The race to feed Africa during a pandemic

“ONCE THEThe EconomistThe Economist Today market was closed, all my knowledge was over,” sighs Brian Kayongo, a spare-parts trader from Kampala, Uganda’s capital. Until the covid-19 lockdown he spent most of his time in the city. He knew about spark plugs, not seeds. But now he is planting maize and beans on a patch of land he has rented in a nearby village. Everybody there is digging, he says. Even the young people who turned up their noses at farming have “surrendered” to the tyranny of the hoe.