Investigating institutional constraints to smallholder development: the issues and antecedents - Institutional Constraints to Small Farmer Development in Southern Africa - page 4

on the verge of starvation (The Economist, 2002). In August 2003, similar situations were
reported in Tanzania, Malawi, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, etc. (WFP, 2003).
The region's development prospects are also hampered by a number of macroeconomic
constraints, including low foreign direct investment (FDI), low savings rates in the region
of 17%, and a double-digit inflation in nine member states (Anonymous, 2003). A heavy
debt burden, with as many as seven countries participating in the Heavily Indebted Poor
Countries (HIPC) Initiative, completes this highly desperate picture (Anonymous, 2003).
On top of all these, the HIV/AIDS pandemic began ravaging the region to the point that
the human capacity to implement the most basic tasks on farms became compromised.
When people cannot even afford the simple tasks of sowing seeds or harvesting crops to
feed starving households, nothing can be more desperate. In his topic The End of Poverty:
How we can make it happen in our lifetime, Jeffrey Sachs' presents what he called a 'Global
Family Portrait' that sketched the scene in a Malawian village that had lost all its able-
bodied young men who, if they had lived, 'could have built small-scale water harvesting
units on rooftops…' (Sachs, 2005). This picture obviously has more than a familiar ring to
anybody who has been involved in development in the region.
At both regional and continental levels, African leaders then began committing to an
expansion of investment in agriculture. The African political leadership meeting in Maputo
in its second summit in July 2003, mandated member states to ensure a minimum allocation
of 10% to agriculture within five years in order to accelerate growth to at least 6% per
annum, which was considered sufficient to effectively address poverty reduction goals on
the continent (African Union, 2003). The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development
program (CAADP) was established at that summit as the means by which the vision of the
New Economic Programme for Africa's Development (NEPAD), of redefining African
Agriculture by accelerating economic growth, minimizing poverty, and enhancing food
security, could be achieved (InWent/IFPRI/NEPAD/CTA, 2003).
The leaders were undoubtedly convinced that potential exists for African countries to
expand agricultural output and turn the sector into a profitable one. For instance, in the late
1990s, the United States Agency of International Development (USAID) commissioned
several studies to assess the Economic Comparative Advantage (CEA) of Southern African
countries in agricultural production. The studies concluded that many of these countries,
including Tanzania, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, possess economic comparative advantages in
a wide variety of agricultural products whose production would significantly and positively
impact on both farmer and national welfare (Nakhumwa et al. , 1999; Sukume et al. , 2000).
The foregoing clearly suggests that there is strong political commitment for small farmer
development at both the national and regional levels. It is also clear that policy makers in
the region have come to the realization that alternative policies that ignore small farmer