By Rebekah Mintzer
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| A woman in Kenya adds fertilizer to crops. Increased fertilizer use will help reinvigorate African soil that has been depleted of nutrients. (Photo credit: Creative Commons) |
11 March 2010 [MediaGlobal]: Food insecurity on the African continent is severely aggravated by a depletion of nutrients in the soil that leads to a decrease in soil productivity. A remedy to this problem is the increased use of fertilizers, yet many African farmers cannot afford or access this agricultural input that farmers on other continents have used in abundance to dramatically increase food production. Using more fertilizer would prevent African farmers from having to plant so expansively but allow them to have higher crop yields in smaller areas without depleting the soil.
A new Website, AfricaFertilizer.org, is using the power of information technology to help spread vital information about fertilizers in Africa with the hopes of invigorating the market and improving the livelihoods of small farmers. Created by the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), a public organization devoted to increasing food security worldwide, AfricaFertilizer.org provides information on country-specific fertilizer use, soil nutrients and soil fertility as well as relevant news, publications, blogs, maps, event listings and other agricultural data.
“Information is power. Information-sharing is mutual empowerment,” Dr. Amit H. Roy, President and Chief Executive Officer of the IFDC told MediaGlobal in an e-mail. “AfricaFertilizer.org is sourcing, aggregating, filtering, and sharing information on fertilizer from and to international, regional, and national players in the sector, but also from and to small, local fertilizer dealers and agricultural extension workers who are the ‘last mile’ link with millions of smallholder farmers.”
The idea of creating a platform for soil fertility data sharing emerged from the 2006 Africa Fertilizer Summit held by the African Union (AU) in Nigeria. The result of the summit was the Abuja Declaration, which called for an increase in fertilizer use in sub-Saharan Africa from 8 kilograms per hectare to 50 kilograms per hectare by 2015 in order to help spur a “Green Revolution” comparable to those that emerged in Latin America and Asia during the 1960s. According to the declaration, Africa’s soil loses the equivalent of US $4 billion in soil nutrients per year, expanding soil infertility and thus food insecurity. There is abundant raw material for fertilizer, like phosphates and natural gas in Africa, but its potential remains largely untapped and fertilizer is imported from elsewhere at prices too high for many smallholder farmers to afford.
IFDC and the AU both recognize that to strengthen agricultural and fertilizer markets they need more, readily updated information accessible to people and organizations. “In Western Europe and the US markets, such information and data are widely shared and spread,” Roy explained. “Detailed, accurate and timely data are compiled and shared by the industry, governments and specialized institutions… Africa remains the least-informed region of the world, although it represents a very promising market.”
AfricaFertilizer.org will expand through partnerships that will provide essential data for the Website. “More content will be added on an ongoing basis, as partnerships are developed at several levels: with international organizations or publishers; at the continental level with organizations such as AGRA [Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa], the African Union and NEPAD [The New Partnership for Africa’s Development]; [and] at the national level with governments, associations, organizations, research institutions and agricultural projects working across Africa,” Patrice Annequin IFDC market information specialist told MediaGlobal in an email.
According to Annequin, IFDC also hopes to use mobile phones to disseminate important fertilizer information, as many sub-Saharan Africans increasingly have gained access to mobile phone technology. AfricaFertilizer.org is partnered with Esoko.com, a Website that allows market information to be transmitted via text messaging to sub-Saharan Africa. Whether transmitted by Internet or phone, IFDC has gathered vital soil fertility information for Africa in once place for the first time—an important step towards improving sustainable agricultural practices on the continent.
