Africa Needs Innovation in Agriculture and Fisheries

Africa Progress Panel Report 2014 Launched

The Africa Progress Panel, chaired by former United Nation (UN) Secretary-General, Koffi Annan on Thursday, May 8, 2014 launched this year's report titled 'Grain Fish Money: Financing Africa's Green and Blue Revolutions.'

Africa has potential to feed itself and the rest of the world according to this year's report. The report submits that Africa will one day play a critical role in helping the world meet global food demand which is expected to double by 2050.

Huge challenges of course remain.

With concerns about the continent's growing inequality, Africa's green (in agriculture) and blue (in fisheries) revolutions can extend economic growth to the two thirds of Africa's populations who depend on these sectors for livelihoods.

PALAVER TREE COMMENTARY is keen about the thoughts of the report's authors in relations to innovations in agriculture and fisheries  and smart government policies which some African countries are already implementing and getting good results.

In various sections of the blog we would be examining some of these innovations and policies with a view to spreading the word.

Join us.

Unreliable Research: Trouble at the Lab

Welcome to the first blog post in the PALAVER TREE COMMENTARY in the new format.

By the way of a reminder, in the African oral traditions, the PALAVER TREE represented the traditional roundtable where misunderstandings, critical community issues and matters affecting the larger populace were thrashed and resolved under the auspices of the traditional leadership and community elders. Discussants and disputants came and tabled whatever contentions they had and various points of views were enumerated. Together, through group consensus,  a final decision would be reached to the satisfaction of all parties. The PALAVER TREE in some societies indeed stood for more than dispute resolutions, problem solving and community social health discussions; it was additionally a place of festivals, the harvest celebrations and a forum where the travelling storyteller (or griot) would set up camp in the twilight of the day, to spin tales of times and seasons far off and free from the worries of the daily grind.

In this blog, the PALAVER TREE is the title of the platform arguing in favour of concepts, causes, ideas, positions, arguments and/or policies that foster and further the spread of the culture of CREATIVITY and INNOVATION in the public and social spheres in Nigeria.   

The above title belongs to an article written about the fallibility of research in THE ECONOMIST in the Briefing section of the magazine on October 19th, 2013.

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