Africa could be losing 15 per cent of its food production because of the declining fertility of its soils. But the process of decline is reversible, using cheap, simple technologies that peasant communities know best, claims a report from a UN agency tackling the problems of the world's poorest people.
The International Fund for Agricultural Development launched the report* in Washington DC last week at a joint meeting with the World Resources Institute. Its findings suggest that the pessimists who believe Africa is being overtaken by irreversible ecological decline are wrong. And it questions conventional views about desertification in arid parts of the continent.
The fund is claiming important successes for its African programme, which is spending almost $600 million on encouraging and developing traditional technologies on peasant farms as the solution to the continent's inability to feed itself.
'The ideas we are promoting are not developed in laboratories or ...
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