Context

Rural Agriculture for Development

Rural-urban migration and population growth explain the contrasting aspects of cities in Africa and their sprawl. 

With rapid urbanization in demographic and urban migration, the total population of Africa has more than tripled between 1950 and 1997, but the cities have multiplied by 11 times, from 22 to 250 million. According to projections by the United Nations, 50% of all Africans will live in cities by 2020. Kinshasa has increased from 165,000 to 3.6 million inhabitants, and cities such as Abidjan and Dakar represent over 25% of the total population.

A massive rural exodus: the search for a job is a priority, but also fascinated by the city as a space for innovation and wealth. In Lagos, when the highest growth of more than 2 / 3 of the increase are due to rural exodus, Abidjan nearly half the inhabitants were born abroad as the attractiveness of the city exceeds Borders (Burkina Faso, Mali)."

The study of the population of Senegal emphasizes both its distribution and its contrasting fast expanding population. These data highlight fundamental problems. Being a predominantly rural population, its distribution, inherited from history, does not conform to a rational exploitation of agricultural potential of the country. This is higher that the rains are more abundant and more regular, or two thirds of the peasantry Senegalese living north of the Saloum. Ie in the driest and most fragile. The future is in the direction of population growth to the southern half of the country, therefore in a spatial policy that values the potential of the wettest regions.

On the other hand, the population explosion may make the problems of education, vocational training and employment more difficult to solve. Their solution can only be made more difficult by the continuing rural exodus and its focus on Dakar and the Cap Vert. In addition to exacerbating the inter-regional imbalances, growth of the capital is synonymous with unemployment for too many young people. This means that rural development, modernization of the countryside and the development of products of the earth represent a social requirement that a further economic necessity.

Social developments, techniques and technology are now more than ever, the human resource base of harmonious social development, sustainable and self-sustaining. The quality of production is related to the degree of skill and organization of human capital, making it a factor in development is to ensure the qualification of human resources.

The field of agriculture as an engine of growth 

(Rural population: 53.3% Human Development Index: 154th largest in the world of 173 countries worldwide report on the 2006 UNDP Human Development).

The new report on World Development 2008 (World Bank) calls for greater investment in agriculture in developing countries. He recommended placing this sector at the center of development efforts to achieve the goal of halving by 2015 the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and hunger. Agriculture contributes to development in many ways. Agriculture contributes to development as an economic, as a means of subsistence and as a source of environmental services and is a unique instrument of development.

Agriculture as an economic activity

Agriculture can feed the growth of the national economy, providing investment opportunities to the private sector and be the main driver of related industries and the rural non-farm economy. Two thirds of the agricultural added value in the world from developing countries. In countries with strong agricultural, agriculture contributes 29%, on average, gross domestic product (GDP) and employs 65% of the population. Industries and services related to agriculture in value chains often contribute to over 30% of GDP in developing countries and changing urbanized. Agricultural production is important for food security because it is a source of income for the majority of the rural poor. It is particularly critical in a dozen countries in sub-Saharan Africa are jointly approximately 200 million. These countries are exposed to repeated food emergencies and uncertainties in food aid is therefore essential, in their case, to increase and stabilize their domestic production to ensure food security.

Agriculture as a livelihood

According to estimates, agriculture provides a livelihood for 86% of rural populations. It employs 1.3 billion smallholders and landless rural people, it provides a "social protection funded by the firm" when shocks occur in urban spaces, and is the foundation of rural communities viable. Of the 5.5 billion people in the developing world, 3 billion, almost half of humanity, live in rural areas, an estimated 2.5 billion of them are members of households engaged in agricultural activities and $ 1.5 billion belongs to households of small farmers.

• While 75% of the world's poor live in rural areas, only 4% of official development assistance goes to agriculture in developing countries.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, a region heavily dependent on agriculture for its growth, public spending for agriculture accounts for only 4% of total public expenditure and tax burden is relatively heavy in this sector.
• For the poorest people, GDP growth determined contributes about four times more effective at reducing poverty when the increase comes from agriculture and not in another.

Agriculture, if it does not much to a country like Senegal, occupies the majority of the population and all of them in rural areas (70% of Senegalese are farmers or ranchers). Thus, ten million, nearly seven are farmers. Eleven million over five live in rural areas. Of the 200,000 km2 of the country, more than 80,000 are directly and permanently dedicated to agricultural activity, and around 60,000 to pastoral activity.

Agriculture is an important sector of the economy, it should be promoted more by a capacity and skills of producers. The first priority is to create conditions so that farmers and ranchers improve their production capacity both in quality and quantity where appropriate in order to satisfy their basic needs. The development of agro-pastoral and competitive pay, promotion of employment related to production or processing, will enable the rural world to meet its basic needs for food, health and education.

Improving the situation of children and rural women participating in large part to the creation of wealth will be promoted through educational training and learning of Information Technology and Communication.