LONDON - Long associated with famine and agricultural decline, Africa has the potential and opportunity to raise its output significantly, experts say, with global agribusiness firms eyeing the prospects for growth.

While 21 of the 36 countries receiving United Nations food aid are in Africa, some states are already making good progress with debt relief, new Chinese investment and mining revenues from the global commodity boom may help others step forward.

The end of a series of long-running wars from Mozambique to West Africa have helped, with governments placing a higher priority on agriculture.

"Right now, Africa is in a really good moment," International Food Policy Research Institute development strategy and governance divisional director Shenggen Fan told Reuters from Washington.

"Ten years ago I was really depressed about Africa, but now I think it is really going in the right direction."

With many of Africa's poorest dependent on farming, agricultural growth could boost income, health and prospects.

Uganda is credited with boosting output with an agricultural extension programme, Kenya with increasing horticulture output and Zambia and Malawi -- both of which spent much of the decade struggling with food crises -- have moved into a maize surplus.

Aid workers complain Africa still has more than its share of agricultural disasters -- drought in East Africa last year, widespread shortages in southern and parts of West Africa the year before, and several states such as Swaziland and Zimbabwe that seem to have been in agricultural freefall for years.

Some experts say the continent -- with its high transport costs, low margins and buying power and large proportion of the world's poorest -- may be particularly badly hit by rising global food prices and record oil prices.

Developed world subsidies and tariffs make Africa less competitive.


POTENTIAL

Ghana's High Commissioner to Britain said on Wednesday there was a risk rich European countries might stop importing fresh food from Africa by air as they try to reduce carbon emissions, risking destroying the income of whole communities.

But some still talk of a potential "green revolution" in Africa such as that which saw Asia boost output last century.

Agribusiness firms hope new commitments from the World Bank, private initiatives as well as a common agricultural plan that pledges countries to put 10 percent of their budget into agriculture could kick-start markets and development.

"If you look at areas of the world with significant amounts of land where usage can be increased you can see Africa has the potential," Sean de Cleene, Africa vice president for Norway's fertiliser group Yara.

"Everyone is in a wait-and-see mode. There is a shift on the table and if they live up to the rhetoric there should be improved markets in Africa."

Africa accounted for around 10 percent of Yara's sales, he said, and while he saw medium to long-term growth he felt that was unlikely to change in the next couple of years.

Growth was constrained by poor infrastructure and lack of credit among other issues, he said, and in Tanzania Yara had gone into micro-lending simply so farmers could afford product.

But with many African countries now logging 5 percent or more economic growth a year -- some much more, albeit from a very low base -- and with most currencies strengthening against the falling dollar, boosting buying power, he said more firms saw some good opportunities and were willing to take the risk.

De Cleene singled out Mozambique, with its three good deep-water ports and recent economic and infrastructure growth as particularly promising.

"The weather and soil are good," he said. "Mozambique had huge tracts of land that didn't open up because of the war. If you take those things together the potential is huge."

Angola, where decades of civil war finished in 2002, might be a similar story but was much earlier in its development, he said. Countries such as Angola, Mozambique and Zambia with mineral resources had an advantage over agriculture-based economies such as Malawi as they could generate cash quickly to plough back into farming.

Firms even see a long-term opportunity in Zimbabwe, which has suffered successive food crises since the government-backed seizure of white owned farms and is also struggling against drought and an HIV pandemic.

"Zimbabwe was once the breadbasket of Africa," said Michael Pragnell, chief executive of Swiss agrochemicals giant Syngenta . "In the long term, it still has huge potential."