In Kenya’s Mwea rice-growing region, the sound of machinery has become increasingly difficult to separate from the rhythm of rice production.

Tractors prepare the fields. Combine harvesters move through mature paddies during the harvest season. Machinery has reduced some of the most labour-intensive tasks and helped farmers deal with a growing rice industry.

But there is one major operation where mechanisation has struggled to make the same breakthrough.Transplanting.

Across the Mwea Irrigation Scheme, farmers still rely heavily on manual labour to move young rice seedlings into the muddy fields.

Several attempts have been made to mechanise the operation, but the physical conditions of Mwea’s fields and the economics of raising seedlings for mechanical planting have created a difficult barrier.

The result is an unusual picture of mechanisation: land preparation and harvesting are highly mechanised, while one of the most important stages between them remains largely manual.

For machinery dealers, farmers, agronomists and the cooperative sector, solving that problem could become one of the defining challenges of the next phase of Mwea’s rice revolution.

MWEA BY THE NUMBERS

From manual farming to a mechanised rice economy

The transformation has been significant.

According to Maina Murimi, an agronomist with the National Irrigation Authority, virtually every stage of rice production was manual around a decade ago.

That has changed considerably.

Today, machinery is deeply embedded in the Mwea production system. Anthony Waweru, General Manager of the Mwea Rice Growers Multipurpose Co-operative Society (MRGM), says the scheme now has an estimated 100 tractors and more than 100 combine harvesters serving rice farmers.

The scale matters because Mwea is at the centre of Kenya’s rice industry. Kirinyaga County currently has an estimated 30,600 acres under active paddy rice cultivation, with the vast majority of that area located within the Mwea Irrigation Scheme.

Mechanisation has therefore moved beyond being a symbol of modern farming. It has become an essential part of keeping the production system functioning at scale.

Waweru says mechanisation improves efficiency and makes farming easier for producers.

For harvesting in particular, its impact extends beyond labour savings.

Murimi says combine harvesting has greatly reduced post-harvest losses, giving machinery a direct role in protecting the value of the crop after months of cultivation.

But the progress is uneven.

Transplanting remains the missing link

Paul Kahuthia, CEO of Tebere Hardware, a dealer in Shaktiman rice machinery, identifies transplanting as the most significant mechanisation challenge facing Mwea.

The problem is not simply that farmers lack access to transplanters.

The machines themselves face a difficult operating environment.

Mwea’s rice soils can become deep and extremely muddy, creating conditions in which conventional transplanting machinery struggles to move through the field.

Kahuthia says no manufacturer has yet produced a transplanter that is ideally suited to the deep black-cotton soils found in the Mwea rice fields.

Murimi gives a similar assessment.

“Several machines have been tested, but some have struggled in the muddy conditions, becoming bogged down instead of delivering the productivity gains expected from mechanisation,” he explains.

This is an important distinction for machinery manufacturers.

The challenge in Mwea is not necessarily a lack of interest in mechanisation. It is a machine-design and operating-condition problem.

A transplanter that performs effectively in another rice-producing market may not automatically work in Mwea.

For manufacturers looking at Kenya’s rice market, that creates an opportunity for locally adapted engineering.

The successful machine may need to combine low ground pressure, adequate traction and the ability to work effectively in deep, saturated soils without damaging the field or becoming immobilised.

The hidden cost of mechanical transplanting

Even if the right machine becomes available, another challenge remains: seedlings.

Mechanical rice transplanting generally requires farmers to prepare seedlings in trays rather than relying on the traditional method of raising and transplanting seedlings manually.

Kahuthia estimates that one acre can require more than 100 seedling trays for mechanical transplanting.

For a small or medium-sized farmer, the cost quickly becomes significant.

This means that solving Mwea’s transplanting problem requires more than importing a better machine.

Farmers need an economically viable mechanised transplanting system.

That could include affordable tray-seedling production, shared seedling facilities, machinery-hire models, financing and technical support.

Both Kahuthia and Murimi see financial support as an important part of the equation.

Without it, the additional cost associated with trays and specialised machinery could discourage farmers from adopting the technology even if a technically suitable transplanter becomes available.

This is where government, manufacturers, cooperatives and financial institutions could potentially play a larger role.

Why farmers are still repairing old machines

The machinery market in Mwea also reveals another important reality about African mechanisation.

Farmers are buying new machines, Kahuthia says, but they are equally interested in keeping existing equipment working for as long as possible.

The reason is straightforward: agricultural machinery is expensive.

