Recent Patterns in Maize Yield and Harvest Area across Africa

Africa’s rapidly growing population is exerting a lot of pressure on agricultural resources including maize yields and harvest area. Across Africa, access to advanced options for increasing maize yields are inadequate. This is daunting as most of the cultivation of maize is in the hands of smallholder farmers who have inadequate access to modern methods of farming. This has resulted in an increase in dependency on harvest area to increase yields. However, it is still unclear how this maize-yield-harvest-area dynamic plays out across different regions of Africa. This study uses crop yield and harvest area time series data from FAOSTAT for the period 1961–2019. The data are analyzed using linear interpolation, the normalization technique, the rate of change, the Pearson correlation coefficient, the coefficient of determination and regression analysis. The results show that maize yields and harvest area have increased by 71.35% and 60.12%, respectively across Africa. Regionally, West, Middle and East Africa witnessed a positive relationship between maize yields and harvest area while in North and Southern Africa, maize yields and harvest area have an inverse relationship. For example, in assessing the relationship between maize yield and harvest area in Africa, this work observes that North Africa has a correlation of −35% and an R2 of 12%, while Southern Africa has a correlation of −36% and R2 of 13%. On the other hand, West Africa has a correlation of 87% and an R2 of 76%, while Middle Africa recorded a correlation of 66% and an R2 of 42%. East Africa recorded a correlation of 76% and R2 of 61%. These results confirm that maize yield and harvest area have a positive relationship in West, Middle and East Africa and a negative relationship in North and Southern Africa. These results underscore the fact that in North and Southern Africa, maize production is less dependent on harvest area as is the case in the other regions of Africa. Such findings have implications for adaptation planning especially in sub-Saharan Africa where food insecurity is closely related to land and forest degradation.