Trade Barriers in Africa cause Food Crises

A new World Bank report says that Africa’s farmers can potentially grow enough food to feed the continent and avert future food crises if countries remove cross-border restrictions on the food trade within the region.

According to the Bank, the continent would also generate an extra US$20 billion in yearly earnings if African leaders can agree to dismantle trade barriers that blunt more regional dynamism.

The report was released on the eve of an African Union (AU) ministerial summit in Addis Ababa on agriculture and trade.

With as many as 19 million people living with the threat of hunger and malnutrition in West Africa’s Sahel region, the Bank report urges African leaders to improve trade so that food can move more freely between countries and from fertile areas to those where communities are suffering food shortages.

The World Bank expects demand for food in Africa to double by the year 2020 as people increasingly leave the countryside and move to the continent’s cities.

According to the new report?Africa Can Help Feed Africa: Removing barriers to regional trade in food staples ? rapid urbanization will challenge the ability of farmers to ship their cereals and other foods to consumers when the nearest trade market is just across a national border.

Countries south of the Sahara, for example, could significantly boost their food trade over the next several years to manage the deadly impact of worsening drought, rising food prices, rapid population growth, and volatile weather patterns.

With many African farmers effectively cut off from the high-yield seeds, and the affordable fertilizers and pesticides needed to expand their crop production, the continent has turned to foreign imports to meet its growing needs in staple foods.

“Africa has the ability to grow and deliver good quality food to put on the dinner tables of the continent’s families,” said Makhtar Diop, World Bank Vice President for Africa.

“However, this potential is not being realized because farmers face more trade barriers in getting their food to market than anywhere else in the world. Too often borders get in the way of getting food to homes and communities which are struggling with too little to eat.”

The new report suggests that if the continent’s leaders can embrace more dynamic inter-regional trade, Africa’s farmers, the majority of whom are women, could potentially meet the continent’s rising demand and benefit from a major growth opportunity. It would also create more jobs in services such as distribution, while reducing poverty and cutting back on expensive food imports. Africa’s production of staple foods is worth at least US$50 billion a year.

Moreover, the new report notes that only five percent of all cereals imported by African countries come from other African countries while huge tracts of fertile land, around 400 million hectares, remain uncultivated and yields remain a fraction of those obtained by farmers elsewhere in the world.

Poor roads and high transport costs blunt progress

Transport cartels are still common across Africa, and the incentives to invest in modern trucks and logistics are weak. The World Bank report suggests that countries in West Africa in particular could halve their transport costs within 10 years if they adopted policy reforms that spurred more competition within the region.

Unpredictable trade policies a liability

Other obstacles to greater African trade in food staples include export and import bans, variable import tariffs and quotas, restrictive rules of origin, and price controls.

Often devised with little public scrutiny, these policies are then poorly communicated to traders and officials. This process in turn promotes confusion at border crossings, limits greater regional trade, creates uncertain market conditions, and contributes to food price volatility.

Establishing a competitive market will enhance food distribution networks

A competitive food market will help poor people most, the report notes. For example, poor people in the slums of Nairobi pay more for their maize, rice, and other staple food than wealthy people pay for the same products in local supermarkets. The report underlines the importance of food distribution networks which in many countries fail to benefit poor farmers and poor consumers.

“The key challenge for the continent is how to create a competitive environment in which governments embrace credible and stable policies that encourage private investors and businesses to boost food production across the region, so that farmers get the capital, the seeds, and the machinery they need to become more efficient, and families get enough good food at the right price.” said Paul Brenton, World Bank’s Lead Economist for Africa and principal author of the report.

World Bank Group support for trade and agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa

The World Bank is recognized as a key source of knowledge on trade policy issues, analysis and investments for trade-related infrastructure at the country level.

The institution’s agriculture support for Africa has grown significantly over the past decade. Concessional lending totaled US$1.07 billion in fiscal year 12 (July 11-June 12): a fourfold increase from FY03.

The share of trade-related lending in total Bank lending has also grown from an average of two percent in FY03 to five percent in FY12. New trade-related commitments in FY13 are expected to increase to US$3 billion, 70 percent of which will go to Africa.

Since 2008, World Bank Group lending for agriculture and related sectors in sub-Saharan Africa total approximately US$5.4 billion.

How Corporate Agribusiness supplies the lion's share of US Food Aid

For the first time it is possible to see which companies benefit from aid contracts and which countries are the main recipients

A woman collects WFP vegetable oil in Agok, southern Sudan.

As the food crisis in the Sahel countries of west Africa deepens and the anniversary of the famine in the Horn of Africa falls, the debate about how best to deliver food aid to the world's hungry has intensified.

The US is the world's largest donor of food aid but still delivers most of it "in kind" under programmes dating back to the 1950s that tie it to American companies and were originally designed to make use of American agricultural surplus.

The in-depth Guardian analysis of all the food aid contracts awarded by the US government's department of agriculture last year highlights some of the most controversial aspects of the programme. For the first time it is possible to see just which companies benefit from the contracts and which countries are the main recipients.
Development charities have been concerned for some time that corporate agribusiness supplies the lion's share of the contracted food aid and the Guardian investigation bears this out.

It is not surprising ADM, Cargill and Bunge dominate food aid, since they dominate global grain trade too. They are also powerful political players; in the first three months of 2012 alone, ADM and Cargill reported lobbying expenses of $360,000 and $340,000 respectively; Bunge reported spending $230,000 over the same period, lobbying Congress on a range of largely agricultural issues, including "support for US in-kind food aid programmes".