When a machine represents a major capital investment, replacing it is not always the first option when it develops a problem.

Repair, maintenance and spare-parts availability therefore become critical elements of mechanisation.

At Tebere Hardware, Shaktiman spare parts are readily available, helping farmers keep equipment operating.

This highlights an often-overlooked aspect of sustainable mechanisation.

A sustainable machinery market is not only about selling more new equipment. It also requires the infrastructure to maintain the machines already working on farms.

Dealers, technicians, spare-parts suppliers and manufacturers therefore become part of the productivity equation.

Kahuthia nevertheless expects the replacement market to grow as older machinery reaches the end of its useful life.

He sees a future beyond 2030 in which Mwea could achieve much more complete mechanisation.

The question is how quickly the industry can close the remaining gaps.

The next challenge: fertiliser efficiency

Transplanting is not the only pressure facing Mwea’s production system.

Murimi points to a deeper issue emerging beneath the surface: soil fertility.

Farmers today are using considerably more fertiliser than they did several years ago.

According to Murimi, some farmers previously used around three bags of fertiliser, while current application levels can reach six or seven bags.

One reason is the changing economics of the rice system.

Farmers increasingly sell rice straw rather than leaving it to decompose in the fields. While this creates an additional source of income, it also means less organic material is returned to the soil.

The result is a potential long-term sustainability challenge.

Higher fertiliser use may help maintain productivity in the short term, but it raises questions about nutrient efficiency, soil health and the future cost of rice production.

For a machinery publication, this creates another important connection.

The future of Mwea mechanisation may not simply be about putting more horsepower into the field. It could increasingly involve precision application technologies that help farmers use inputs more efficiently.

Drones show promise — but price remains a barrier

The same pattern is visible in crop protection.

Drone technology has been tested for spraying in Mwea and can offer advantages in speed and application efficiency.

But according to Murimi and Waweru, the cost of drone services remains a major obstacle for farmers.

As a result, many farmers continue to spray manually, sometimes without adequate protective equipment.

The current situation illustrates one of the central challenges of agricultural technology adoption in Africa.

A technology can be technically effective but still fail to achieve widespread adoption if its business model does not work for farmers.

For drones, the answer may therefore lie not in individual ownership but in affordable service-provider models, cooperative contracting or other forms of shared access.

The same principle could apply to expensive harvesting and transplanting machinery.

Mechanisation is changing the economics of harvest

The strongest evidence of what machinery can accomplish in Mwea is perhaps found during harvesting.

With more than 100 combine harvesters operating in the scheme, farmers have moved far beyond the predominantly manual system of the past.

The machines allow harvesting to take place faster and have significantly reduced post-harvest losses.

That matters because rice quality and value can deteriorate when harvesting is delayed.

Mechanisation therefore creates benefits that extend beyond saving labour. It can protect the crop, reduce exposure to weather-related losses and allow farmers to complete harvesting within a narrower window.

The challenge now is to reproduce that success at other stages of production.

The cooperative model could be crucial

MRGM’s role illustrates another potential pathway for mechanisation.

The cooperative does not only represent farmers. It operates across several parts of the rice value chain, including production, marketing, milling and agro-vet services.

It also has a dedicated filling station supplying fuel and lubricants to the agricultural and transport sectors.

Importantly, the cooperative purchases machinery for use by its members.

That model could become increasingly important as agricultural equipment becomes more sophisticated and expensive.

Rather than requiring every farmer to purchase specialised machinery individually, cooperative ownership or organised machinery services can spread the cost across a larger number of users.

MRGM has also worked with machinery companies, including FM World and Massey Ferguson, while local leadership and after-sales support remain important considerations.

The lesson is clear: mechanisation does not necessarily mean every farmer owns a machine.

In many cases, access to the machine may be more important than ownership.

Water remains part of the equation

Mwea’s machinery story cannot be separated from water.

Rice production depends on reliable irrigation, and water availability remains a challenge despite the major contribution of the Thiba Dam.

The irrigation system also presents a contrast with some more advanced agricultural systems internationally.

Kenya continues to rely heavily on open-channel water distribution, meaning that future improvements in water management could potentially complement machinery and precision agriculture.

Better water control, efficient pumping, field levelling and precision irrigation could all contribute to the productivity and sustainability of the rice system.

For Mwea, mechanisation is therefore becoming part of a much bigger technological transition.

Looking beyond 2030

The interviews conducted in Mwea suggest that the next phase of rice mechanisation will not be about simply adding more tractors and harvesters.

