Africa Agriculture

The water supply in Morocco is coming under increased strain as consumption rises on the back of demographic growth, urbanisation, an expanding industrial and agricultural sector, and climate change. These factors could lead to the potential depletion of an estimated 80% of the country’s extant water resources over the next 25 years, according...

Nigeria has a number of constraints hampering growth in the agricultural sector, ranging from transport networks to access to financing. However, chief among the challenges is limited productivity. The country suffers from sub-par yields, which curb farmers’ profitability and restrict efforts to achieve self-sufficiency in the sector.

As part of the process of improving food security and the profitability of the agriculture industry, the government is turning its attention to stoking not only production but also the consumption of staple crops. The government wants to play to the industry’s key strengths and, as such, is hoping to extract greater benefit from the most...

While oil may be Nigeria’s breadwinner, agriculture remains the most important component of the country’s economy. The sector is the country’s largest employer and accounts for 23.9% of GDP. And yet for many years the agriculture industry took a back seat to the country’s rise as a key global hydrocarbons producer.

With Tunisia striving to bring economic growth back on track, agriculture performed strongly in 2015, driven by outstanding production and olive oil exports, which generated TD2bn (€917.2m) in revenue. Combined with falling oil prices, this helped reduce the trade deficit from TD13.64bn (€6.3bn) in 2014 to TD1.2bn (€550.3m) in 2015.

Owing to favourable weather and efforts to improve sector organisation, in 2015 Tunisia was the world’s second-largest olive oil producer and its top exporter. As of October 31, 2015, coinciding with the end of the 2014/15 agricultural season, Tunisia’s 90m olive trees had returned 350,000 tonnes of olive oil.