Patrick Woodall, research director at Food and Water Watch, pointed out the inherent contradiction in current policy. The companies that benefit from the US food aid business are the very companies that encourage poor countries to cultivate non-food crops for export rather than food to feed their people. "In terms of global food security, it seems like a double-edged sword," he said.

Nor is it surprising that food aid supports US geopolitical interests – although just how emerges in our analysis. The Guardian database shows Ethiopia, Sudan, Djibouti, Pakistan, Kenya and Afghanistan are among the top recipients of American food. These are all countries with people who go hungry but, were humanitarian need the only criterion for giving food aid, you might expect to see more countries from west Africa higher on the list, points out Rob Bailey, a fellow at Chatham House. Ethiopia, the recipient of the largest amounts by far, is highly vulnerable to regular droughts and food crises, and famine has been associated with regime change there, but it is since it became an ally in the global war on terror in the region that a more permanent food aid structure has been developed. The US has given more food and the World Food Programme has been able to work with the government to make regular food distributions as a result. A similar pattern can be seen in food aid to Afghanistan, Bailey said. High wheat prices have been a source of political instability in strategic ally Pakistan too, explaining its position as fourth largest destination country for US food aid.

Debate over these issues is growing as Congress approaches a 30 September deadline to pass a new farm bill. Negotiated every five years, it is one of the largest and most contentious pieces of US legislation, setting policy on a wide range of issues – including the bulk of international food aid.

In 2008 Congress authorised a $60m pilot to buy food aid closer to where it was needed as part of the current farm bill – a move that many other donor countries and NGOs believe would be a more effective use of money. The Senate version of the farm bill would extend the pilot. However, the House version doesn't even mention it. Now the two chambers of Congress have to reconcile their differences, and with big farm bill fights over farm subsidies and domestic food stamps, it's anyone's guess what happens next.

Trade groups are clear in their opposition to local and regional purchasing. In letters to Congress earlier this year 31 agribusiness and shipping groups wrote: "US food aid programmes not only further our humanitarian and security goals by allowing Americans to share their bounty with the needy, but these programmes also provide stable jobs for hundreds of thousands of Americans."

Source: the guardian

Drought affecting millions in Africa's Sahel

Ndjamena -- The Arabic nomads in central Chad always have moved from place to place, following the rains with their camels and cattle. But in that parched stretch of Africa, some nomads have stopped moving, saying the droughts now come too often.

Chad is one of eight countries on the Sahel, a belt of arid land that stretches across Africa below the Sahara Desert. The region has always been prone to drought, but residents and aid workers say this year is the worst they've known.

The situation has prompted the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to launch a global social media campaign to raise awareness about the region's children, who are now in urgent need of food aid.

One of those children is an 18-month-old boy named Goni, who lies in a nutritional center, his hands bandaged so he doesn't pull out the feeding tube that keeps him alive. His mother, Saidi Mohamed, sits next to him in despair.

"This year, I didn't harvest anything. Even the seeds didn't grow. We couldn't even eat the seeds because everything was lost," says Mohamed.

Like others at the center, Mohamed used to depend on money sent by relatives working in Libya -- but when the revolution took place there last year, her family fled and the help disappeared. Now, she can't afford food at the market because the prices have risen so high.

"I have some hope because my child is feeling better," Mohamed said. "When he arrived, he couldn't even open his eyes. (But) when he recovers fully, I will have no other option but to go back to our village."

Across the Sahel, the crops have failed and hunger and malnutrition loom large. UNICEF says more than 10 million people are in danger of starving to death, and that 1 million children are at risk of malnutrition.

Halima Adoum says she had to watch her son die because he didn't have enough to eat. After locusts and droughts destroyed her crops, she wasn't able to pay for food.

Adoum resorted to feeding grass to her 4-year-old son Ahmed, who then died.

"When my son died, I was in shock. I was just in shock," Adoum said.

She said she has nothing for her remaining four children. Her one thought is of getting by.

"Every day, I am just thinking, 'How am I going to get food?' Again and again, 'How am I going to get food? How am I going to get food?'"

The crisis was set in motion last year with a lack of rains and drought, and it has grown worse because the drought has continued, UNICEF officials say.

With less food being grown, people are starting to sell their personal belongings and livestock so they get by in the coming weeks -- but that doesn't take care of their needs long-term, said UNICEF Executive Director Tony Lake, who spoke to CNN on a dry plain in Banda, south of Chad's capital, Ndjamena.

Rising food prices are another problem. And Mali, another country in the Sahel, is coping with thousands of refugees after a military coup there last month.

Lake said it's clear the region is on the threshold of a crisis and that now is the last chance to act.

"If you have an earthquake, or if you have a flood, you don't have much in the way of advance warning -- a little with a flood, none with an earthquake -- so you have to respond as quickly as you can," he said. "Here we know it's coming. Here, there's absolutely no excuse."

UNICEF's campaign, called #SahelNOW, asks users on Facebook, Twitter and other social media to post messages to spread word of the problem and raise funds for affected children.

Read more about the campaign

The fund hopes to raise $120 million to treat and feed the region's children. At this point, UNICEF says it has about $30 million on hand.

In Chad alone, more than 6 million people have been affected by the crisis, with 3.5 million of them younger than 18. An estimated 127,300 children under age 5 are already suffering from severe acute malnutrition, UNICEF says.

The country also has the highest numbers of polio cases in Africa and is dealing with a meningitis outbreak, diseases that could complicate children's needs amid the crisis, the organization says.

Source: CNN