The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa

The New Harvest argues that Africa can feed itself in a generation and help contribute to global food security despite its history of persistent food shortages and the rising threat of climate change. To achieve this, the continent must harness scientific and technological advances, invest in infrastructure, foster higher technical training, and create regional markets. It must also produce a new crop of entrepreneurial leaders dedicated to the continent's economic improvement.

This new edition provides ideas on how to place agriculture at the center of the continent's long-term economic transformation. It demonstrates how policy coordination can help realize agriculture's full potential as a motherboard for other economic activities. Incorporating lessons from academia, government, civil society, and private industry, The New Harvest outlines how African countries can work together at regional levels to generate new knowledge and resources, harness technological advancement, encourage entrepreneurship, increase agricultural output, create markets, and improve overall economic performance.

The New Harvest is a product of the Agricultural Innovation in Africa Project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Read the full text here.

Praise for the first edition:

"Calestous Juma draws on a rich harvest of research to write a convincing analysis of the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship in the agricultural sectors of Africa. Hopefully, it will be widely read by scholars and policy analysts across Africa as well as outside. It is a great book."—Elinor Ostrom, Professor of Political Science, Indiana University, and 2009 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences

"Calestous Juma has once again produced a book that will be an important reference for scholars, researchers and practitioners in their search for ways to break the persistent conundrum that is Africa's failure to properly exploit its huge agricultural potential. The book reveals his exceptional ability to express ideas that will be relevant to the emerging trends in Africa's agricultural and political economy."—Monty Jones, Executive Director, Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, and 2004 World Food Prize Laureate