Moving toward rice self-sufficiency in sub-Saharan Africa by 2030: Lessons learned from 10 years of the Coalition for African Rice Development

The Coalition for African Rice Development (CARD) was initiated as a policy framework with the aim of doubling rice production in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the period from 2008 to 2018. This paper assesses the contribution of the CARD policy to rice production and forecasts the local rice supply and demand to provide a better understanding of the policies needed to attain rice self-sufficiency by 2030. A combination of the autoregressive integrated moving average method and counterfactual approach was adopted using rice statistical data from 23 countries in SSA. The results showed that the contribution of CARD to paddy rice production in 2018 was 10.2 million tons, equivalent to 74% of the target. This contribution resulted from increases in area and yield of 23% and 19%, respectively. However, the yield growth rate was not sustainable in almost two-thirds of countries. Investments in supply-push factors such as fertilizer and irrigation development, which were the focus in the past, have limited effects on rice production. We conclude that sustainable investments in demand-pull factors such as the private-led modern milling sector and contract farming development should be prioritized to achieve rice self-sufficiency in SSA.