FOOD SECURITY IN AFRICA

Outline

1. Causes of Food Security
2. Possible Solutions
3. Food Sovereignty
4. Pillars of Food Sovereignty
5. Characteristics of Africa’s agricultural sector compared to developed countries
6. Challenges Related to Food Crisis Management
7. Challenges Related to Inadequate Food Supply and Limited Marketing
8. Challenges Related to Increasing the Incomes of the Vulnerable
9. International speculation on global markets and its effect on food prices
10. Inadequate steps taken by national governments and international aid to strengthen small farmers
11. Failure of national governments to respect the customary land rights of pastoralists

Causes of Food Insecurity

Food insecurity arises primarily when :

(1)food production is constrained, for example by climatic conditions such as drought or floods;

(2) when there is insufficient production in a particular area to feed the number of dependent population living there; 

(3) when local food prices/imports are very high, which may be due to increases in fuel/transportation costs or to the vagaries of international commodity markets.

(4) Pests, livestock diseases and other agricultural problems- many failed harvests in African and other Third World countries are also caused by pests such as desert locusts.

  Cattle diseases and other agricultural problems such as erosion, soil infertility, etc. also play a role in food insecurity

(5) Cash crops dependence. Many African and Third World governments encourage production of the so-called cash crops, the income from which is used to import food. As a result, countries which depend on cash crops are at high risk of food crisis because they do not produce enough food to feed the population.

(6) Rapid population growth. Poor African and Third World countries have the highest growth rate in the world which puts them at increased risk of food crises. e.g. the population of Niger increased from 2.5 million to 15 million from 1950 to 2010. According to some estimations, Africa will produce enough food for only about a quarter population by 2025 if the current growth rate will continue.

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Challenges Related to Food Crisis Management

•Extreme weather events such as droughts and floods (which are increasing in frequency and impact under global climate change) a range of pests, and communicable human and animal diseases often undermine fragile livelihoods and pose direct threats to food security in Africa.

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   Climate change is likely to create additional challenges and threats to a range of production systems in future. So, too, do a range of disruptions borne of social and political strife, most notably the several civil conflicts raging across the continent.

    Food crises occur when these hazards and disruptions encounter deep-rooted vulnerability.

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Challenges Related to Inadequate Food Supply and Limited Marketing

•Food supply in Africa is inadequate and erratic. African population growth rates are the highest in the world. With low agricultural productivity and rapid population growth, Africa is the only region of the world where per capita food production has fallen over the past 45 years. Cereal yields have stagnated for the past 45 years and currently average less than one ton per hectare.

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   Livestock have always been a key element in African agriculture and household investment. However, livestock production and pastoral livelihoods in Africa face multiple threats related to trans-boundary disease, water shortages and climate change among others related to trade barriers and phytosanitary  (i.e. relating to control of disease in plants more so in agriculture)  issues. Per capita fish consumption in Africa is likely to decline due to population pressure, despite increasing international trade.

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•The value of agricultural output per worker in Africa has stagnated. In 2003, the average African farm worker produced $520 in farm output, compared to $670 in Asia and $4,100 in Latin America. Low on-farm productivity thus translates into low incomes, low purchasing power and lower incentives and capacities for investment in productivity growth. Low agricultural productivity also contributes to high food prices. Low asset endowments of small farmers combine with endemic livestock diseases to limit animal production, productivity and traction.

•Challenges Related to Increasing the Incomes of the Vulnerable

    One of the root causes of food insecurity in developing countries is the inability of people to gain access to food, due to poverty. Even in good years, many households are unable to meet their basic food needs. Over 70 per cent of the poor in Africa live in the rural areas where food insecurity is prevalent.

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   Poverty is closely related to the lack of a steady flow of income. The poor, because of their lack of income and assets, are highly vulnerable and therefore unable to cope with uncertainties such as economic down-turns, health hazards, natural catastrophes and civil conflict.

