The Last Africans

This painting hangs on my sitting room wall. The image does not do it justice. It is beautiful: an untitled impressionistic oil painting of a nomadic group of people in Northern Kenya. I bought it about 14 years ago at a small exhibition in Nairobi entitled "The Last Africans".

My main memory of the Last Africans exhibition is a brief and impromptu introductory speech delivered by my friend and and former colleague, Matthias Schmale. Matthias was a compelling speaker, not least due to his sincerity, and he took this occasion to speak eloquently about his sadness that the era of the pastoralist and nomadic life practiced across most of the African continent was coming to an end: that the traditions and modus vivendi of the Turkana, the Karamajong, the Rendille, the Samburu and, most iconic of all African pastoralists, the Maasai, were dwindling into scattered tourist exhibits amid the farms, settlements and towns created through population growth, the march of technology and urban development. His lament was not romantic: it was for the impoverishment to us all brought about by the reduction of cultural diversity.

My reading matter over the past week has been a collection of papers selected by Nigel Halford of the Rothamsted Institute in UK, entitled Plant Biotechnology. For a non-scientist, much of this book has been extremely difficult to understand, but I was keen to try to improve my understanding of transgenics/genetic modification and its impact. Included in the anthology is a short paper published by researchers from the University of Cape Town on the potential for inserting a "water-efficiency" gene into maize, the staple crop for most of East and Southern Africa. The authors are in no doubt that this would be a positive move, as it would allow the cultivation of maize to spread into areas hitherto too dry for farming.

In this connection, recent press publications in Kenya have reported that considerable applied research in WEMA (Water Efficient Maize for Africa) is underway - with the potential to open up new low rainfall areas in Kenya for the cultivation of maize. Kenya needs it: the Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, recently forecast a shortfall of about 1 million tonnes (30% of Kenya's annual consumption requirements) due to patchy rainfall. This is nothing new: 8 years out of 10 Kenya struggles to grow enough maize for its burgeoning population - mainly due to reliance on rainfall for water requirements, depleted soils, and the widespread use of poor quality planting material.

Advances in agricultural technology over the last 100 years have supported massive population growth. Through effective selection and breeding programmes, plant breeders have produced ever more productive crop varieties. The Haber-Bosch process for utilising atmospheric nitrogen has provided the necessary source of nutrition for these varieties. And now, transgenic technologies offer the potential to accelerate conventional plant breeding through the production of uber-crops capable of resistance to herbicides, drought, soil salinity and who knows what sort of adverse conditions. But these advances carry a cost. One wonders what the consequences of WEMA's introduction will be for Kenya's pastoralists and biodiversity as the area under cultivation of maize expands.

Clinging on in ever more marginal areas, the pastoralist way of life appears to be an inevitable casualty of the modern world. As Einstein, in his wonderful 1949 essay entitled "Why Socialism" observed "The time—which, looking back, seems so idyllic—is gone forever when individuals or relatively small groups could be completely self-sufficient."

Of Bentleys, Soil, Seeds and Marram Roads

Experts in African agriculture disagree over the most critical limiting factor on agricultural performance. Most believe that improvements in agricultural inputs are essential. Increase productivity – the argument goes – and resulting production surpluses will create an environment in which agricultural markets will become larger and more sustainable. A few believe that well-functioning markets are the key: markets, they argue, provide confidence to farmers to invest in improving production efficiency.

Within the inputs camp, there is a further division. Better planting material or better soil health – which is the critical factor? One of AAC’s directors, Walter Vandepitte, likened the use of highly engineered hybrid seeds on impoverished soils to “driving a Ferrari along a marram road”. The seed advocate will argue in response that adoption of improved seeds will lead farmers to increase their use of fertilizers, irrigation and crop protection products to safeguard their crops, increase yields and, indirectly, improve soil health.

I am not qualified to provide an opinion on these arguments, but it does seem to me to be self-evident that even the best and most robust planting material is useless if grown in unsuitable soil conditions. Gardeners and farmers have always known this – indeed, before the dawn of manufactured fertilisers and crop protection products, they used to practice systems of crop rotation: on the logic that the nutrients taken out of soil by crops need to be replaced.

East African soils are fragile and vulnerable. A great deal of land is given over to monoculture, especially maize. The sun is strong, baking exposed soil and depleting nutrients. Rainfall is frequently heavy and can wash away topsoil. Few farmers compost organic material or have access to sufficient animal manure for fertilizer. All these factors combine to cause rapid depletion in soil nutrients and, if unchecked, result in soil acidification and ultimate infertility. This is a very serious problem.

One of AAC’s investees is a company called Lachlan Kenya (http://www.griculture.co.ke/) Based in Nairobi, this company distributes and markets a wide range of crop protection products throughout East Africa. Recognizing the importance of effective soil management products, the business also distributes a range of micro-nutrient fertilizers (especially important in horticulture), humic acid (which accelerates the decomposition of organic material in the soil and facilitates the uptake of nutrients) and, most interesting of all, a nitrogen-fixing biological fertilizer marketed under the brand name Twin-N. These products, and others, all have potential to improve soil health, something which is urgently required in much of East Africa.

Returning to the analogy of the absurdity of driving a Ferrari on a marram road, anyone who has visited Kampala recently will know that the city’s roads are afflicted by potholes and that a 4WD vehicle is almost a necessity in certain areas. Picture my surprise, then, when I saw an extremely handsome Bentley (registration number JH) cruising the city streets a few days ago. Subsequent research revealed that the Bentley’s owner is a young lady called Judith Heard (picture above). Kampala residents are no strangers to exotic vehicles – Hummers and Lexuses are frequently sighted – but most at least pay lip service to the necessity of having a high clearance vehicle. For sheer chutzpah, there is something wonderfully impractical about a Bentley which takes it straight to the top of the show-off chart. Bravo Ms Heard!