From subsidy reform in Malawi to failing markets and fragmented data, an agricultural transformation panel in Kigali exposed the real barriers between African farmers and a more prosperous food economy.
KIGALI, Rwanda — For years, the agricultural prescription in Africa has been deceptively simple: produce more food.
But at a panel on the future of farming, Malawi Agriculture Minister Roza Mbilizi offered a more uncomfortable diagnosis — African agriculture does not have a production problem alone. It has a markets, policy and investment problem.
“Agricultural transformation must be driven by markets, not simply by production,” Mbilizi told participants, arguing that Malawi was trying to move away from a model in which smallholder farmers grow primarily to feed their families towards one in which farming becomes a source of income.
The shift is at the heart of Malawi’s agricultural strategy, which puts commercialisation and mechanisation alongside irrigation and other investments.
One of the clearest signs of that change is the decision to halve Malawi’s farm-input subsidy programme, a move Mbilizi acknowledged was politically sensitive.
The government, she said, had concluded that subsidies could boost production but were not enough to create the long-term productivity needed to transform agriculture.
“We are saying as much as this gives us … production in terms of volume, it does not create long-lasting productivity,” she said, pointing instead to irrigation, research, extension services and market infrastructure as the foundations of a more resilient sector.
That approach is being tested through what Malawi describes as “productive alliances”, bringing smallholder farmers together in cooperatives and linking them to investors.
On irrigation schemes, the government wants local and international investors to become so-called anchor farmers, providing inputs and mechanisation while also creating a ready market for the surrounding smallholders.
The idea is simple: do not ask farmers to produce first and hope a buyer appears later.
Build the buyer into the equation from the start.
“What we are concentrating on is the productive alliance model where we are aggregating our smaller farmers into cooperatives,” Mbilizi said. Investors, she added, would provide inputs and mechanisation while farmers gained access to a market.
That thinking is increasingly shaping a wider debate about Africa’s agricultural future.
Anup Jagwani, Global Director for Farming and Agribusiness at the World Bank Group, said the continent’s demographic pressures made agricultural transformation urgent.
More than 1.2 billion people are expected to enter the workforce over the coming decades, he said, while the number of jobs available will be far smaller.
Agriculture therefore cannot remain simply a safety net.
It must become an engine of employment.
But that does not necessarily mean more people working in fields. As farms become more mechanised and technology-intensive, many of the new jobs will emerge around production — in seeds, irrigation, inputs, technology, logistics, processing and other forms of value addition.
“Agriculture will not necessarily create jobs on farm because as we increase mechanization … it would be outside and around the farm that we will create these jobs,” Jagwani said.
That is where the agricultural transformation agenda becomes considerably more complicated.
A functioning farm economy requires roads, energy, digital infrastructure, finance, research and workable regulations.
It also requires governments to stop treating agricultural policy as the preserve of agriculture ministries alone.
Jagwani said one of the lessons behind AgriConnect was the need for an integrated approach bringing together agriculture, infrastructure, digital technology, irrigation and education.
Sometimes, he said, the problem is not on the farm at all.
“It is in the roads and infrastructure, it’s energy, it’s so many different aspects that go into it,” he said.
The same fragmentation exists in agricultural data.
Mbilizi said government departments were generating research and information that could potentially guide investment but often failed to make it accessible to the businesses and young people who needed it.
“There’s a lot of data, a lot of information that is created in government but this is not known by the other stakeholders,” she said.
Malawi has identified 15 agricultural value chains and is prioritising four, with plans to expand that number to seven. The government has begun analysing what it costs to produce, aggregate and process commodities in those sectors and what investors could potentially earn.
The goal is to turn government information into an investment tool rather than leave it buried in institutions.
But perhaps the biggest missing piece is the market itself.
Sara Mbago-Bhunu, Director of the East and Southern Africa Division at the International Fund for Agricultural Development, warned that many African markets remain poorly governed and inadequately equipped, with vendors operating outside formal infrastructure and markets lacking refrigeration, internet and banking services.
“There’s no point of investing in the market infrastructure when the vendors are actually outside,” she said.
She also questioned why African countries sometimes import large quantities of produce such as tomatoes while domestic commercial farmers struggle to secure space on supermarket shelves.
The problem, in other words, is not necessarily that Africa cannot grow food.
It is that the systems connecting farmers to consumers are not working properly.
Mbago-Bhunu argued for more practical improvements to existing markets, including refrigeration, digital connectivity and banking, while also supporting stronger markets managed directly by farming communities.
She pointed to Kenya’s e-voucher programme as an example of how digital systems could connect smallholder farmers with input suppliers.
Underlying all of this is a difficult balancing act.
Governments want food to remain affordable while farmers need to earn enough to stay in business.
Agriculture is also inherently risky, with weather, climate change, prices and production costs capable of wiping out margins.
Jagwani argued that the answer is not simply to push food prices higher but to create more value throughout the chain.
“The only way to do that is by increasing the size of the pie,” he said.
That means processing more, improving logistics, reducing waste, using technology and making agriculture more productive so that both consumers and farmers can benefit.
For Malawi, the transformation also requires something less technical but potentially more difficult: a change in the relationship between government and the people it seeks to serve.
Mbilizi called for farmers, women, young people and private companies to have a stronger voice in agricultural policymaking.
“Policy is for our people. The laws, the regulations, everything else is for our people,” she said.
And then came her bluntest message.
“Let it go. Let our people give them the space. Give the youth the space. Give the women the space. Give the private sector the space.”
It was an admission that transforming African agriculture may require governments not simply to do more, but in some cases to step back.
“Sometimes it’s good to be at the back of the bus than in your front,” she said.
The challenge now is whether that rhetoric can survive beyond conference halls.
Africa already has millions of farmers.
What it lacks, the panel suggested, is a system capable of turning those farmers into profitable businesses — and connecting them to the finance, technology and markets needed to make that possible.
