sub-Saharan Africa.

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