Those machines have already established themselves.

The bigger challenge is filling the gaps between them.

A suitable rice transplanter could be transformative. More affordable drone services could improve crop protection. Better precision fertiliser application could help address rising input use. Improved water management could protect productivity as pressure on resources increases.

And all of these technologies will need to work within the economic realities of Kenyan farming.

For Kahuthia, complete mechanisation is possible beyond 2030.

But reaching that point will require more than machinery manufacturers alone.

Farmers will need financing. Manufacturers will need to adapt machines to local conditions. Dealers will need to provide parts and technical support. Cooperatives will have to continue developing shared-access models. Government and development partners may need to support technologies where the initial investment is beyond farmers’ reach.

Mwea has already demonstrated that rice farming can move rapidly from manual production towards a machinery-intensive system.

The next question is whether the industry can solve its hardest problem.

The fields can be ploughed by machines. The rice can be harvested by machines. But until machinery can reliably plant the crop in Mwea’s difficult soils, the rice revolution remains only partially mechanised.

And that unfinished chapter may provide one of the biggest opportunities for the next generation of agricultural machinery in Kenya.

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John Deere is increasingly seeing 2026 not as another difficult year for agricultural equipment, but as a potential turning point.

The company’s latest results, released on August 20, point to an agricultural machinery market that remains uneven but may be moving toward the end of its current downturn.

Deere reported third-quarter net income of $1.379 billion, up from $1.289 billion a year earlier, while worldwide net sales and revenues rose 5% to $12.608 billion.

More significant for the machinery industry, however, is what Deere expects next.

The company now forecasts fiscal 2026 net income of between $4.75 billion and $5.00 billion, while CEO John C.

May said Deere continues to believe that 2026 will mark the bottom of the current agricultural equipment cycle.

That does not mean farm machinery demand is suddenly returning to boom conditions.

It suggests something more important: the industry may be approaching the point where deferred equipment purchases, improving inventories and investment in newer technology begin to support the next replacement cycle.

Deere Sees Evidence of a Cycle Turning

Agricultural equipment is highly cyclical. Farmers tend to increase machinery investment when commodity prices, farm income and financing conditions are favourable, but postpone purchases when margins tighten.

That creates a lag between a downturn in farm economics and the eventual impact on equipment manufacturers.

Deere says three developments are particularly encouraging: early order programme trends, improving used-equipment inventories and increased customer adoption of advanced technologies.

The used-equipment market is particularly important.

When farmers delay buying new tractors and combines, older machines remain in service for longer.

Eventually, however, the replacement decision becomes difficult to postpone, particularly for large commercial operations where equipment downtime can have significant financial consequences.

This dynamic means the bottom of a machinery cycle does not necessarily produce an immediate surge in sales.

It can instead mark the point where purchasing decisions stop deteriorating and begin building toward the next cycle.

The Recovery Will Not Be Uniform

Deere’s outlook should not be interpreted as evidence that every agricultural market is recovering at the same speed.

May specifically pointed to relatively stable U.S. market conditions alongside softer conditions in Brazil and Europe.

That distinction matters because the global farm machinery market is not a single market.

A large grain producer in the United States has very different machinery economics from a Brazilian soybean farmer, a European mixed farm or a commercial operation in Africa.

Commodity prices, interest rates, farm sizes, currency movements, government policies and access to finance can all change the timing of machinery purchases.

This makes the idea of a “bottom” more useful as an industry-cycle indicator than as a universal forecast of immediate sales growth.

Technology Could Change the Next Replacement Cycle

There is another important difference between the next machinery cycle and previous ones: farmers are increasingly being asked to justify equipment purchases not simply through horsepower or capacity, but through productivity.

Precision agriculture, automation, connectivity and machine data are becoming part of the investment equation.

That creates an interesting dynamic for manufacturers such as Deere.

A farmer replacing an old tractor may not simply be buying a newer version of the same machine. The purchase can provide access to guidance systems, data connectivity, automation and other technologies designed to improve how the entire farming operation is managed.

For manufacturers, that makes the technology installed on a machine increasingly important to the value proposition.

What Does the Turning Point Mean for Africa?

This is where Deere’s outlook becomes particularly interesting for African agriculture.

A global machinery recovery does not automatically translate into a rapid increase in equipment purchases across African markets.

In many parts of the continent, the bigger constraint is not necessarily the absence of machinery demand. It is the ability of farmers and agricultural businesses to finance machinery.