   

    Vulnerability is further increased by the depletion of productive assets and unsustainable livelihoods.

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   Poor households spend a significant proportion of their household expenditure on food, either by directly purchasing it or by producing it. Where households produce their own food, cash and transport constraints limit people’s ability to purchase farm inputs and market their produce. Increasing prices of farm inputs associated with the supply-side commercial practices on local and sub-regional markets undermine poor farmers’ ability to access the farm inputs for production.

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    Food access by urban dwellers hinges primarily on the household’s ability to purchase food.

     Lack of education frequently limits poor households’ access to the most lucrative farm and non-farm employment opportunities. At the same time, shortage of capital prevents them from investing in transport, mechanical milling and other high return farm or non-farm business opportunities. Instead, the poor depend on low-return unskilled labour activities such as basket making, weaving and casual labour activities.

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International speculation on global markets and its effect on food prices

•In the months leading to the 2008 food crisis, food staples including wheat were allowed to become the objects of dramatically increased speculation on global financial markets . The successive collapses of the “dot com” and US housing market bubbles sent investors looking for new sources of profit in the relatively tiny international food market.

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   The largely unregulated markets of the international financial system allowed the possibility of price manipulation of food staples such as wheat and rice and the creation of new investment tools such as food commodity index funds.

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   These practices aggravated already existing price hikes, sending a windfall of profits to some investors and causing food riots by the hungry in cities affected across the globe. Although the 2008 crisis and the ensuing larger financial crisis has led to some efforts in the United States to regulate markets, and discourage hoarding and price manipulation, these efforts have largely been inadequate, and are not a guarantee that  food price  crisis will be avoided in future.

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   Some price volatility among foodstuffs in certain poor countries is also more related to domestic  policies rather than international markets, but nonetheless, changes on the latter also impact severely  on the poor.

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Absence of a rules-based multilateral trading system that protects and takes into account the special needs of poor and vulnerable countries

•The WTO Doha Development Round, launched in Qatar in 2001, was supposed to put in place a multilateral world trading system that would work towards attaining the Millennium Development Goals of eradicating extreme poverty by ensuring that trade becomes an engine for development of the world’s poor.

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•However, since WTO talks broke down in Cancun in 2003, the Doha Development Round has since not been revived, and this millennium pledge has not been met. WTO rules on agriculture still oblige many poorer member states to compete with wealthier economies by opening their markets to cheap food imports whose production is subsidized by G8 nations, which undermines local production.

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   Poor countries have long argued that they should be allowed to impose a special tariff in these cases, in order to protect local food production, but this proposal has consistently been vehemently opposed by some key members of the WTO, including other G8 countries.

•Inadequate steps taken by national governments and international aid to strengthen small farmers

•A further cause of the current food crisis is the structural adjustment policies imposed by international financial institutions in the 1970s and 1980s that forced governments in the Global South to end investment in agriculture, and instead, has left poor communities to buy food at the mercy of market conditions.

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•State support for local grain storage facilities, farmers’ cooperatives and local farmers’ marketing boards generally ended, while at the same time, the same structural adjustment policies gave fiscal incentives to transnational corporations for large-scale agribusiness operations. These policies left a legacy of serious damage to national food production in many countries of the Global South.

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•Not only do world trade rules currently fail to offer protection of the world’s poorest and most hungry people, but in general, the governments of poor countries have failed to put in place other systems that develop the local economy so that small landholders and pastoralists can have access to their own local markets. Instead, they must currently compete with cheaper goods from abroad, or be dependent on food imports when food prices surge.

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•Governments have also failed to invest in efficient production systems, which provide storage infrastructure, resulting in post harvest waste. Although aid from wealthier countries has in some cases strengthened small farmers, the efforts have largely been inadequate ones, as small farmers are still vulnerable to the slightest external shock, and to the whims of international markets.

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   Supported by international donors, Ethiopia has made some welcome changes with the creation of the Productive Safety Net Program, which delivers cash and/or food transfers to 7-8 million rural Ethiopians for six months every year.

