The only thing that is new about the recent Afrobarometer findings on the Affordable Input Programme (AIP) is that 63 percent of the people are against scrapping the programme. In other words, the programme is beneficial and a majority of the people still want it.
The findings belie the public outcry that AIP is ineffective and not benefitting a majority of its intended beneficiaries.
But the rest of the survey’s findings are not telling us anything new. That there are glaring inefficiencies in AIP implementation is a song we have sung to boredom.
The lamentation that AIP, which constitutes about half of the whole agriculture sector budget funding, also benefits other agro-related businesses is also obvious.
For example, AIP has a budget for suppliers, transporters, importers, among others. Then there are also administrative costs. These include expenses on the role that public officers and traditional leaders play in planning and awarding suppliers and identifying or selecting the beneficiaries, respectively.
Each of these play a critical role in the AIP value chain and so need to be budgeted for.
The Afrobarometer survey found that 38 percent of the respondents think the programme mainly benefits the businesses mentioned above. The survey found that 16 percent mainly benefit politicians; 13 percent government officials and eight percent traditional leaders.
Unfortunately these are mere perceptions of the sampled respondents and, therefore, qualitative in nature. The survey would have been more revealing if it sought to answer the question: how much of the AIP cake is served to suppliers, importers, transporters and poor farmers other than just getting people’s perceptions.
A statement based on perception (qualitative) when the same could be affirmed with data (quantitative) more often than not serves a political agenda.
Afrobarometer would thus do well next time to also find out how much exactly is spent on each of the above mentioned AIP value chain activities. That would be more informative to planners and policy makers than just soliciting people’s perception on the programme.
By nature, people will always be biased for or against something. But no one would dispute an assertion that AIP is benefitting agro-businesses more than poor farmers if such a statement was backed with data.
That is why in the case of the recent Afrobarometer survey, there is a contradiction of sorts in the findings. The report shows a majority of the people (75 percent) throw AIP under the bus.
It says they think the programme benefits other people or entities—suppliers, importers, transporters—more than poor farmers, and that only 22 percent think the poor farmers are the primary beneficiaries.
Yet 63 percent of the same respondents are opposed to abolishing AIP. What does it means if such a huge number of respondents want AIP to continue? It means the programme is, after all, a good one and is benefitting the people.
I also wish Afrobarometer or any other survey would give data on how many recipients of AIP sell the commodity and why they do so. It is a known fact that some AIP recipients are too old to farm while others do not have land to cultivate.
Both groups of recipients sell their AIP resources. Others have land but are too hungry and so end up selling the fertiliser to buy maize.
Data on such issues would help policy makers to aggregate recipients and decide how best to help these people.
My understanding is that this is the direction government is now taking. Hence the various social protection programmes such as Social Cash Transfer, Food for Work, Mtukula pa Khomo, and so on. It could be the reason why in the 2024/25 agriculture season, the Central Region has the lions’ share of the AIP resources compared to the other regions.
The Centre is the bread basket for the country. Even without citing figures I can say without fear of contradiction that land holding is bigger in the Centre than in the other two regions.
But my worry is the speed at which government is reforming the programme. AIP should indeed target households with land and labour while those poor people without land can receive direct cash or be moved to the public works programme.
But the reform programme is progressing at a chameleon’s speed.
