Over the years, agriculture in Africa has been given some push to propagate the numerous benefits embedded in the sector. This push for a change in agriculture has led to more innovative ways of practising agriculture, which in the long run improve the standard of living for farmers and boost economic growth in most African nations. To sustain the productivity of the sector with good standards of living for farmers and everyone involved in the agricultural value chain, some influential persons in Africa have made some substantial investments and advocated changing the narrative of the sector. One of such people is Strive Masiyiwa, the Zimbabwean business tycoon calling for a more sustained effort in causing a change in the agricultural sector.
The Zimbabwean telecoms tycoon once said, “If I started again, I would have done agriculture.” This, he said, was about the fact that agriculture is embedded with a lot of worthwhile opportunities. The passion of Masiyiwa for the agricultural sector has seen him becoming the Chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to support smallholder farmers to reduce poverty and hunger.
Quoting Strive Masiyiwa at a revolution forum held to transform Africa’s agriculture, he said, “Africa has the largest, most vibrant group of young people – yet we have a need to create jobs even today for over 250 million [of them]. Yet we have over 60% of the world’s unutilized arable land. There must be a way to connect these two dots.”
His transformational agenda has witnessed him communicating the need for Africa to adopt the modernized model of farming. This means that the use of ancient tools like cutlasses and holes-all primitive modes of farming ought to be halted, to shift to the usage of more mechanized technologies and equipment.
His ability to make predictions has made him a unique businessman, investor and advocate in Africa. Moving his online followers to his interest to invest in agriculture, he began to introduce his followers to disruptors in African agriculture. His first post was about Hello Tractor, an app that makes the accessibility of tractors on a hiring basis more accessible and affordable to smallholder farmers.
Another striking initiative he brought on board was the One Acre Fund where he demonstrated how entrepreneurs can scale a solution for agricultural development in Africa.
There is so much to be done in agriculture, and Strive Masiyiwa’s initiatives have contributed to achieving accelerated and sustainable growth in the agricultural sector for the collective good of the African continent, and Africa became a net exporter of major food crops in the world. Entrepreneurship is certainly the best way to make Africa a great continent, and a determiner of its exports of agricultural products to other countries in the world. There are a lot of opportunities in the sector, and nations in Africa must strive to make agriculture work.
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