Background

The large potential for agricultural production has not been realized in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). One of the key development paradigms for long-term increased agricultural production in SSA is sustainable agricultural mechanization. The benefits are multi-faceted ranging from reducing drudgery, improving the timeliness of agricultural production operations, increasing the efficiency of input use, to facilitating the implementation of the sustainable intensification of production systems, and making agriculture more resilient to increasingly extreme and unpredictable climatic events. Sustainable mechanization can also be applied to the development of improved post-harvest, processing and marketing activities, enabling more timely, and concise operations, with value added to primary products. This can foster the delivery of more nutritious foods and higher value products to final consumers. Moreover, sustainable mechanization has the capacity to contribute to entrepreneurial activities in rural and remote areas, with hire services that can provide much needed mechanization services to those involved in the agri-food sector. In addition, farm-based sustainable mechanization hire services can also contribute to wider development efforts, such as rural-urban transport of goods (and people), rural feeder road construction and maintenance, power for water pumping, provision and distribution of drinking water as well as the collection of bio-waste in rural, peri-urban and urban areas.

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has a history of strong public sector leadership in agricultural mechanization development. Procurement, mechanization services and spare parts supply have mostly been in the realm of the public sector. Over the years, differences in the priorities, perspectives and approaches between the public and private sector towards the development of agricultural mechanization have led to the agricultural mechanization in SSA being largely led and run by the public sector with the private sector playing a minor role. In the long run, this approach was not sustainable as important stakeholders such as private sector agri-machinery suppliers, manufacturers and service providers were neglected.
Initiatives for applying sustainable mechanization to growing more food and other functions and activities designed to increase sustainability of the food system, requires new thinking and perspectives. There is a primary need to see mechanization in a wider and more holistic context. There are numerous cross-cutting and cross-sectorial factors that can contribute to well-functioning, inclusive and sustainable mechanization systems. These need to be ascertained, assessed and elaborated upon and the important experiences and lessons learnt need to be shared with wider audiences that can facilitate and enable a more holistic framework to support the design, formulation and implementation of targeted sustainable mechanization policies.
There is a secondary need to consider mechanization as an important component of private sector development, but with an acceptance that private sector initiatives and markets cannot do the ‘job’ alone. The public sector still has a role to play in ensuring that a conducive environment exists for the development of sustainable agricultural mechanization in SSA. For example, the public sector needs to play a key role when developing agricultural mechanization strategies that will guide implementation of the planned actions. Furthermore, this will foster new and innovative models of public-private partnerships (PPP) that include the numerous opportunities provided by the shared economy, (via ICT and social media platforms, for example), that could play a key role in the successful development of a regional framework for sustainable mechanization.
There is also the need to consider mechanization as a complex system, intricately tied to food and livelihoods systems and not only to agricultural production. Yet the overarching question, or model, to consider is how sustainable mechanization can have greater impact and positively contribute to the urgent need to align agricultural (production) systems in climate-smart ways that include adaptation and mitigation strategies. This new and PPP-based sustainable mechanization paradigm will contribute to more resilient production systems in order for sub-Saharan Africa to meet food needs and reduce heightened pressures on the natural resource base.

Purpose and objectives

The main purpose of the meeting is to provide a platform to discuss sustainable mechanization development strategy options and, specifically the role of public-private and private-private partnerships. This will be implemented via the exchange of knowledge, perspectives, experiences and lessons learnt in the past while identifying leveraging and entry points for sustainable development of agricultural mechanization in SSA.

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