One major contributing factor has been lack of investment. Nevertheless, even when no such hindrances were present, efforts of various African governments and donors to accelerate the use of mechanisation inputs had, at best, had mixed results. The failure to do so resulted in the disastrous ‘land liberation’ policies of Robert Mugabe in 2000. It was becoming clear that such large-scale changes in the traditional patterns of agriculture went beyond the use of better equipment and inputs – there were critical cultural, religious and social issues that also needed addressing. This failure also set back efforts elsewhere to opt for larger, more-mechanised farming despite the outstanding results from South Africa and Zimbabwe, where a small number of commercial farmers were producing more than sufficient quantities of food. The policy failed – but largely because of the severe lack of organisational capacity that became evident during the programme and the reluctance of farmers to leave their ancestral landholdings for pastures new. It was in an effort to increase mechanisation that he instituted the Ujamaa policy of collectivisation, since individual plots were too small to allow for mechanical farming on a commercial level. In the 1960s, Tanzania’s charismatic former President, Julius Nyerere complained that while the world was using combine harvesters, his farmers were still using wooden ploughs to till the soil. For example, in Central Africa, 80% of worked land is cultivated manually and in eastern and southern Africa, this figure is 50%. ![]() ![]() That is clear from figures which point to the fact that it is still overwhelmingly human manpower which drives agricultural production in Africa. ![]() There is overwhelming consensus that mechanisation still has a long way to go in Africa. In agricultural terms, this signifies the use of agricultural machinery to mechanise agricultural endeavour, thus increasing farm productivity. With a growing number of countries, such as Malawi, Ghana and Rwanda, beginning to ramp up investment in agriculture to expand their production levels, investors, governments and aid organisations are focusing their attention on how to kick-start the single most important process for raising productivity levels: ‘mechanisation’.
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