Mechanizing Africa’s Rice Sector

Significant increases in rice production can be obtained in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) by increasing rice grain yield in existing production systems, expanding rice harvested area, and reducing harvest and postharvest losses. However, availability of labour at critical times is often a major constraint, and this situation is aggravated by the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Delays during harvesting, threshing and drying cause losses in both grain quantity and quality. Rice crops in Africa are often not planted on time due to late and poor land preparation as farmers wait for rain to soften the soil so they can prepare the land using hand implements. This often results in poorly prepared and uneven seed beds and weeds become a major problem. To compensate for this, farmers tend to plant more seeds. Lateplanted crops are more susceptible to pest damage, in particular leaf diseases. Unlevelled and uneven fields result in higher water requirements, poor fertilizer-use efficiency and nonuniform crop ripening causing delays at harvest and increased losses to shattering and birds. Rainfed rice crops are often left in the field up to one month longer than necessary because farmers tend to wait until grain moisture content is low enough for easy hand-threshing. At the 27 Mechanizing Africa’s Rice Sector