Honourable delegates, invited guests, ladies and gentlemen, comrades.
On behalf of the People and Government of Socialist Ethiopia, I take great pleasure in welcoming you all to Ethiopia for the Conference on Management of Vertisols in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Many African countries are experiencing declining human food production, on a per caput basis: over the past three decades, per caput grain production in sub-Saharan Africa, as a whole, has declined from 170 kg to 118 kg, which is far below subsistence levels. Food imports in the mid-1980s claimed some 20% of total export earnings, and nearly 30% of the population was fed with imported grain. At the same time, sub-Saharan Africa's population has been growing rapidly, and is projected to triple by the year 2025.
Total per caput food production in sub-Saharan Africa in the period 1982-84 was 8% lower than a decade earlier, with 31 out of 39 countries showing a negative trend. Similarly the overall economic background in Africa has not been favourable in recent years. Per caput GDP, which grew at 1.3% per year in the 1960s, virtually stagnated in the 1970s, with an average growth rate of only 0.7% per year, and actually fell in the first half of the 1980s. Inflation averaged 15% per year from 1974 to 1984, and the gross domestic saving rate declined by a third. The ratio of foreign debt service payments to export earnings deteriorated during the 1980s. The ability of governments to raise revenue, expressed in terms of current revenue as a percentage of GNP, declined slightly-from 15 to 14%-in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, and markedly-from 17 to 12%-in the low-income countries. This is reflected in the increasing difficulties experienced by the governments of our subregion in maintaining the quantity and quality of their services in the face of growing budgetary deficits.
The human population of sub-Saharan Africa is essentially a rural one. Of the 440 million people only 25% live in urban areas, a much lower proportion than in other parts of the developing world. This population is growing at a high rate of more than 3% per year, and is projected to triple by the year 2025.
The fact that domestic food supplies less and less adequately meet the most basic dietary demands of an ever-increasing population not only poses serious threats to the future of this part of the world, but also presents heavy challenges to all those involved in agricultural research and development.
In rural societies agricultural land and the people using that land are the most important resources on which the necessary economic expansion and diversification can be based. Sub-Saharan Africa is a region of enormous environmental diversity. The main sources of this diversity are variations in rainfall, temperature and soils. Technologies for increasing labour, capital and land productivities must be adjusted to such environmental variability if they are to have any significant impact. The generation of such technologies needs efforts well beyond those currently expended on this work. Total expenditure on agricultural research in sub-Saharan Africa between 1981 and 1983 was only US$125 million per year, a figure which contrasts sharply with the enormous expenditure on the importation of 14 million tonnes of basic food commodities into the continent. The growth rate now needed in domestic African crop and livestock production is close to 4% per year. Actual rates of growth over the past 15 years have been only about one third of this.
To improve food production, increases in land and labour productivity are essential, and for this purpose technological innovations that reduce costs are required. The lack of adequate cash, credit and input supplies in Africa's rural areas dictates a low-input development strategy.
There is an urgent need to reverse this alarming situation of the subregion. Although this responsibility largely rests in the hands of the governments and peoples of the region, the role that international agricultural research organisations could play in generating food production technologies, given the existing limited technical and financial resources of national institutions, cannot be over-emphasised.
Any national agricultural production strategy must ensure that desired changes are brought about as quickly as possible making optimum use of available resources. Sub-Saharan Africa is faced with dramatic domestic food shortages. The major goal of agricultural development strategy must therefore be to increase agricultural output substantially in the shortest possible time. The resources available for the implementation of agricultural production strategies in sub-Saharan Africa are equally dramatically limited with respect to both research and development.
What is required, therefore, is a most rigorous scrutiny of development programmes with regard to their technical validity and potential impact on increasing food production. This is a process of clearly defining priorities of work and of allocating budgets-public or other-to activities that will most effectively bring about the envisaged increase in food output.
To exemplify the nature of such a development strategy, based on optimum use of resources for maximum possible production impact, the case of your host country, Ethiopia, may be cited. We have just started the implementation of a new national strategy to achieve food self-sufficiency during the period 1987-89 and to fortify this self-sufficiency within the perspectives of the Ten-Year Plan.
This strategy is not only a new concept of assigning priorities to development efforts, but is also quite radical in reforming practices of resource allocation. Technical manpower, agricultural inputs and other supplies and technical support facilities are being reallocated and concentrated in areas of high productive potential, while resource allocation to areas with low productive potential is being scaled down. The purpose, of course, is not to downgrade still further those areas of low productive potential, but to consolidate scarce resources in such a way as to have a very substantial impact on national food production: this can obviously best be achieved where the natural potential is highest.
New technologies are therefore being generated for these areas, and the maximum possible effort is being made to transfer these technologies to the farm level in order to achieve the necessary break-through in production in the shortest possible time.
To give you an idea of the scale of the effects I may mention that out of the total number of 568 Weredas (administrative sub-units) in the country, 148 have, after a careful selection procedure, been designated as agriculturally high potential areas which will receive preferential input treatment in our development strategy.
Vertisols, the subject of your conference, are-at least for Ethiopian conditions-soils with considerable productive potential, but they are generally underutilised using traditional production technologies. Ethiopia has 13 million hectares of Vertisols, half of this area being in the highlands, above 1500 m altitude. The fact that about 25% of all Ethiopia's presently cropped land-about two million hectares-are Vertisols may explain our keen interest in the best possible outcome of this conference. Future expansion of Ethiopia's food production will be largely based on the reclamation and improvement of waterlogged lands in the highlands, and the development of major river basins which are predominantly Vertisols. We believe we can learn a great deal from the experiences of other countries in the management of these soils.
Another strategy of central importance in the drive towards self-sufficiency in food in Ethiopia is the resettlement scheme. Resettlement of the population from the densely populated, severely degraded highland regions of the country to the fertile plains is an essential condition for increased food production in the country.
In accordance with Party guidelines and the Ten Year Plan, my Government has successfully resettled over half a million people since the drought in 1984/85. The fact that the soils in resettlement areas are predominantly Vertisols may further explain our interest in this conference.
Reclamation and improvement of waterlogged Vertisols on the Ethiopian plateau will substantially increase food production. As capital and technology are limited in our country, reclamation work will largely be implemented through mobilisation of available labour within the community.
Our villagisation endeavour, which we consider a precondition for planned use of our land resources, will offer some useful experiences in this connection.
A number of my colleagues in the Ministry of Agriculture, the Institute of Agricultural Research and the Agricultural University will be presenting detailed reports on the nature, ecology and agricultural utilisation of Ethiopian Vertisols. I hope this exposure of the Ethiopian scene to such a distinguished gathering of international experts will contribute to clearer ideas and concepts, and ultimately to the better utilisation of this vast cropland resource in our country.
I sincerely hope that you will come up with detailed suggestions for research and development on the improved agricultural utilisation of Vertisols for human food production. These suggestions should take into account not only the ecology and pedology of the Vertisols, but also the socio-economic environments and resource constraints prevailing in our production systems. It is only then that we will be able to make reasonable use of these soils.
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA) for organizing, and ICRISAT and IBSRAM for sponsoring, this important conference at a time when Africa is searching for technological solutions to its food crisis.
I wish you maximum possible success in your deliberations and an enjoyable stay in Ethiopia. I now declare this conference open.
