Aligning Sustainable Agriculture to Sustainable Development Goals in Africa

Agriculture is faced with the challenge of offering remedies to the three of the world’s most important threats to human life, namely food shortage, poverty and adverse effects of climate change. These challenges are on their part affected by declining productivity of land, growing human population and global warming. Sustainable Agriculture has been identified as important means of addressing these limitations and included as a key target in the Sustainable Development Goal No. 2. Considering the universality and integration of Sustainable Development Goals, it becomes the responsibility of everyone to promote sustainable agriculture as a means of attaining this goal. Additionally, everybody needs to understand how sustainable agriculture will contribute to all the other 16 goals. To deliver on these responsibilities, it will be imperative that everybody concerned sufficiently understands the concept of sustainable agriculture and applies it within their respective roles in diverse agricultural systems. Unfortunately, the concept of sustainable agriculture is highly misunderstood, mistaken, misrepresented and overlooked especially within the mainstream national agricultural research and extension systems in Africa. This paper highlights the key principles of sustainable agriculture with the objective of broadening the understanding of sustainable agriculture concept among all players in agriculture. It highlights the contribution of sustainable agriculture to all the 17 sustainable development goals and proposes some transformations that may be necessary for wider embracing of sustainable agriculture in Africa.