The East African Corn Belt: Feeding and Fueling Africa’s Future

By Gerard J. Ostheimer, PhD and Douglas L. Faulkner “The Cleantech Conservative”
Special to The Digest

The East African Corn Belt runs from South Africa, north and east through Zambia, Tanzania and into Kenya and Ethiopia (see map). We believe that this area is poised to become a thriving hub of innovation and production of bio-based products – Africa’s Iowa perhaps. Current corn yields are low by American standards. In Tanzania, recent yields have averaged about 22 bushels per acre, but with improved farming practices and some mechanization that number could double or triple in short order.

The problem is not one of potential supply. The problem is insufficient demand. The global price of corn is too low, and there are not strong local markets for the feed, food, fiber and fuel that could be produced from sustainably intensified corn production in East Africa. Last year corn planting in Tanzania decreased 6% in response to markets. As such, investments to increase production are not being made and small-scale subsistence farming continues to dominate. Regardless, we believe that the American (and increasingly Brazilian) experience with corn ethanol production – kickstarted by sound, enforced policies – is increasingly relevant to developing the African Bioeconomy. Fortunately, governments in the region have been and are taking steps to strengthen agriculture in the region, which is the obligatory first step.

Trifecta for Growth

Many East African countries have the required underpinnings for growing a vibrant, innovative Bioeconomy:

• Stable governments with policies that are pro-agriculture, pro-business, and pro-entrepreneurship
• Underlying agricultural and rural conditions that can support sustainable intensification
• Opportunities for demand creation for greater food and energy security

We believe that a practical combination of business support and venture philanthropy could create a feed forward cycle of supply and demand that would enable East African countries to meet their development and climate goals.

Tanzania Setting the Stage

Tanzania is improving its business climate and building international partnerships to enhance economic development, especially for entrepreneurs and labor-intensive industries, like agriculture. According to Tanzania’s Ambassador to the U.S., Dr. Elsie S. Kanza, “Partnerships to improve?access to finance?are key to accelerating the growth of both public and private sectors in Africa” and “[c]urrent financial limitations are exacerbated by an inaccurate perception of the risks of doing business on the continent.” Putting these views into action, the government of Tanzania has

• Enabled Tanzania’s CRDB Bank to partner with the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and Citigroup for a loan agreement of?$320 million for on-lending to 4,500 small and medium-sized enterprises in Tanzania and Burundi.
• Leveraged initiatives such as the United States Agency for International Development’s Feed the Future program to facilitate private investments worth over?$1.3 billion and positively impacted more than 900,000 smallholder farmers.
• Opened doors to investors to improve transportation infrastructure and energy access.

The pursuit of similar approaches towards greater agricultural productivity across the region could set the stage for integrated value chains for corn-based ethanol, feed, and food products coupled to coordinated demand signals from livestock, clean cooking, and eventually transportation.

Demand Creation is Key

The path to East Africa’s corn-based economy will be defined by local needs and opportunities. Today the region’s biggest needs are rural jobs, high-quality/high-protein animal feed, and energy access for basic needs such as cooking. Demand for these items is being driven by a fast-growing, youthful, entrepreneurial population eager for a modern, middle-class life. The median age in Tanzania is an eye-popping 17.4 years old with a total population of nearly 67 million.

To accelerate value chain creation, progress should occur simultaneously in (1) increasing corn yields across the region, (2) improving infrastructure to get greater inputs to farms and their crops to processing industries and consumers, (3) creating feedstock off-take into fuel ethanol for clean cooking and/or transportation fuel markets, and (4) creating off-take for distillers grains and solubles (DGS) into critical livestock production. The food security benefits of increased corn and DGS production should motivate East Africans to grow well beyond their sugar and molasses-based ethanol sector and embrace the corn-based bioeconomy. Because the region is plagued by food insecurity – and maize is a staple food, a “food vs fuel” paradigm dominates the region. Considerable advocacy will be needed to convince local policymakers that a pro-offtake approach will increase food security.

Leadership from the Americas

The U.S. experience – and to an increasing extent Brazilian experience – with a corn-based bioeconomy shows that these three elements: jobs, animal feed, and biofuels can create a vigorous feed-forward loop of economic growth, rural development, increased investment, and crucially, increased food production. The production of corn ethanol with its DGS by-product should be an integral part of East African sustainable economic development.

East African agricultural and ethanol modernization can open broad new trade, investment and technical assistance opportunities that are squarely in the wheelhouse of Americas’ agri-businesses. Improving home-grown corn yields and harvests won’t happen overnight, so animal feed and ethanol demand can initially be met by greater imports of U.S. grains and biofuels.

As a first step, American agri-business leaders could provide Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia with lessons-learned from their corn-based bioeconomy journey. This could proceed to technical assistance, motivating these forward-leaning countries to pursue the yield gains that result from appropriate investments into agronomy, livestock sciences and bio-refineries. In parallel, non-trivial amounts of creative international support, including climate finance and carbon markets, should be harnessed to get the ball rolling on new market creation.

African Bioeconomy at ABLC

To further explore these ideas we invite you to join us at ABLC2025 for an African Bioeconomy Panel on Wednesday March 19th at 4 PM. Our keynote speaker will be the Ambassador of the Republic Zambia to the United States of America, His Excellency Chibamba Kanyama. The panel will consist of regional experts in the areas of grain markets, ethanol clean cooking, carbon markets, and the African potential for SAF. Please join us for this deep dive into the next bioeconomy frontier.