Tractors for Africa - made in Africa
Most would accept that tractors are a fundamentally important part of efficient agricultural production. Yet in Sub Saharan Africa, where people are heavily dependent on agriculture for their own survival, tractors are not yet common - land is mostly worked still with the use of animal or people power.
FAO Paper on Motorised Soil Tillage Here
Tractor availability is limited to refurbished old western tractors and the cheapest made in the east. Availability is further severely limited by the lack of available finance to import any - and the inability to meet the most basic economic viability needed for any finance package.
The modern tractor is simply a too expensive a component to consider by any farmer caught in a poverty trap. A further very significant factor is the inability of the local farming community to maintain and support tractors - any attempt to donate tractors - or provide them as an aid package - would inevitably result in them becoming unserviceable or simply being sold on as an economic necessity.
In the case of the IFAF Biofuel plantation development - where the need for tractors runs into thousands - financing them would require many many millions of Euros in foreign capital debts - and many millions more to support and maintain them with an "island economy" of mechanics and spare parts etc. An undesirable distortion in the economy surrounding locally owned Biofuel Plantations.
The ideal solution is a tractor made and maintained in Africa itself - one that operates on biomass fuels - preferably the waste co-products from the plantations - or any such biomass fuel a farmer could get his hands on. One that is simple to operate - powerful enough to do the job - easily maintained by local technicians with its locally made spares - and above all inexpensive enough to be affordable by farmers and plantations, with the support of local financial institutions. Exactly as happened with western farming in the early part of the last century - when Henry Ford and others recognised the same needs.
"I have walked many a weary mile behind horse and plough and know the drudgery of it" Henry Ford
