Getaw Tadesse POLICY SEMINAR Taking Stock of Africa’s Agrifood Processing Sector Key findings of the 2022 ReSAKSS Annual Trends and Outlook Report on Agrifood Processing Strategies for Successful Food Systems Transformation in Africa Co-organized by IFPRI and Akademiya2063 FEB 9, 2023 - 8:00 TO 9:30AM EST

2. Outline
About the 2022 ATOR
• Motivation
• Content/ approach
Key Findings and Insights
• General findings on the dynamics of the sector
• Value chain specific findings
• Policy and investment findings

3. Motivation
• The CAADP/Malabo declaration main goal is to
trigger accelerated growth and transformation
for shared prosperity and improved livelihoods.
• Achieving such ambitious goal requires that
each component of the system performs
efficiently.
• A high-performing, resilient, and competitive
processing sector is critical to the overall
performance of the food system.

4. Content
Focus on three important issues
• Patterns, structure and performance of the
sector
• The dynamics of selected value chains
• Policy and investment options

5. General findings about the dynamics of the sector
• The sector represents a substantial share of total
manufacturing employment and value added.
• Employment, output, and labor productivity are growing.
• Small and medium enterprises and informal firms constitute
the largest share of agrifood processing firms.
• Processed agricultural products account for a large and
increasing share of intra-African agricultural trade
• Agrifood processing plays a role of revitalizing smallholders’
commercialization

6. Value chains specific findings
Challenge Effects
Fruits and vegetables:
i) Low and unpredictable
productivity;
ii) Seasonal and highly perishable;
iii) Poor transport infrastructure and
insufficient cold chain facilities
• High post-harvest losses
• High risk of foodborne
diseases
• Increase cost and
reduce processors’
competitiveness
Meat, beef and poultry:
i) Lack of quality control;
ii) No reliable local animal feed
subsector;
iii) Poor veterinary services
• Limit access to high-
value markets
• Raise costs and
undermine
competitiveness
A common theme:
i) Lack of well-functioning linkages
between producers and
processors
• Unreliable supply chains
Case studies
• Tomato products in Ghana and Nigeria.
• Pineapple products in West Africa.
• Traditional African vegetables in Kenya
and Tanzania.
• Beef exports from Botswana and
Namibia-
• Beef trade in West Africa.
• Meat production in East Africa.
• Poultry industry in Mozambique and
Ghana.

7. Skills and Knowledge
• Limited opportunities to acquire skills and knowledge.
• Public education and training systems face funding and human resource
limitations.
• Public education often does not cover areas of new and emerging
technical skill.
• Limited interactions between training institutions and industry result in
mismatches between the training offered and the skills required by
firms.

8. Access to finance
• A large percentage of agrifood processing firms in Africa identify
access to finance as a major constraint to their operations.
• Formal financial institutions tend to serve only large and formal firms;
• Small and informal enterprises, which constitute the largest share of
agrifood processing firms, rely mainly on their own funds or on
informal financing.

9. Access to innovation and technologies
• Innovation in African agrifood processing firms is
generally low due to several constraints:
• Low and declining investments in research and
development
• Limited access to technology, e.g ICT.
• Limited effort on technology transfer from foreign
food processing firms
• Limited interaction between food processing firms and
research institutions

10. Industrial clustering and agriparks
• Significant strategic importance of industrial clusters for
transforming Africa’s agriculture into a high-value-added
industry
• Case studies of Uganda’s fish and South Africa’s wine illustrate the
benefits of clustering to promote growth and competitiveness
• However, two challenges remain very important
• The rate of endogenous clustering is very slow
• Government supported agro-industrial parks are not sufficiently
successful

11. Concluding remarks
• The agrifood processing is a key factor in the continent’s ability to build
food systems that provide sustainable healthy diets for all.
• Many challenges constrain the development of food processing sector
in Africa: financing, skills and knowledge, infrastructure, innovations
and technologies.
• Areas for quick actions include:
 Expand successful industries and best practices
 Strengthen the transformation of agrifood processing firms
 Revitalize policy failures and inactions