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   Similarly, a pilot program to provide weather-indexed insurance for smallholder farmers has been initiated in Kenya with significant success; unfortunately the program is still not widely implemented.

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Failure of national governments to respect the customary land rights of pastoralists

•All over Africa, different ethnic groups live a pastoralist or nomadic lifestyle, constantly moving and grazing their animals on traditional lands. In most cases, these groups do not have formal title deeds to such lands, which they use on a rotational basis, nor do they have any security of tenure. When pastoralists can have access to lands, they are able to survive by grazing their animals on different lands according to the seasons.

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•However, when pastoralists cannot have access to their traditional lands, their livelihoods are threatened. Such threats are caused by conflict, such as in Somalia and bordering areas where conflict has meant that pastoralists can no longer use lands they once did.

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•Another cause is the sale of pastoralists’ lands by governments to commercial interests, a practice known as “land-grabbing”.

•African governments are putting increasing pressure on pastoralist peoples to abandon their nomadic way of life, and increasingly selling lands periodically used by pastoralists to foreign investors. Government sedentarization policies and land-grabbing are rendering pastoralists even more vulnerable to hunger, since in many cases they no longer have the lands to support their traditional lifestyle.

•Their increased vulnerability has an overall negative effect on food security in the region and is a factor that could put them at risk for future food crises.

Possible solutions

   1. National governments must firstly invest in small-scale agriculture, to allow farmers to produce food to feed their communities.

    They should then take steps to protect small farmers and pastoralists by strengthening their resilience. This can be done by providing access to credit, subsidized weather-indexed insurance systems and ensuring that small farmers have access to markets to sell their produce locally.

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   Programs such as the Ethiopian Productive Safety Net Program are welcome and should be further extended. National governments should also take steps to protect the rights of pastoralist peoples, ensuring that their customary land rights are recognized in national laws.

    2. The international community must put in place a multilateral trading system that takes into account the importance of agriculture in poor and vulnerable countries. As was set out in the Doha Development Round of WTO talks, poor countries must be treated fairly within this system.

   They must be allowed rules tailored to their special needs, such as special agricultural safeguard mechanisms, which protect national agricultural production from surges of low cost food imports, and which allow governments to meet their legal obligations to protect the right to food.

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   3. Wealthy donor countries should work to realise the human right to food, as recognized in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, through the creation of a democratic and legitimate system of global food security governance.

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   One way to do this would be to further strengthen the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS) and to support the development of the CFS Global Strategic Framework that will be put in place to provide the increasingly necessary political framework to guide the global food system.

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•Member states of the CFS, UN agencies and specialised bodies, as well as civil society voices, will be working together to develop the Global Strategic Framework.

    4. Governments must work harder to reform the international financial system by better regulating markets to discourage excessive price volatility of food staples such as wheat on the international trading system. Measures must be taken to ensure that the trading of food staple commodities is carried out transparently to discourage hoarding and speculation.

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   Measures already taken in the US, such as the Dodd-Frank law on financial reform, are welcome ones and these should be encouraged on other commodity exchanges, particularly in Europe and in Asia.

   5. With a view to tackling the rising temperatures driven by global warming and that are predicted to play further havoc with African smallholder farmers’ harvests, the international community should provide funds to the Green Climate Fund and other international climate funds, to be channelled into adaptation projects, particularly targeting smallholder farmers and pastoralists.

•The sustainable practices of both smallholders and pastoralists can actually contribute to more ecological agriculture, and are thus a tool to help mitigate global warming.

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Food Sovereignty

•Food sovereignty is about the right of peoples to define their own food systems. 
In 1996, in Rome, La Via Campesina introduced Food Sovereignty as the right of the world’s peoples to decide upon their own food and farming policies, giving preference to local production and distribution systems - in the hands of peasants and family farmers - that meet the needs of the population.

