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Soil acidity remediation in sub-Saharan Africa requires targeted investments

Nature Food volume 6, pages 799–808 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Acid soils are widespread across sub-Saharan Africa. Agricultural lime can be used to alleviate production constraints associated with soil acidity, but lime is not widely available in the region, and it is unclear if applying it would be profitable. Using lime requirement models and crop yield responses to soil acidity modelled as plateau–linear decay functions, we estimated the profitability of acid soil remediation through liming. Crop yield loss to soil acidity occurs on 32.7 Mha, or 23% of sub-Saharan Africa’s cropland. The burden of acid soils is US$6.0 billion (6% of the current production value), and 75% of that could be profitably alleviated. Under prevailing conditions, liming would be profitable in the year of application on 6.2 Mha (with an average profitability of US$278 ha−1) and on 8.8 Mha when lime’s long-term effect is considered. Intensification of crop production and lower relative lime/output prices could make liming profitable on more cropland.

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Fig. 1: Distribution of acid soils and lime requirements for acid soil remediation across sub-Saharan Africa.
Fig. 2: Crop yield loss to soil acidity across sub-Saharan Africa.
Fig. 3: Profitability of liming acid soils in sub-Saharan Africa.
Fig. 4: Four-quadrant diagram for the relationships between acidity saturation, the cost of lime needed to reach a crop-specific TAS, yield loss to soil acidity and profitability from liming for a regular sample of 200,000 grid cells across sub-Saharan Africa.
Fig. 5: Methodological approach to assess the economic benefit of liming in sub-Saharan Africa.

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Data availability

The spatial data and tabular aggregates from our results are available at www.acidsoils.africa. Soil data from Hengl et al.45 can be accessed at https://www.isric.org/projects/soil-property-maps-africa-250-m-resolution. Crop area and production data from IFPRI51 can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/PRFF8V.

Code availability

The R scripts developed for the analyses presented in the manuscript are available via GitHub at https://github.com/EiA2030-ex-ante/gaia-ex-ante-wow.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge support for this study from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, through the Guiding Acid Soil Management Investments in Africa (GAIA) project (grant number INV-068374), and from the OneCGIAR Initiative on Excellence in Agronomy (grant number INV-005431). We thank C. Witt, K. Giller, K. Shepherd, B. Vanlauwe, B. Gérard, M. Walsch and M. Farina for insightful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Harare, Zimbabwe

    João Vasco Silva & Frédéric Baudron

  2. University of California–Davis, Davis, CA, USA

    Fernando Aramburu-Merlos & Robert J. Hijmans

  3. Instituto de Innovación para la Producción Agropecuaria y el Desarrollo Sostenible (IPADS), INTA-CONICET, EEA Balcarce, Argentina

    Fernando Aramburu-Merlos

  4. Centre de coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD), UPR AIDA, Montpellier, France

    Frédéric Baudron

  5. Agroécologie et Intensification Durable des cultures Annuelles (AIDA), Université de Montpellier, CIRAD, Montpellier, France

    Frédéric Baudron

  6. International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

    Samuel Gameda, Tesfaye Shiferaw Sida & Moti Jaleta

  7. Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB), Kigali, Rwanda

    Vicky Ruganzu

  8. Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute (TARI), Dodoma, Tanzania

    Joel Meliyo

  9. International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Nairobi, Kenya

    Jordan Chamberlin

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  1. João Vasco Silva
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Contributions

J.V.S., F.A.-M. and R.J.H. conceptualized the study and developed methodology and software for data acquisition, analysis and visualization. F.B. and J.C. supported the conceptualization of the study, validated methodology and results, and were responsible for funding acquisition and project administration. S.G., T.S.S., V.R., J.M. and M.J. were instrumental in the validation of the methods and the results, supervision of the research work, and project coordination in the respective countries. J.V.S. wrote the original draft. All authors edited and commented on the manuscript, particularly F.A.-M. and R.J.H.

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Correspondence to João Vasco Silva.

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Nature Food thanks Yves Uwiragiy, Jianbin Zhou and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Silva, J.V., Aramburu-Merlos, F., Baudron, F. et al. Soil acidity remediation in sub-Saharan Africa requires targeted investments. Nat Food 6, 799–808 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-025-01194-z

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