Harnessing agricultural science for the people: Are African Universities doing enough?

Agricultural research in many African universities has been project-based and piece-meal, failing to focus on understanding the socio-cultural context of African agricultural systems and their interaction with the physical environment, and thereby missing the link between the science and the people’s way of life. Instead of using science to improve the African agricultural systems and practices from within, university scientists have sought to impose foreign models of production and to displace tried and tested local systems with very little success. The call is for African agricultural scientists to be original and to study the real world around them.