The gap in agricultural productivity between Africa and other global regions is ever widening. Production has not even kept pace with demand for food of the growing population and the number of food insecure people is increasing rather than decreasing. For sub-Saharan Africa, various targets set by the Millennium Development Goals will not be met. This alarming situation has raised political awareness inside and outside Africa to support the development of the agricultural sector. In this regard, Africa is at the crossroad of making strategic choices for its agricultural development. Any production system that could be pursued should target the millions of small and resource poor farmers to ensure widespread development, while it should comply with international standards and developments in agriculture. The understanding of the evolution in agriculture in the developed world that results from external and internal forces is valuable for identifying agricultural development pathways for Africa. This evolution is described on the basis of a conceptual framework that takes objectives or human desire as a starting point, illustrated by a number of typical farming systems, primarily in Europe. African agriculture is diverse and complex with very many farming systems. On the one hand, this diversity may appear to be an asset, while on the other it may have constrained progress in productivity in the past. In this paper, we reason what development pathways could be pursued on the African continent in the context of agricultural policies and developments in production systems outside Africa.

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