•Advocates of food sovereignty puts the people who produce, distribute and consume food at the centre of decisions on food systems and policies, rather than the demands of markets and corporations that they believe have come to dominate the global food system. This movement is advocated by a number of farmers, peasants, pastoralists, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, women, rural youth and environmental organizations.

The 6 pillars of food sovereignty:

a) Focuses on food for people: The right to food which is healthy and culturally appropriate is the basic legal demand underpinning food sovereignty. Guaranteeing it requires policies which support diversified food production in each region and country. Food is not simply another commodity to be traded or speculated on for profit.

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b) Values food providers: Many smallholder farmers suffer violence and marginalisation from corporate landowners and governments. People are often pushed off their land by mining concerns or agribusiness. Agricultural workers can face severe exploitation and even bonded labour.

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   Although women produce most of the food in the global south, their role and knowledge are often ignored, and their rights to resources and as workers are violated. Food sovereignty asserts food providers’ right to live and work in dignity.

c) Localises food systems: Food must be seen primarily as sustenance for the community and only secondarily as something to be traded. Under food sovereignty, local and regional provision takes precedence over supplying distant markets, and export-orientated agriculture is rejected. The ‘free trade’ policies which prevent developing countries from protecting their own agriculture, for example through subsidies and tariffs, are also inimical (contrary) to food sovereignty.

d) Puts control locally: Food sovereignty places control over territory, land, grazing, water, seeds, livestock and fish populations on local food providers and respects their rights. They can use and share them in socially and environmentally sustainable ways which conserve diversity. Privatisation of such resources, for example through intellectual property rights regimes or commercial contracts, is explicitly rejected.

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e) Builds knowledge and skills: Technologies, such as genetic engineering, that undermine food providers’ ability to develop and pass on knowledge and skills needed for localised food systems are rejected. Instead, food sovereignty calls for appropriate research systems to support the development of agricultural knowledge and skills.

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f) Works with nature: Food sovereignty requires production and distribution systems that protect natural resources and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, avoiding energy-intensive industrial methods that damage the environment and the health of those that inhabit it.

Characteristics of Africa’s agricultural sector compared to developed countries

1.Agricultural food production

In Africa:

• Overall low productivity due to traditional agricultural practices

• Non-mechanized, rainfed agriculture with little take-up of new technologies and innovations, such as drought-resistant crops

• Insufficient production of marketable subsistence Food

In developed countries:

• Highly mechanized, intensive farming practices with full use of new technologies

• Plentiful production geared to market demands

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2. Transportation/ distribution and communications

• Inadequate connectivity infrastructure between areas of high production and high consumption

• Inaccessible production areas due to poor state of rural roads and incomplete regional roads

In developed countries

• Infrastructure and connectivity meet the demand for rapid availability/transportation of perishable and seasonal products

3. Marketing

In Africa

• Insufficient exchanges between sub-regions with different but complementary agricultural potential

• Excessive increases in the prices of imported commodities from the global market

• Poor economic, logistical and trade infrastructure

In developed countries

• Modern marketing techniques to maintain the balance between supply and demand

• Establishment of reasonable prices for products

4. Processing

In Africa

• Very low industrialization, where the processing of products is generally artisanal

• Low and unreliable electrification

• Storage conditions poorly suited to urban consumption patterns

In developed countries

• Industrialization of finished goods available for the growing urban consumption

• Reliable electricity supply

• Modern storage conditions to preserve perishable Goods

5. Storage

In Africa

• Insufficient or poor food stock reserves

• Inappropriate storage structures

In developed countries

• Item stocks are sustainable and consistent with health requirements

Summary

In Africa

• High agricultural production capacity oriented to cash crops

• High imports of basic foodstuffs with no control over prices in most countries

• Low purchasing power of urban consumers

• Weak commercial linkages between national or regional geographic complementary areas

In developed world

• High food subsistence production

• Good linkages in infrastructure and modern technology

• Easy access to the consumption of diversified food products

• Better coordination of commercial exchange

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