By: Guangzhe Chen
A simple pot of pilau hints at the immense potential of Africa’s food sector. Its ingredients—Tanzanian rice, Kenyan meat, spices from India and the Middle East—move through a vast network of farmers, processors, transporters, and traders.
Multiply that across a rapidly growing continent, and the sector becomes a trillion-dollar market by 2030. It’s also an opportunity for the 12 million young Africans who enter the workforce every year.
In fact, few sectors can stimulate the broader economy like a competitive food system. As farms become more productive, demand rises for energy and storage, packaging, manufacturing, ports and trucking, as well as credit and insurance. Each upgrade creates jobs beyond the farm, lowers food costs, and opens new trade opportunities.
The continent can leverage this opportunity by developing a food system built around three pillars —modern infrastructure, clear rules for investors and agribusinesses, and plenty of private capital —all at the core of the World Bank Group’s jobs strategy.
Laying those foundations could require around $80 billion a year through 2030 for roads, technology, training and research.
It’s a figure few governments can afford, but what if much of that money was hiding in plain sight? Governments in Africa are already spending $17 billion each year to increase agricultural yields and subsidise food prices for consumer.
Those dollars are doing far too little to create the jobs and growth the continent urgently needs. They finance blanket fertiliser subsidies (often delivered in the wrong amounts) that encourage single-crop farming, exhaust soils, and increase greenhouse gas emissions.
When governments undercut commercial suppliers and fix prices, they also drive private dealers, lenders, and processors out of rural markets, propping up a low-productivity system instead of supporting more diverse products that generate work from farm to market.
As Africa increases its public spending on agriculture, smarter targeting can make all the difference. Redirecting subsidies towards improved seeds, the right fertilisers, modern equipment, and climate-smart practices could triple the region’s agricultural productivity.
This would make the sector far more attractive to private investors and accelerate growth across the value chain, an objective at the heart of AgriConnect, the World Bank Group’s new initiative to help 300 million smallholder farmers move up the value chain.
Many countries are already changing course. Governments across the continent are redesigning their support systems to ensure every public dollar delivers greater value for farmers and taxpayers.
Programs are moving beyond single input subsidies to offer integrated packages, namely seeds, tools, credit, and tailored agronomic advice delivered through digital platforms.
In Zambia, electronic vouchers are allowing farmers to choose from a wide range of inputs using smartphones or credit cards, prompting suppliers to stock up on farm products and hire new staff. Senegal is replacing input subsidies with long-term investments in irrigation, upgrading farmers’ skills, and support for cooperatives.
Malawi’s digital farm registry is helping targeted support to one million of the most productive farmers, freeing up public funds for irrigation, research on climate-smart agriculture, and safety nets for vulnerable smallholders.
More than 40 countries are working with the World Bank and increasingly with each other to improve how they invest in agriculture. These reforms are shaping $13 billion in public expenditures to deliver better outcomes for farmers, strengthen food systems, and protect soils and ecosystems.
Agribusiness is one of five sectors the World Bank Group has prioritised for job creation, alongside infrastructure and energy, primary healthcare, tourism, and manufacturing.
Africa has the potential to turn agriculture into a competitive advantage. But doing so requires governments to make smarter use of the resources they already have and to align public spending in ways that unlock private investment, innovation, and markets at scale.
If Africa succeeds, its vast farmland could become a magnet for young talent and a powerful engine for growth rather than a place people leave behind.
Guangzhe Chen is the Vice President for Planet at The World Bank Group
