been unanimous in emphasising the need to provide solutions built on three narratives:
firstly, reintroduction of agriculture in development thinking which led the categorisation of SSA countries as an agriculture-based economy. Secondly, introduction of a new scheme of support based on the PPP mechanism, mainly dominated by TNCs and buyer-driven value chain into the global food system. And finally, stabilisation of international market to ensure that countries dependent on imports will no longer undergo the consequence of the severe shock due to price spikes.
However, despite the fervour with regard to the African continent often ignored for long time, this thesis highlights significant inconsistencies that cast doubt on the effectiveness and sustainability to scale-up agriculture, ensure food security and poverty reduction.
Why are the recent policies not working and what can be done about it
Shedding light on the three narratives mentioned above and their implications for agricultural development and food security policies in SSA is the overarching objective of this manuscript. Additionally, the thesis seeks to propose a new framework to address the policy inconsistency detected throughout the different inquiries in this document. It provides theoretical and empirical arguments on the policies that aim to promote agriculture in the African continent based on a mode of production prioritising the PPP and value chain.
To this extent, this thesis was set out to answer how the mechanism of PPP and the concept of value chain are introduced in development strategies to enhance the private control of the food system and to what extent these strategies are in contradiction with the apparent realities related to economic conditions, food security and poverty. Five sub-research questions were posed in the beginning of this manuscript to address this central question:
Why and how the changes in modus operandi in agricultural development and food security policies, particularly, the market-led paradigm, affect the modes of production and the way of life of smallholders in a holistic manner and how this modus operandi socially, politically and economically marginalises the people in SSA ;
Does the quest for food security through stabilisation of international markets and the interplay between international, national and household levels converge in a homogenous way to enable all the food imports dependent countries to ensure their future food supply and their food security ;
To what extent does the classification of the region as an agriculture-based economy inhibit the development of the other sectors of the economy and the trajectory of its structural transformation
Whatare the driving forces of the economy in the region
-agricultural and food security policies
To answer these questions, this manuscript was built on two systematic approaches with respect to the new change in African agriculture and its food security
policy
-core contribution of this manuscript. The first approach examines the problem of food from the lenses of agency and structuralist schools of political economy and addresses the first two sub-research questions.
The second approach addresses the data theory to highlight the contradictions in the implementation of agricultural development and food security policies in SSA region. The approach explores empirical evidences through the technique of orbit
analysis to highlight the contradictions on the evidences presented by the positive analysis school of political economy on the sectoral decomposition and the relations between agriculture and other sectors of the economy. Furthermore, using the same perspective, the thesis also highlights the driving forces of the African economy from the aggregate demand. The second approach gives an answer to the third and fourth sub-research question mentioned above.
The new modus operandi and the stabilisation of the world grain markets
The examination of the new modus operandi to address the current African agricultural and food security problem stresses discussions related to the market-led paradigm, the PPP and value chain as well as their effects on the African smallholders.
From this perspective, the thesis underlines that the change in modus operandi marginalises the African smallholder in multiple ways: economically, due to the loss of the source of livelihood, socially due to the cycle of the poverty trap engendered by that loss, and politically, due to the loss of control over food.
Additionally, the same theoretical tools stemming from the agency/Structuralist schools were used to analyse the second narrative related to the stabilisation of the world grain markets insofar that food security would transcend through three levels, global, national and household. The thesis draws three concluding points regarding this topic. Firstly, the differences of market mechanisms, more precisely, how the local and global grain markets work and their interactions are inconsistent. Local markets are often non-existent and still need to be created notwithstanding the constraints attached to them. Global grain markets are nowadays functioning under a complex exchange mechanism using financial instruments that give room for speculations making the market more unpredictable. Secondly, the political motives that influence the food policy at the level of individual countries are other constraints to the second narrative.
Each individual country has different conditions with regards to food security and different resources to address them. The severity of these conditions and the availability of the resources are two important factors that make it possible for a given country to address and soften their vulnerabilities. Also, the priority for advanced countries and SSA countries are also different in their content and directions. High-income countries20 are more directed to the traditional security lenses while the African countries are more focused on policies that ensure food security through agricultural development and poverty reduction. And finally, the constraints faced by African agriculture in dealing with technical/technological barriers as well as physical conditions of the land, led this thesis to conclude that there is an existing trilemma or an impossible trinity to ensure food security at the three levels previously mentioned. Moreover, a thorough examination of the ideological debates with the focus on core competencies, strengths and expectations of pro-corporatists and the transnational movements indicates that the African agriculture is changing with the influence of the strong neoliberal proclivities.
In other words, the neoliberal ideology is gaining ground to the grassroots type of agricultural development.
