Africa's food crisis: when African leaders met in July at Sirte in Libya for the 13th ordinary session of the African union summit, there were important political discussions, notably concerning regional integration, but the need for Africa to increase agricultural output was the overriding theme - and these two issues are clearly related. Stephen Williams reports.

Three reports published just before African leaders met at the African Union (AU) Heads of State and Government summit in Libya in July, have all underscored the need for African governments to invest more in agriculture. At stake are hugely positive multiplier effects on other key economic sectors--and saving the continent's annual $33bn food import bill so that this huge sum can be applied to further investment in agricultural capacity and social spending.

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Regional integration has an important role in these aspirations. New pan-African transport corridors hold out the promise that even if just part of Africa's potential agricultural output can be realised, valuable export markets can be supplied. With more efficient transport corridors, some of the estimated 40% of Africa's agro-output that goes to waste might instead reach consumers and realise its value.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) prepared one of these three new reports specifically for the AU leaders. Investing in Agriculture for Economic Growth and Food Security begins by gathering together the relevant statistics that illustrate the crucial role of agriculture in African economies--out of the world's 40 most agriculture-dependent countries, 30 are located in Africa. Furthermore, outside of South Africa, more than 60% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are rural and some 80% of Africa's poorest people live in rural areas. In these countries, primary agriculture is a source for two thirds of rural incomes while the majority of the remaining income is generated by activities that the report describes are "loosely linked to and supporting the agricultural sector".

However, Africa's agricultural output has posted relatively slow growth over the last few decades, although it did show some improvement during the first half of the current decade. Agri-output has lagged behind Africa's total population growth, as the number of people in the continent rose from 280m in 1960 to 922m in 2005.

Africa's population is forecast to hit the one-billion mark by 2015, l.5bn by 2030 and 2bn by 2050. The FAO makes clear that the challenge facing African agriculture in the years ahead is to "sustain the momentum of the decade before 2005 in the face of climate change, rising import prices, the international financial crisis and the economic downturn in developed and some emerging markets".

The bottom line is that Africa will need adequate food supplies for 18m additional people each year and to improve the nutrition status of the 94m currently undernourished if it is to meet its Millennium Development Goal by 2015. This is the equivalent of achieving a 4.6% growth in food supplies.

Food imports rise, exports fall

The situation today is that nearly all African countries are net food importers. In North African countries, imports meet over half of the region's food requirements while in SSA they account for between 25% and 50%. This food-import dependency is a relatively recent phenomenon, having grown over the last half century as agri-output failed to keep pace with population growth, and low-cost food supplies from world markets, especially wheat and rice, supplanted local produce in urban centres.

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Indeed, although the FAO does not use the term, it would be justified to describe the inflows of low-cost food supplies from world markets as little more than the dumping of heavily subsidised food crops onto African markets. The FAO's report to the AU Heads of State indicates that currently, on average, Africa imports some 30% of its food grain needs, or 50m tons, valued at some $11bn. Most of this is imported commercially but some 2-3m tons is imported as food aid (see box). Africa is also especially dependent on overseas sugar: it imports 7.5m tons, as well as pulses and meat, each accounting for 1.4m tons of imports.

Meanwhile, the FAO states that over the last 40 years, Africa's traditional agricultural exports (such as cotton, rubber and bananas) have been stagnant or have declined (as is the case with coffee, palm kernels and groundnuts) as competitors from other developing countries--such as Vietnam, in the case of coffee--have rapidly increased ouput. Even where the FAO's figures indicate that exports of crops such as cocoa and cashew have, respectively, doubled and trebled in the last 40 years, they have lost historically dominant positions in world markets.

Nevertheless, there have been some relative food-export success stories in a limited number of countries, exporting crops such as tea, tropical fruit and citrus from Northern and South Africa, and out-of-northern hemisphere-season vegetables (see Food Air Miles box). And a few countries have been singled out for having made "remarkable progress in agricultural growth and poverty reduction". These countries include Ethiopia, Sudan, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda and Mozambique, but this progress from a pan-African viewpoint is counterbalanced by much poorer performances in other countries such as DR Congo, where more than three quarters of the population are considered undernourished, pulling the average performance of the continent heavily downwards.

Indeed, the FAO states that SSA's share of world agricultural exports has dropped from 3.8% to 1.6% since 1965, its net trade in agricultural commodities moving from an annual surplus of $2bn in 1961 (valued at $14bn in 2007 terms) to a deficit of $22bn in 2006.

Food prices still high

These statistics must have sent a shiver up the collective spines of the continent's leaders, confirming that Africa's growing food-import dependency has exposed its vulnerability to volatile world markets. Meanwhile, uncertain food aid availability for the poorest segments of the population makes achieving the MDG target of halving the proportion of hungry people look increasingly difficult to meet.

