Paper short abstract:

The paper focused on the anthropogenic factors inherent in the motives, methods and means for formulating and implementing agricultural policies in tropical Africa

Paper long abstract:

The human factor in the desperate quest to feed the world's burgeoning population, otherwise called anthropogenic, has received less than commensurate scholarly attention in Africa. In formulating and executing agricultural policies, greater attention is devoted to need, strategy, material and technology for increased production rather than the conditioning of the policy frameworks to socially inclusiveness and environmentally sustainability. In this paper, we critically examined the level and practice, or lack, of human restraints in the agricultural policies of Nigeria, which is considered extrapolatable to most tropical African states. The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, coupled with FGD for triangulation, is utilised to evaluate the design principles for economic viability, social inclusion and threats of some of the policies to the environment. The paper found evident lack of preventive and proactive measures against crossing the planetary boundaries in the motives, methods and means for driving agricultural policies in Africa. In order to give some empirical content to the complex arguments advanced here we shall illustrate the issues raised mainly with examples from Nigeria.