The thesis proposed as an alternative to the pro-corporatist approach that centres population in policy design in which productive capacity and absorptive capacity were partly presented to contribute to the conceptualisation of the capacity-driven agricultural development and food security. This thesis also gave an insight into the characteristics of the African agricultural problem represented by three arrows for policy challenges:
the upward type, indicating a positive relation between land productivity and the share of employment in the rural area; the straight type, representing stagnating land
20Countries defined in the three Groups
productivity and the declining type, representing the decline of the share of employment in agriculture over time.
What did we learn from orbit analysis policy and theoretical implications
Another contribution of this thesis is related to data theory, more precisely, the application of a simple but implacable technique of orbit analysis. Agricultural development and food security policies advanced by the GAFSP and the New Alliance are built on empirical evidence that derives from positive analysis. These empirical studies underline in particular the relations between agriculture and the other sectors of the economy and more precisely their incidences on poverty reduction. As technical fixes are prescribed to tackle agricultural development and food security in SSA, development institutions propel a signalling process, by tagging the region as an
-for the poor. Such technical solution advances evidences built upon empirical and thorny methods, yet, with false interpretations with the one-size-fits-all policy packages.
This signalling was ignoring the prevailing conditions in SSA economy, where structural transformation already took place without the agricultural linkages.
Orbit analysis was adopted to untangle the debate on the chicken-and-eggs on the role of agriculture in the economy by analysing SSA economic conditions pointed out byTsakok and Gardner (2007). In doing so, this thesis identified various patterns of
. The empirical findings observed from the orbit analysis clearly shows that the agricultural sector in SSA was outstripped by other industries since the 1990s. In addition, the regional decomposition, the use of categorical variables such as political freedom, geographical condition, and the business
environment, support that, on the short run21, the leading role played by agriculture was only robust in a few countries, particularly for countries not part of the GAFSP and New Alliance. On the long run, the empirical findings suggest that economy of the continent is led by a hybrid dualism of manufacturing/agriculture.
Moreover, while investigating the long run driving force of the SSA economies from the perspective of aggregate demand, the thesis draws three other patterns resulting from the relations between the main aggregates on investments and trade, namely: trade type, imports-investment type and investment-exporting type. When coupled with the sectoral decomposition, these three types of categorisation make it possible to design a new analytical framework that goes beyond the simple
cla
-In this manuscript, we also presented the extension of the orbit analysis. The method was originally designed byItaki (2014)to analyse time series data to highlight the leading and following relations among the analysed variables. The method also offers a new alternative to the so-
-statistics to determine causal relations. The empirical analysis in this thesis highlights that orbit analysis not only applies to time series data but also to a panel or longitudinal type of data. The extension of the method uses the same principle of treatment of the original orbit analysis and stacks the variables into panel form. Descriptive statistics and graphical analysis using statistical software (like STATA for the present case) also makes it possible to understand dynamic movements of each variable and identify on a time scale its power to pull or to be pulled. Consequently, the method offers acute and precise information on the study of the possible origins in the change of an economic
21Based on comparative benchmarks 2000-2008 and 2008-2013.
phenomenon at a time t and therefore makes it possible to identify the policy that triggered those changes.
- of
this thesis,
productive capacity and absorptive capacity at the rural and urban level. Moreover, a new insight into the concept of policy convergence was introduced in the conceptualisation of the capacity-driven approach in which three policy interfaces were identified. The thesis brought forth that the interplay between rural development, urban migration and globalisation are the essence of the new political economy of agricultural development and food security.
Sustainable agricultural development and food security in sub-Saharan Africa
The capacity-driven approach is relevant to policy thinking and policy making relative to the analysis of the nature, the dimension and the direction of policies to be implemented in the Sustainable Development Goals.
In recent years, several ideas were exchanged on the sustainable development solution network particularly influenced by Sachs (2015)
ned various ideas related to the development challenges to be addressed from 2015 to 2030. The challenges for agricultural development and food security are practically known and exposed by a vast ground of literature. However, as the initiative is relativ
The theoretical and empirical foundations of the capacity-driven approach offer a framework to initiate this process. This thesis points out that the problems of agricultural development and food security begins at the rural level and is extended systematically to the national and international level. The versatility of this framework
will make it possible to devise clear policy design at different level according to the driving, enabling, productive and absorptive capacity.
Other points however require in depth studies as the focus of this thesis were based on the combinations of historical facts and empirical studies from data available on the public domain about the GAFSP and New Alliance. Further country-wide and micro-perspectives studies are necessary to assess the real conditions on the ground on the location where agricultural development policy can be conducted, the condition of the markets, the various economic activities, the quality of the infrastructure, and all the elements that solely data cannot explain. Further researches that supplement the capacity-driven approach are therefore expected in the future.
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