ALL AGRI #Africa Agri market Update

The findings, published in Nature Geoscience, reveal that the Afar region in Ethiopia is underlain by a plume of hot mantle that pulses upward like a beating heart.The team's discovery reveals how the upward flow of hot material from the deep mantle is strongly influenced by the tectonic plates—the massive solid slabs of Earth's crust—that ride above it.

With geopolitical developments shaping the world, Africa is expectedly changing with the times. It has gone far, particularly with Russia, opened new directions in bilateral economic cooperation after their joint historic summits. It is also time to make a critical appraisals of Russia’s policy towards Africa. By next year 2026, Russia’s strategic plan to ensure and support food security may fade away its its policy mainstream. First and second summits witnessed agreements and declarations signed to tectonic applause with an unwavering decision characterized by increasing food and agricultural products including grains and chicken meat across Africa.

FARMERS have sold 2 million kilogrammes (kg) of sesame seeds, with the Zambezi Valley catchment leading both the production and sales volume of the crop since the marketing season commenced mid-last month. This surge in sales coincides with calls from contractors advocating for an increase in production of the crop to meet the growing demand from international markets, with countries like Turkey, India and China topping the list. Sesame is increasingly recognised as a key export commodity with the potential to generate substantial foreign currency for Zimbabwe.

Agriculture accounts for roughly a third of Africa’s GDP and provides a livelihood to more than half the continent’s workforce. Yet for millions of African farmers working the land, the promise of prosperity remains elusive due to stubbornly low crop yields. Nowhere is this challenge more apparent than in cereal farming, which includes the cultivation of key commodities like wheat, rice, maize, barley, oats, rye, millet, sorghum, buckwheat, and mixed grains. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), cereal yields in Africa trail the rest of the world by a notably wide margin. In 2023, the continent’s cereal yields stood at 1.7 tonnes per hectare, which is less than half the global average of 4.24. By contrast, Asia achieved cereal yields per hectare of 4.46 tonnes, behind Europe (4.53), South America (4.69) and North America (6.78).