Sub-Saharan Africa's agricultural sector accounts for 17% of its GDP and employs roughly 49% of the workforce. As the region's farming remains largely extensive, population growth is increasing food demand and straining agricultural supply chains.

Between 2001 and 2023, Africa recorded the world’s highest growth in cultivated agricultural land, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). In a report published on June 19, the UN agency stated that during this period, the global area of cultivated land increased by 78 million hectares. Africa accounted for 96% of this expansion, adding 75 million hectares.

Evolution of Cultivated Areas

Three regions concentrated the majority of this expansion. West Africa saw an increase of 31 million hectares of cultivated land, East Africa added 25 million hectares, and Central Africa expanded by 15 million hectares.

According to the FAO, this growth was primarily driven by the expansion of temporary crops, which have a growing cycle under one year. These include cereals and tubers like maize, rice, sorghum, and cassava. This type of agricultural production in Africa increased by 59 million hectares between 2001 and 2023, a rise of 38%. This figure is well above the global average of 11%.

At the same time, permanent crops such as cocoa, coffee, oil palm, and rubber expanded by 18 million hectares, a 65% increase. West Africa, in particular, saw a 79% increase in agricultural land dedicated to these crops over the period, while in Central Africa, the area devoted to these value chains doubled.

Overall, this trend reflects both the growing pressure to feed the continent's rapidly expanding population and the boom in cash crops intended for export.

The expansion of agricultural land in Africa over the past two decades has not come without consequences. In its report, the FAO notes that the rise of extensive agriculture has led to massive deforestation. The UN agency estimates that Africa lost 82 million hectares of forest cover between 2001 and 2023. 

Evolution of Cultivated Land and Forests

While no precise mechanism of deforestation is detailed, certain linked factors suggest it is primarily associated with the expansion of permanent crops like cocoa. Notably, in Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s top cocoa producer, about 45% of total deforestation and forest degradation is attributed to cocoa cultivation. In a 2023 report, researchers from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium revealed that around 2.4 million hectares of forest were replaced by cocoa plantations in the country between 2000 and 2019. This area is nearly the size of Rwanda.

Another report, also published in 2023 in the academic journal Nature Food, found that cocoa farming was directly linked to the loss of 386,000 hectares of forest in protected areas in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana between 2000 and 2020.

Faced with these findings, the question is no longer simply how to feed a growing population, but how to produce more without further degrading ecosystems. The challenge for African countries is to accelerate sustainable intensification to ensure that agricultural growth does not undermine the very foundations of its own viability.

Stéphanas Assocle