In an interview with Agrimachinery Africa, Kip Eideberg, Senior Vice President of Government and Industry Relations at the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, highlighted the issue directly:

“For African farmers the high upfront cost of equipment and limited access to affordable credit remain major barriers to modernization.”

That means Africa could enter the next global machinery cycle from a very different position.

While mature markets may be focused on replacing relatively recent equipment and upgrading to more advanced technology, many African agricultural economies still have significant unmet demand for basic mechanization.

The opportunity is therefore potentially larger than simply selling the newest tractors.

Africa’s Machinery Opportunity Is About Access

For African farmers, the critical question may be whether the next global machinery cycle produces equipment that is financially accessible, not merely technologically advanced.

That could increase the importance of smaller tractors, used equipment, machinery leasing, contract farming services and dealer-supported financing.

It also creates opportunities for manufacturers that can adapt products and financing models to local operating conditions.

A sophisticated 300-horsepower tractor may be highly productive on a large commercial farm, but it is not necessarily the machine that unlocks mechanization for a smaller agricultural enterprise.

The same principle applies to precision technology. Digital agriculture can create measurable efficiency gains, but farmers first need an economically viable pathway to acquire the equipment and technology.

A Cycle Bottom Is Not the Same as a Boom

Deere’s announcement therefore deserves attention beyond its quarterly financial performance.

The company is effectively signalling that the agricultural equipment industry may be moving from correction toward stabilization.

If 2026 does prove to be the bottom, the next phase could be driven by replacement demand that has accumulated during the downturn, improving used-equipment conditions and growing demand for machines equipped with productivity-enhancing technology.

But several risks remain. Deere itself points to factors including farm income, commodity prices, interest rates, trade policy, tariffs, currency movements and customer demand as variables that could alter the outlook.

For Africa, the story is even more nuanced.

The continent does not need to wait for a global machinery boom to demonstrate its mechanization potential.

Its challenge is creating the financial and commercial systems that allow farmers to participate when machinery becomes available.

If Deere is right that 2026 represents the bottom of the current cycle, the next question for Africa will not simply be whether the global farm machinery market recovers.

It will be whether African farmers can access enough capital, machinery and support to participate in the recovery.

That could determine whether the next global equipment cycle becomes merely a recovery for manufacturers—or a genuine opportunity to accelerate agricultural mechanization across Africa.

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Ask anyone who sells agricultural machinery in Africa what’s holding the market back, and you’ll rarely hear “farmers don’t want tractors.”

You’ll hear about deposits farmers can’t raise, loan terms that don’t match a harvest cycle, and lenders who won’t finance equipment they aren’t confident they could repossess if a loan goes bad.

That gap between real demand and a financial system that can’t safely meet it is, according to the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), the single biggest obstacle to mechanizing agriculture across the continent.

It’s also a solvable one, says Kip Senior Vice President of Government and Industry Relations at AEM.

Speaking after the release of AEM’s 2026 report on the economic impact of the U.S. equipment manufacturing industry, Eideberg laid out a case that should matter to every policymaker, financier, and equipment dealer operating in African markets: the technology to lift agricultural productivity already exists and is scaling.

What’s missing in many emerging markets is the financial infrastructure to get it into farmers’ hands.

What a $415 Billion Industry Can Teach Africa

AEM’s newly released report, produced with S&P Global Market Intelligence, puts hard numbers behind the U.S. equipment manufacturing industry’s footprint: 2.2 million jobs across all 50 states, $902 billion in total output, and $415 billion contributed annually to U.S. GDP.

Agriculture equipment alone accounts for 35% of that industry, generating an estimated $237 billion in total sales activity once direct, indirect, and induced effects are combined.

Behind those numbers sits a lesson Eideberg believes is transferable to any market trying to build a modern equipment sector, including Africa’s. Success, he says, depends on much more than manufacturers alone.

The U.S. industry thrives because it is supported by a broad network of suppliers, dealers, financiers, technology providers, training institutions, and skilled workers, all operating within a stable and predictable business environment, Eideberg explains, and AEM’s research shows that this surrounding ecosystem generates as much economic activity as the manufacturers themselves.

That framing matters because it reorients the conversation. Discussions about mechanizing African agriculture often start and end with equipment — which tractors, which brands, which local assembly plants.

But according to Eideberg, the equipment itself is the smallest part of the story; indirect and induced impacts, the suppliers, the dealer networks, the technicians, the financing arms, account for a substantial share of the U.S. industry’s overall economic contribution, and that supporting ecosystem is exactly what tends to be thinnest in emerging markets.

