Why+is+Africa+30+years+backward+-+AGRA+reveals+-+JS+Choi

http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=207391
 * Title**: Why is Africa 30 years backward - AGRA reveals
 * Source**: GhanaWeb
 * Date**: April 23, 2011

Explanation: This article talks about governments’ failure to support African agriculture. Agriculture sector in Africa is a huge part of its GDP. According to this article, the sector contributes over 40% to Ghana’s gross domestic product. 40% of GDP is a huge portion and yet farmers do not have access to functioning extension systems, affordable credit, stable prices or markets. About 50% of what African farmers produced is getting lost because of poor storage system. This means that countries are spending one dollar to produce the crops for one dollar or less. This tragic situation is happening because governments and institutions, such as AGRA (The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa) fail to support agriculture sector. Banks won’t lend much money to farmers to support the farming because of “perceived high risks, poorly coordinated agricultural value chains and poor infrastructure in the agricultural sector.” Though GDP of African countries is raised by 5-6%, African agricultural economy is still very weak and needs to be improved for rapid economic growth.

Vocabulary: • Macroeconomics: A wider view of economics, and considers such things as measuring all the economic activity in the whole economy • GDP: Gross Domestic Product- The total value of all final goods and services produced in an economy in a year • Economic development: is the increase in the amount of people in a nation's population with sustained growth from a simple, low-income economy to a modern, high-income economy. • Economic Growth: is the increase of per capita gross domestic product (GDP) or other measure of aggregate income. • Expenditure: the amount of money spent.

Graph 1: Graph that shows economic growth of Africa since 1970 Source: http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/12/asia-china-africa-trade-growth-markets-economy-investment.html

Evaluation: I agree with the author that governments and institutions should focus more on supporting and subsidizing the agricultural sector because in Ghana, 40% of its GDP comes from agriculture only. It means that almost half of products produced in Ghana are crops. Though this is a significantly huge portion of economy, governments and banks do not yet support it because it is very risky. (Risky because there is a possibility that banks will not get their money back for failed harvest.) According to the Mckinsey report “lions on the move: the progress and potential of African economies”, GDP of African is increasing really rapidly, ($461 billions to $1.6 trillion). This is a huge jump. I believe that now that other sectors of economy are doing well (though they still need constant subsidy and support.), it is time to change government’s attention on agricultural sector whose output is predicted to increase from $280 billion per year to $880billion by 2030. This prediction can only come true if there is going to be a constant support from institutions such as AGRA and governments. Since most of Africans are farmers, helping agricultural sector might also mean improving economic development, which concerns with well-being of people. Therefore, I insist that governments follow what the author wants them to do, “financial aid to famers”.