World Food Policy Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 50

How Promising is the Rice Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa?

unlikely to be important in MV adoption.
While improving access to credit is likely
to be important to increase fertilizer
application, it is also remarkable to
realize that considerably high rice yields
are achieved without functioning credit
markets in our four study sites. Therefore,
it seems fair to conclude that the improved
credit access is desirable but not essential
for the improvement of rice yields in SSA.
Furthermore, according to our ongoing
research in the Mwea irrigation scheme
in Kenya, which is a large irrigation
scheme consisting of 12,000 ha with wellmaintained facilities, rice yields are as high
as 5–7 ton/ha and credits are supplied not
only by agricultural cooperatives but also
by rice traders, as in many rice-growing
areas in Asia. It may well be, that the
large demand for fertilizer induces the
development of informal credit markets,
where standing crops serve as the role of
credit.

practices are adopted. These findings
indicate that Asian rice technology can
be directly transferable to SSA.12 On the
other hand, there are many areas in SSA
where unimproved varieties are adopted,
chemical fertilizer is not used, and paddy
fields are not bunded and leveled. In such
areas, the rice yield is low and ranges from
1.0 to 1.5 ton/ha, which is close to rice
yields in Asia before the Green Revolution.
These observations strongly indicate that a
strategic priority on the capacity building
of extension specialists on rice and
strengthening extension activities for rice
production will be warranted, in order to
realize a rice Green Revolution in SSA.

So far, however, inadequate
resources have been allocated to the
capacity building and extension. Unless
more resources are allocated to these
activities, the efforts to realize a rice Green
Revolution in SSA are bound to fail.

Since MVs are fertilizer responsive,
once they are adopted , demand for
fertilizer will increase, which, in turn, will
increase the demand for credit. Similarly,
since MVs are more productive under
irrigated conditions, adoption of MVs
will increase the demand for irrigation
water. Thus, the benefit and cost of credit
programs and irrigation projects must be
carefully reassessed, while considering the
large expected gains in productivity and
profitability of rice farming in SSA.

We have been conducting
research on lowland rice production
partly because it is the most promising
crop and partly because the success of
the developing rice sector in SSA can

IV - Concluding Remarks

T

he four case studies we have
reviewed in this article clearly
demonstrate that in order to realize
the rice Green Revolution in SSA, highyielding MV seeds, application of fertilizer,
and the adoption of bunding and leveling
are essential. We found that very high
yields are realized in some irrigated areas
in Tanzania and Uganda and reasonably
high yields are achieved in some rain-fed
areas in Tanzania, Uganda, and Ghana.
Commonly in these areas, Asian-type
MVs as well as bunding and leveling
12

Asian varieties, however, are susceptible to yellow mottle virus, which is unique to SSA. Thus, MVs
tolerant to this virus must be developed urgently (Balasubramanian et al. 2007).

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