Food prices in many African countries are substantially higher than a year ago. The FAO cites three examples--in Malawi, rice is selling for $1.50/kg, almost double its price a year ago, and in Zambia and Kenya the maize price is up by more than 40%. It explains that a number of factors, including poor harvests last year and a lack of trade finance for agricultural inputs, have created shortages and higher prices.

The FAO cautions that if Africa was to simply address its food security problem by expanding production into new areas, but remaining at the current level of labour and land productivity, it will not improve matters, as any gains made in production growth will be at the expense of the environment and agricultural long-term growth. It calls for increased land and labour productivity. In SSA, these currently lag far behind other developing regions.

Illustrating this point, the FAO says that the best estimate value added for each hectare of agricultural land and each worker in SSA is $428 and $466 respectively--compared with estimates of $2,457 and $767 in East Asia and $767 and $495 in South Asia. Cereal yields are twice as high as SSA's in South Asia and 2.5 times as high in East Asia.

After considering the various resolutions relating to agriculture development adopted in this decade by African leaders, notably Nepad's CAADAP initiative, the FAO's report to the AU Heads addresses at length the issue of climate change. Climate change is likely to express itself through a higher frequency of weather extremes, higher temperatures and rising sea levels, and the FAO report says "the forecast for Africa is increased droughts outside, and more rainfall and flooding within, the tropical belt ... Increased efforts are needed [in most agricultural regions] to make agriculture more resilient to the vagaries of weather through higher investments in irrigation, water management and storage, drainage and flood control."

Africa's sleeping giant 

Earlier work by the FAO in 2002 identified the cereal-root crops mixed-farming system of the dry sub-humid Guinea savannah zone, as a new frontier for future agriculture development--if the effects of climate change could be mitigated.

This suggestion is the focus of the second of the three reports available to African leaders. Although not specifically written for the AU summit, its notably upbeat tone puts forward an argument that a vast stretch of African savannah land that spreads across 25 countries (again illustrating the need for Africa's regional integration) has the potential to turn several African nations into global players in bulk commodity production.

It will take more than just an expansion into previously uncultivated land, but at the moment, only 10% of the Guinea savannah zone, a vast area of around 600m hectares of land stretching from Senegal to South Africa with 400m hectares suitable for farming, is actually cropped.

The report, published in June, was prepared by the FAO and World Bank and abridged from a forthcoming book titled Awakening Africa's Sleeping Giant--Prospects for Commercial Agriculture in the Guinea Savannah Zone and Beyond to be published by the World Bank. Based on detailed case studies carried out on three continents--in Africa in Nigeria, Tanzania and Madagascar--the book concludes that opportunities abound for Africa's farmers to compete effectively in regional and global markets by producing cassava, cotton, maize, soya beans, rice and sugar in a vaste swathe of potential fertile land that runs from the coasts of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Senegal eastwards to the Ethiopian border, then veers southeast to cover parts of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and the DR Congo before spreading across the continent over large areas of Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and western Madagascar.

By comparing this huge region with northeast Thailand and the Cerrado region of Brazil, it reaches the conclusion that Africa is better placed today to achieve rapid development in agriculture than either of these two regions were when their agricultural transformation took off in 1980.

Interestingly, despite the huge areas involved, large-scale commercial farming is not being envisaged by the book's research. "Commercial agriculture in Africa can and should involve smallholders to maximise growth and spread benefits widely," says Michael Morris, Lead Agricultural Economist with the World Bank in Madagascar. "Large-scale mechanised production does not offer any obvious cost advantages, except under certain very specific circumstances and is far more likely to lead to social conflict," he argues. But the report does say that the emerging pattern of commercial agriculture in the African Guinea savannah must provide diversification opportunities for smallholder producers of staple crops, and that while changing the use of the Guinea savannah to agriculture will inevitably bring some environmental costs, it finds that agriculture can also benefit the environment.

"Commercialisation of agriculture through intensification can reduce environmental damage by slowing the spread of agriculture into fragile and/or environmentally valuable lands," says Morris in describing the balance of the environmental impact. "However, intensification brings with it risks of environmental damage through destruction of vulnerable ecosystems and the excessive use of fertilisers and pesticides."

Africa's apparent slow start in developing a modern, efficient agricultural sector does actually carry some benefits. "There is a wealth of experience from other countries on which to draw," says Guy Evers, Africa Service Chief in the FAO Investment Centre, highlighting that "providing secure and transferable land rights will be critical to protect the interests of local populations."

This view echoes the report's conclusions that governments must help entrepreneurial farmers acquire unused land in areas of low population density, and provide incentives to invest in increasing productivity. Successful commercialisation of agriculture will also depend on well-functioning markets.

Institutions and equitable enforcement structures should also be set up to help small- scale farmers access land and engage profitably in commercial agriculture but "a key challenge is knowing when the state should step aside", the report cautions.

