Africa

Potato arrived late in Africa, around the turn of the 20th century. In recent decades, production has been in continual expansion, rising from 2 million tonnes in 1960 to over 30 million tonnes in 2013.

Potatoes are grown under a wide range of conditions - from irrigated commercial farms in Egypt and South Africa to intensively cultivated tropical highland zones of Eastern and Central Africa, where it is mainly a small farmer's crop.

In some African countries the production of potatoes is growing very rapidly. Algeria more than doubled its potato production in 5 years, and seems to have overtaken Egypt as the #1 producer in Africa in 2013 - at least based on the preliminary FAO estimate for Egypt. Rwanda also almost doubled its potato production in the last 5 years and now ranks in the top 5 potato producing countries of Africa