Mechanizing Africa’s Farms won’t Work unless we Do it Differently – Ethiopian Monitor

Mechanizing Africa’s Farms won’t Work unless we Do it Differently – Ethiopian Monitor

By Beth Bechdol* For decades, Africa’s agricultural mechanization has been guided by a stubborn assumption: if tractors transformed farming elsewhere, surely, they would do the same here. So, we shipped in large, expensive machines built for flat fields and industrial supply chains – and declared progress. The results are visible across the continent – idle equipment, spare parts out of reach, maintenance costs that exceed farm incomes, and mach…