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The third report is again the work of the FAO, this time collaborating with the OECD to author a global outlook of the agricultural sector. Two of the most salient points the FAO/OECD's Agricultural Outlook makes is that, based on population and income projections, global food production needs to increase by more than 40% by 2030 and 70% by 2050, compared to average 2005-07 levels. There is substantial additional land available for agricultural use, the report concludes, as some 1,560m hectares could be added to the current 1.4bn hectares of croplands currently under cultivation. Much of the additionally available land is found in Africa and most of it is suitable for rain-fed crop production.

But historical expansion of arable land has been slow, and bringing more marginal land into production can involve considerable investment and lower average yields, while possibly incurring social and environmental costs, the FAO/OECD Outlook warns. Nevertheless, Africa's potential green revolution, if realised, would make the continent one of the world's principal breadbaskets, feeding not only its own peoples but much of the world's. The FAO suggests that all the elements are in place, and in another important development, the July G8 Summit in L'Aquila, Italy pledged $20bn to assist the world's poorest farmers to build global food security.

Many NGOs gave this development a cautious welcome, mindful that previous pledges by the G8, notable at Gleaneagles when Africa was promised $50bn in development aid, have yet to be met. But this scepticism was recognised by a summit statement that read: "Commitments to increase overseas development aid must be fulfilled. The tendency to decrease ODA and national financing to agriculture must be reversed."

Speaking in Italy, US President Barack Obama promised the G8's $20bn funding, over three years, would be "in addition to the emergency humanitarian aid that we provide".

But Obama added the caveat that "countries in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere in the world that are suffering from extreme poverty have an obligation to use the assistance that is available in a way that is transparent, accountable and that builds on rule of law and other institutional reforms that will allow long-term improvement".

RELATED ARTICLE: WFP buys more food aid from Africa

The World Food Programme (WFP) has released figures that show that it spent $2.21bn on food aid for Africa in 2008 out of a worldwide total direct expenditure of $3.54bn. The WFP is active in 40 countries in Africa and has assisted 53m people to survive food crises, rebuild their communities after disasters, as well as attain food security, an education and improved nutritional status.

The figures also reveal that the WFP is increasingly purchasing food aid within Africa and for the last four years, it has made the majority of its food purchases on the continent, last year amounting to $427.1m. South Africa, Uganda, Sudan and Ethiopia are among the top 15 WFP food-purchasing countries, accounting for $283.6m of the WFP's expenditure.

2008 WFP food purchases by commodity

Commodity      Metric tonne (worldwide)  Metric tonnes (Africa)

Wheat                 611,553                   0
Maize                 610,976                   566,066
Rice                  433,262                   3,205
Blended food          332,580                   130,649
Pulses                236,009                   90,201
Wheat flour           125,246                   762
Sorghum               123,191                   99,750
Maize meal            114,445                   101,702
Vegetable oil         108,121                   6,722
Other                 61,012                   22,663
Sugar                 58,273                   2,536
Total                 2,824,667                1,024,255
% in Africa                                     36%
Source: WFP

RELATED ARTICLE: Food Air Miles

Kenya's flying vegetables

The latest Africa Research Institute Policy Voices document examines the position of smallholder farmers in Kenya and, amongst other matters, the food miles debate. Flowers, fruit and vegetables from Africa occupy a small place on the shelves of European supermarkets, but among rural populations in Africa, the livelihoods of many thousands of smallholder farmers and their families have been transformed by their hard-won stake in an emerging global trade.

Writing in this report, Dr Stephen Mbithi, chief executive of the Fresh Produce Exporters Association of Kenya (FPEAK) describes how horticulture has become the largest sector in the Kenyan economy--larger than tourism, tea and coffee--generating annual revenues of $2bn with around 240 large-scale producers and roughly 150,000 smallholder farmers. The sector employs 1.5m labourers and supports up to 4.5m dependents.

Smallholders now produce 60% of Kenya's exported fruit and vegetables, but even if Kenya's horticulture farmers are able to respond to market developments by planting the most profitable crops, they would still have problems adapting to the UK's Soil Association plan to review its organic certification for all airfreighted agricultural products sold in the UK.

Although the plan was subsequently retracted, Mark Ashurst, the director of the Africa Research Institute, writes that "suspicion lingers that environmentalism was deployed as a rhetorical Trojan Horse by European farmers--a means to attack more-competitive producers in Africa under cover of a seemingly credible concern for the planet".

He points out that fresh products are invariably flown in the holds of passenger planes carrying tourists home from their East Africa holidays, and that even if UK consumers were persuaded to stop buying imported flowers, fruit and vegetables, this would not reduce the carbon footprint of European tourists flying to Africa's mountains, beaches and safaris. Crops that are seasonal in Europe grow naturally all year round in Africa and are generally cultvated without the use of tractors or expensively heated greenhouses.