  Josue Dione, director of Food Security and Sustainable Development of the UN Economic Commission for Africa | Image: IISD
By Babukar Kashka
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
NAIROBI (IDN) – One in three Africans is chronically hungry despite 3 billion dollars a year that Africa receives in food aid and 33 billion dollars the continent spends annually on food imports. What to do?
The answer seems to be simple: instead of spending so much money on importing food, Africa should devote those huge funds to promote domestic production, export food, reduce poverty and reposition itself in the global economy.
Quite reasonable indeed, and a perfect practical implementation of what Italians are used to say: “It is better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick.”
The formula, however, should be taken seriously as it came from Josue Dione, director of Food Security and Sustainable Development of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), who announced it at a three-day conference on agribusiness in Abuja, Nigeria.
Though so simple and so reasonable, how come then that Africa did not do it?
According to Dione, one reason is that “African agriculture is thirsty” as less than 4 per cent of the total arable land is irrigated compared to 33 per cent in Asia and the Pacific and 29 per cent in the Middle East.
Another reason is that “African agriculture is hungry” as it receives only 14.6 kilograms of fertilizers per hectare, against 114.3 kilograms per hectare for all developing countries.
The result is that Africa’s share in world agriculture trade fell to 3.2 per cent in 2006 from 5.4 per cent in the 1980s and 15 per cent in the 1960s, according to ECA.
On top of that, the continent’s small share in regional and global agricultural trade is anyway strongly associated with a shift in world agricultural trade away from bulk commodities, Dione said.
THE VALUE CHAINS FACTOR
“Significant part of global agro-food trade has moved downstream along the value chains, and thus become less dependent purely on natural-resource endowment,” explained Dione.
Yet, moving Africa’s food and agriculture system towards processed, higher value-added products has been more difficult for the continent than for other developing regions.
“Africa is suffering from a competitive disadvantage in agro-processing, better policies can help improve the business environment and create the conditions necessary for higher private investment in agribusiness,” the high-ranking official said.
ECA has advocated the development of regional value chains for selected agricultural commodities, which would allow domestic production to gain more resources.
“Developing agriculture for broad-based economic growth, food security and poverty reduction in Africa now requires an integrated approach to investing in improving productivity and efficiency at all stages of the commodity value chains, from research and development to input markets, farm-level production, processing, storage, handling, transport, distribution to the final consumer,” he suggested.
The proposed solution to African agriculture was submitted to high-level representatives from 44 African countries who gathered at the three-day UN-backed conference in Nigeria, which approved on March 10 an ambitious plan “to generate employment, income and food security across the continent through agribusiness.”
Yes, but how? According to the UN, the scheme provides a framework and financial mechanisms for public and private sector investors to finance development of the agricultural industry in Africa, whose population could double by 2050 to reach 2 billion people.
Sub-Saharan Africa alone will need 940 billion dollars of cumulative investment over the next 40 years – most of it for agribusiness capital outlays – to feed its people, the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) announced.
RESTRUCTURING THE CONTINENT
“Agribusiness in Africa needs to undergo a profound structural transformation and technological upgrading during the next 20 years to generate jobs and income urgently needed by Africa’s growing population,” said UNIDO director general Kandeh Yumkella at the Abuja conference.
The African Agribusiness and Agro-industries Development Initiative, or 3ADI, was endorsed at the gathering in Abuja, attended by some 500 participants, including heads of State, prime ministers and the ministers of agriculture and industry.
The conference, which ended on March 10, was organised by UNIDO, with the African Union, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, ECA, and the African Development Bank.
“It is essential to avoid policies, such as subsidies on labour-saving technologies, that bias technology choice in favour of large-scale, highly mechanized operations,” stressed Yumkella.
AGRIBUSINESS IN AFRICA?
He also underscored the importance of developing agribusiness on a regional and continent-wide level, adding that private enterprises had to be stimulated, technology and innovation expanded, innovative financing mechanisms introduced, infrastructure and energy constraints removed.
“For agribusiness to become competitive, policies need to be in place, as well as research and practical actions to achieve a unique blend of ecological compliance and inclusive growth,” he said.
African states have pledged to invest through the African Union a minimum of 10 per cent of budgetary resources in the agricultural sector, and the Group of Eight industrialized countries (G-8) conference in Italy in 2009 renewed the donor community commitment to the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme.
This programme has set an annual agricultural growth target of 6 per cent to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving poverty by 2015. Not much has been paid, however.
Anyway, UNIDO and Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI), a leading pan-African banking group, signed an agreement to work together in promoting economic growth in Africa, particularly in the area of agribusiness, including food, leather, textiles, wood, agro-machinery; on renewable energy, including bio-energy initiatives, on hydro power projects, and other environmentally sustainable projects; as well as on clean technologies.
MORE PRODUCTION, LESS FOOD
So far so good. The fact, however, is that despite good global cereal harvests last year, millions of people in dozens of poor countries, including several African ones, are in desperate need of emergency humanitarian aid due to stubbornly high food prices, the UN agricultural agency warned six months ago.
In fact, critical food insecurity is affecting 31 countries and the situation is particularly acute in East Africa, where prolonged drought and mounting conflict have left an estimated 20 million people in need of food aid, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).
The Crop Prospects and Food Situation report, published in November 2009, noted that although international food prices have fallen significantly since their peak a few years ago, wheat and maize prices rose in October and rice export prices are still high above pre-crisis levels.
“For the world’s poorest people who spend up to 80 per cent of their household budgets on food, the food price crisis is not over yet.”
The report said that in Western Africa cereal production for 2009 is set to decline from previous year because below average rainfall forced farmers to re-plant crops in many parts of the region and led to livestock losses in Mali, Chad and Niger.
The dire food situation in the region is worsened by cereal prices remaining well above the levels of two years ago before the hike in food prices, with the price of millet in the markets of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger ranging from 21 to 42 per cent higher, and imported rice between 22 and 46 per cent higher.
In addition, an expected reduction in Nigeria’s cereal production could lead to new price rises across West Africa, the report said.
The FAO report also voiced deep concern over the situation in Eastern Africa as crops and pastures are expected to fail due to poor rains and an increase in armed conflict, resulting in more trade disruptions and continuing high food prices.
Kenya’s maize production is forecast to be 30 per cent down on last year, leaving almost 4 million Kenyans either highly or extremely food insecure, and in Ethiopia the number of people in need of food aid jumped from 5.3 million in May to 6.2 million in October.
SEVEN QUESTIONS
Conclusion: all this value chains and agribusiness that experts talk about should help resolve one part of the problem.
Any proposal to solve the huge impact of climate change on Africa, which has already dried rivers and lakes, altered the rain system, contributed to long periods of total drought during farming seasons, as well as spectacular floods in pre-harvesting periods?
Any formula to put an end to the unlimited corruption epidemic, which has been spreading between African rulers thanks to giant multinationals exploiting cobalt, uranium, gold, diamonds, among others?
Any suggestion how to stop flooding Africa with machine guns that serve so-called 'rebel groups' kill civilians, rape women and children and recruit baby-soldiers?
Any idea for European governments to refrain from supporting African dictators for the sake of making life easier to their business and sell them more weapons?
Any proposal to make fair trade with Africa?
Anyway to keep Africa away from big military strategies such as the establishment of the U.S. African Command?
Any chance to leave Africa alone to benefit from its own resources and thus solve its own problems?
Finally, any human consideration at all? (IDN-InDepthNews/13.03.2010)
Copyright © 2010 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters
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