Dr. Ousman Gajigo, Economist formerly with ABD
By: Dr. Ousman Gajigo
Earlier this month, the Minister of Agriculture, Demba Sabally,announced the government’s plan to order about 180 tractors. He added that the cost of the procurement of these tractors have already been included in the 2024 budget. Under normal circumstances with a capable government, there would be nothing wrong with such an announcement. After all, who could be against investments in this important sector? However, in the context of Gambian agriculture and its history, this announcement should be very concerning indeed.
By any measure, the Gambian agricultural sector is seriously underperforming. Under such a circumstance, a capable government guided by development goals would have carefully examined its approaches to the agricultural sector in terms of policies and execution. In other words, any typical government activities in the sector that have not produced the desired results would be re-examined for proper execution or jettisoned if found ineffective. It is often said that ‘insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’. In our situation with agriculture, we obviously do not have insane individuals running the government. But if we rule out insanity and still keep on observing the repetition of the same activities, we must ask ourselves whether our leaders actually care about results.
Let’s refresh our collective memories about the dire state of Gambian agriculture, particularly in the past 8 years of the Adama Barrow regime. Agricultural productivity has been consistently falling each year since Adama Barrow came to power. The average overall yield of all cereals has been declining at a rate of 7% per year from 2017, which includes rice. In fact, The Gambia currently has the lowest rice yield (less than 1 ton per hectare) in all of ECOWAS.
For decades, particularly during the Yahya Jammeh regime, the government has been importing a large number of tractors. Yet, despite the increase in tractors, we as a country cannot point to a result in the sector that matters. Crop production has not been increasing, and nor has productivity improved. We import morerice now than we ever did before.
We all know that tractors are essential to improving efficiency in agriculture. But that alone is not sufficient to justify the government spending millions of dalasi at any given point in time on them. There is a major difference between a private farmer buying a tractor to use on his/her farm versus a government buying tractors. A farmer purchasing equipment does not face the complex set of coordination and incentive issues that the government must deal with.
The government is a composite entity whose policies are mediated through thousands of bureaucrats, structures and other entities, not to mention a significant time lag, before their results hit the ground where it matters. As such, it is vital for senior public officials to understand how its expenditures in tractors interact with other policies and action plans through a long series of chains before goals are achieved. Just because there is a purported shortage of tractors does not mean the solution lies in the government buying them.
One of the first questions the government needs to ask it whether any specific expenditure in the sector is the best use of limited resources in achieving that sector’s key objectives.Phrased within the context of this specific issue, is the government purchase of tractors the most appropriate use of agricultural resources at this point in time to achieve agricultural productivity? After all, there is a high opportunity cost when resources of a poor country are misallocated. It might make a lot more sense to put such resources into something like irrigation or roads linking farms to market or cold storage solutions. Orinstead of the government procuring tractors, should it instead facilitate the private sector’s acquisition of them?
Another key question to ask would be how the equipment would actually be put to use and by whom. The mechanism to put in place to ensure that the tractors are allocated to the right regions is not straightforward and need proper planning. Beyond the spatial allocation of the tractors, it is important to think through how the tractors would be allocated to individual farmer groupsand whether the beneficiaries should include private agribusiness firms.
Tractors need to be operated by well-trained individuals to maximize their value. There is a costly misconception in The Gambia that almost anyone who can move a vehicle can operate a tractor, which means that we are only getting a small fraction of the value of this important equipment. Is the current practice of the government putting tractors operators on long-term salaries the best approach?
Tractors are assets that depreciate quickly given the rugged nature of the work. We all know that maintenance is a major deficiency when it comes to the management of infrastructure or equipment by the Gambian government, and the value of many investments have been short-circuited by its absence. Adding to the challenge of maintenance is the mechanism of ensuring that fueling of those tractors or the revenues they are supposed to generate would not be misused. Financial malfeasance would be hard to avoid in the very procurement of these tractors if the history of government procurement of vehicles is any guide. After all, we all know what happened with the government’s ordering of ambulances a few years ago.
How many of us can be confident that the above considerations have been properly reflected upon by the Adama Barrow cabinet? The lack of due diligence can be inferred by the press account of Minister Demba Sabally’s announcement. All we were treated to was simply a triumphant announcement of the government’s planned purchase as if the mere presence of the tractors is sufficient to solve the problem. There was no mention of the fact that the buying of tractors has been a traditional activity of the government for years that did not yield results. What’s more, there was no discussion of how the government intends to modify the execution of its plans to avoid the repeat of previous failures.
Coincidentally, this is the time of the year where the harvests of all crops of the previous season have been completed. This would have been a prime opportunity for the Minister of Agriculture to say something about the performance of the agricultural sector not only for this year but the previous years as well so that citizens can have some idea of how well the country has been doing in this important sector.
A critical examination of Minister Sabally press conferences produces more questions than answers. Like other incompetent ministers who populate Barrow’s cabinet, he simply continued doing whatever activities he found with the ministry. There was apparently no reflection on whether those existing policies have resulted in any meaningful achievements central to the development of that sector. This of course precluded anycontemplation of whether new approaches in the sector by the government are warranted.
These deficiencies are not surprising. Minister Sabally reports to Adama Barrow, who has already demonstrated his indifferenceto what constitutes development in agriculture as I pointed out in my reaction to this State of the Nation speech. Since Minister Sabally is serving at the pleasure of Adama Barrow, it would be unrealistic for anyone to expect a competent minister. Competent subordinates do occasionally appear under incompetent leaders, but usually due to some fluke and they rarely last long because it is impossible for a competent person to endure the unbearable frustration of serving under such a leader for long time. In due course, Adama Barrow would also be parroting this same empty boast of his government buying tractors, continuing the confusion of results with inputs.
It should be obvious by now that the real reason for the purchase of those tractors have little to do with helping the agriculture sector. A more cynical look at this misguided tractor purchase reveals the real reason. When they materialize, the distribution of these tractors will mostly likely not be aligned with the goal of developing the agricultural sector. In all likelihood, thetractors will be distributed with political considerations in mind, and it would be very effective political patronage. Just as the annual “Meet the Farmers’ Tour” is ostensibly about farmers and agriculture when in reality it serves mostly as a full-blownpolitical campaign given the ubiquity of NPP paraphernalia.