It should be possible to provide the public goods and services needed to support agricultural modernisation, such as agricultural extension services and rural feeder roads, with relatively modest increases in the share of Government budgets allocated to agriculture. Getting the policies right is more important than the total amount of public resources invested in agriculture.
Agricultural policies should be clearly focussed on helping the broad mass of smallholder farmers to begin the process of transforming from subsistence production to commercial farming. Unfortunately, the record of agricultural performance in the region over the last two decades is very weak, which indicates that the agricultural policies pursued over a long period have been deficient.