Manufacturers, Eideberg notes, are more likely to invest where there is regulatory certainty, access to financing, strong infrastructure, legal transparency, and open, competitive markets. He’s equally direct about what he believes doesn’t work.

Long-term competitiveness, he argues, is built through partnership between government and the private sector rather than through market-distorting policies such as forced localization, tariff and non-tariff trade barriers, or weak intellectual property protections.

For African governments weighing whether to mandate local assembly requirements or protect domestic manufacturers behind tariff walls as a shortcut to industrial development, it’s a pointed caution from an organization that represents the manufacturers those policies are meant to attract.

The Missing Middle: Suppliers, Dealers, and Financiers

Ask what actually determines whether a piece of equipment reaches a farmer’s field, and Eideberg points past the factory gate entirely.

Suppliers provide the components and materials, dealers connect customers with equipment and after-sales service, technicians keep machinery running, and financial institutions help customers access the capital required to purchase it in the first place, he says.

Strip out any one link in that chain and the equipment doesn’t move, no matter how strong demand is.

Financing is where Eideberg’s argument sharpens into something close to a diagnosis of Africa’s specific problem. Mining, agricultural, and construction equipment are high-value capital assets, he points out, and that is precisely what makes financing so critical.

In many developing markets, he says, demand exists, but purchases are constrained by limited access to credit, high financing costs, and legal uncertainty surrounding collateral and asset recovery.

“

For African farmers, the high upfront cost of equipment and limited access to affordable credit remain major barriers to modernization.

Kip Eideberg
Senior Vice President of Government and Industry Relations, AEM

That last phrase, legal uncertainty surrounding collateral and asset recovery, is worth sitting with. It’s not simply that African farmers and contractors are poor or that interest rates are high, though both are often true.

It’s that lenders in many African jurisdictions cannot be confident that if a borrower defaults, they can actually recover the tractor, excavator, or harvester that secured the loan. Repossession processes can be slow, contested, or effectively unenforceable.

Faced with that uncertainty, banks and equipment-finance companies respond the way lenders everywhere respond to unpriceable risk: they lend less, they lend at higher cost, or they don’t lend at all.

The result is a market where the demand side and the supply side of the equipment trade are both healthy — farmers want machinery, manufacturers and dealers want to sell it — but the financial plumbing connecting them is broken.

It’s a distinctly different problem from the one usually assumed, and it points to a distinctly different set of solutions.

Why AEM Is Backing the MAC Protocol

Asked what policy would do the most to change that picture, Eideberg doesn’t hesitate: ratification of the MAC Protocol, formally the Mining, Agriculture and Construction Equipment Protocol, an international commercial treaty designed specifically to de-risk equipment financing.

The Protocol, he explains, establishes a clear and transparent legal framework that protects creditors when financing agricultural, construction, and mining equipment.

By providing defined remedies in the event of default, including repossession, sale, leasing, and export of equipment, it reduces lending risk and increases confidence among financial institutions, Eideberg says, adding that those protections are underpinned by an international electronic registry that records security interests in equipment, giving lenders a transparent, searchable record of who has a claim on a given machine, the kind of legal clarity that’s often simply absent in domestic frameworks.

The mechanism by which this is supposed to help ordinary farmers is straightforward, even if it operates a step removed from the field.

When a lender knows it has an enforceable, internationally recognized right to repossess and resell equipment in the event of default, it can afford to offer better terms.

For many African farmers and businesses, Eideberg says, the high upfront cost of equipment and limited access to affordable credit remain major barriers to modernization, and by reducing financing risk, the MAC Protocol can encourage lenders to offer longer loan terms, lower financing costs, and more flexible leasing arrangements.

Notably, Eideberg frames adoption of the Protocol as close to a free policy win for African governments.

There is no cost for African governments to ratify the MAC Protocol, he stresses, and doing so would boost agricultural productivity across the continent while helping to combat food insecurity and the environmental degradation caused by unsustainable agricultural practices.

For treasuries and ministries of agriculture weighing competing priorities and limited budgets, a treaty ratification that costs nothing but could unlock private lending is a rare combination.

The knock-on effects Eideberg describes extend beyond individual farm loans.

Beyond improving equipment access, he says, adoption of the MAC Protocol can support the growth of domestic manufacturing and machinery-support industries: as demand for equipment increases, countries can attract investment in local assembly operations, component manufacturing, maintenance services, dealer networks, and skilled workforce development.

