ABSTRACT
With a growing world population and shrinking water and land resources, future increases in agricultural output will need to be met by agricultural productivity growth. Technology is important for the improvement of agricultural productivity (World Bank, 2007). China has accumulated lots of valuable experience in developing agriculture through technological innovation. Since 1949 and especially since 1978, agricultural growth has been largely attributed to technological innovation. By 2008, the contribution of technology to agricultural productivity increase had reached 50 per cent (Ministry of Agriculture Rural Economy Research Center, 2009). Most African countries began to build agricultural technology research and development (R&D) and extension systems after their independence, but primarily depended on technology and scientific management introduced from western countries for the cultivation of high-yielding commercial crops. After a decade of stagnation during the 1990s, investment and human resource capacity in public agricultural R&D averaged more than 20 per cent growth in Sub-Saharan Africa during 2001–2008 (Beintema and Stads, 2011). However, most of the investment growth occurred in a handful of countries; in many other countries, investment levels have stagnated or fallen. Research capacity and funding depend overwhelmingly on often volatile, external funding sources in many countries: in particular those in francophone West Africa, which are threatened by extremely fragile funding systems, face fundamental capacity and investment challenges (Beintema and Stads, 2011). The uniqueness of African agro-ecologies limits the possibilities for benefits from international technology transfer. African countries also find it difficult to realize suitable economies of scale for research because of small populations. Low investment in scientific research and absorption of advanced technology are important explanations for poor maize output in the Sub-Saharan Africa region, relative to other regions of the world (World Bank, 2007).