In other words, fixing the financing bottleneck doesn’t just move more tractors, it’s a precondition for the dealer networks, technician training programs, and local supply chains that AEM’s own U.S. data shows generate the bulk of an equipment industry’s economic value.

What Modern Equipment Actually Does for a Farmer

It’s worth being concrete about what’s being financed, because the case for the MAC Protocol is really a case for getting a specific set of technologies into more hands.

Eideberg describes a suite of tools that go well beyond horsepower.

Modern equipment technologies, he says, put data in the hands of farmers to better utilize the land already under cultivation; from preparation and planning to seeding and harvest, that data allows farmers to read soil moisture, texture, and temperature so they can make informed decisions on how and when to apply necessary inputs.

Auto-guidance systems, he notes, reduce overlap, avoid soil compaction, and prevent skipped field passes, while variable-rate technologies use sensors on equipment and attachments to map a farmer’s field so operators can visualize and optimize where certain areas need more, or less, seed, water, and fertilizer.

The pitch here is productivity gains without a corresponding expansion of farmland, a critical distinction in a continent where much of the highest-quality agricultural land is already under cultivation, and where expanding into new land carries real environmental cost.

At its core, Eideberg says, modern equipment can drastically improve agricultural land already under cultivation without relying solely on generational knowledge passed down from one farmer to the next about how to optimize each piece of land.

Importantly, he’s careful to note that this isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition requiring African farmers to leap straight to fully autonomous, sensor-laden machinery.

These technologies can scale up or down depending on the sophistication of the application and equipment, he says, and retrofits, interoperable technologies, and scalable equipment options can allow farmers to adopt solutions that fit their operation, crop, geography, and capital constraints.

A smallholder in Kenya’s Rift Valley and a large-scale commercial farm in South Africa‘s Free State don’t need the same equipment package; the technology stack, in Eideberg’s telling, is designed to meet farmers where their capital and operations actually are.

A Growth Market, If the Financing Follows

Eideberg is unambiguous that AEM sees Africa as a genuine long-term opportunity rather than a charity case.

The continent, he says, represents a significant long-term growth opportunity for equipment manufacturing due to its growing population, expanding infrastructure needs, and demand for improved productivity across the mining, construction, and agriculture sectors.

He believes many African markets already have strong underlying demand for modern equipment, with investment constrained primarily by financing challenges and legal uncertainty, the same diagnosis, restated as an opportunity rather than a problem.

As that demand is unlocked, Eideberg expects the ecosystem to mature in a fairly predictable sequence, with opportunities emerging for greater local assembly, regional supply chains, dealer development, service networks, and workforce training programs.

He also points to a role for deeper partnership between multinational manufacturers and local firms to build distribution, maintenance, and technical support capacity, the kind of on-the-ground presence that turns a one-off equipment sale into a durable, serviceable asset for a farmer or contractor.

Zooming out, Eideberg situates the African opportunity within a broader global pattern. Emerging markets everywhere face significant pressures, he says: population growth, climate change, environmental degradation, and disruptions in global supply chains are all increasing the need to grow more food with fewer inputs.

Precision agriculture, in his telling, is not a luxury add-on for wealthy farmers but a response to that pressure, a way to scale production safely and efficiently by making better use of the land already under cultivation.

He points to AEM’s own Benefits of Precision Ag study as evidence that higher productivity does not have to come at the expense of local environments, since technologies that optimize seed, water, fertilizer, and fuel use can raise output while cutting waste.

The Bottom Line for Africa’s Agricultural Machinery Market

Strip away the policy language, and Eideberg’s argument reduces to something fairly simple: the equipment exists, the demand exists, and the productivity case is proven in mature markets, but none of it reaches African farmers without a financial system willing and able to lend against it.

That’s not a manufacturing problem or a demand problem.

It’s a legal and financial infrastructure problem, and one that AEM argues has an unusually cheap fix in the form of a treaty that costs governments nothing to ratify.

For dealers, financiers, and manufacturers watching Africa’s agricultural machinery market, the message is that the next major unlock for the sector may not come from a new product launch or a new assembly plant, but from a signature on an international registry.

Whether African governments move to ratify the MAC Protocol, and how quickly lenders respond if they do, will be one of the more consequential storylines to watch across the continent’s equipment markets in the years ahead.

This interview was conducted with Kip Eideberg, Senior Vice President of Government and Industry Relations at the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), following the release of AEM’s 2026 report on the economic impact of the U.S. equipment manufacturing industry, produced in partnership with S&P Global Market Intelligence.

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