Food Crisis: African Particularities in a Global Crisis
blurb:isstoday:06062008food
6 June 2008: Food Crisis: African Particularities in a Global Crisis
The current skyrocketing cost of food has generated a crisis that is now receiving top priority at global summits. At this week’s United Nations Food Summit in Rome the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) launched a $17 million emergency programme for poor countries to give small farmers seed, fertiliser and other tools to boost production during the 2009 season. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon also called for a 50% increase in food production by 2030. Immediate solutions to the food crisis suggested at this and other recent international meetings also include: to have a global food fund; new guidelines for bio fuels cultivation and lowering trade barriers for poor countries to export their produce.
It has become overwhelmingly clear that the biggest losers in this crisis are Sub-Saharan African countries, while the main food exporters are set to gain the most. For Africa, the solutions suggested so far can however only work on the short term.
Globally, the food crisis was generated by many factors, the most well known being the high price of oil. Major world grain producers like Australia, the US and parts of Asia also experienced seasonal drought this year. Adding to this, the increasing demand for maize in the production of bio-fuel shifted the production from food for people, to food for cars.
Furthermore, there has been a change in the diet of a
rapidly-expanding middle-class in the Asian countries
(China and India) where people now show a higher preference for meat.
The skyrocketing of food prices is not only due to food scarcity, but is also the result of financial speculation caused by the global credit crunch.
The consequences of the food crisis on a global level vary greatly depending on the level of income of each country. As the South African Central Bank Governor Tito Mboweni puts it, middle-class people need to decide between ‘buying filet or chicken wings’. For an increasing majority of people, that is not an option. They simply don’t have food to eat.
Attention needs to be drawn to what is ‘new’ about the ‘new’ food
crisis in Africa, specifically in Sub-Saharan Africa. The answer is
one of degree rather than newness.
To a lesser or greater extent Africa has over the past few decades substituted an agriculture-based economy for non- agriculture based industrialization. It pumped money into the secondary and tertiary sectors at the expense of the agricultural
sector. The rent-seeking nature of most of Africa’s economies has meant that its revenue base has relied on shares from foreign investment deals.
These types of economies do not generate sufficient employment and create wide gaps in the distribution of income among citizens. Neither have they invested sufficiently in the agricultural sector to ensure that they are able to feed their populace, preferring to import food.
Food imports were indeed cheaper than those produced by local farmers for developing countries. But the tide has turned, placing food out of reach for many ordinary Africans.
Had the current global crisis not happened, developing countries were bound to have a crisis anyway: a neglected agricultural sector, a failing industrial sector and a huge problem of unskilled labour unable to shift to the tertiary sector has to impact the economy negatively sooner or later.
As prices increase, more and more income will be used to purchase food, leaving less and less for savings and future investment.
Meanwhile international summits, awareness raising concerts, marches and workshops have made headlines. However, flawed trade agreements, the unfair practices of farm subsidies, closed markets to poor countries and product dumping, have received little attention.
As the world reacts to the food crisis, idle land will eventually be
used, farmers will produce more to take advantage of high prices and the situation could go back to ‘normal’ as early as next year’s harvest season.
It is clear that Africa needs to find context-specific solutions to
the crisis. Should production rise, the cost
will still be high for ordinary Africans to afford food, considering
that the cost of production will not go down. Therefore African issues need immediate attention and different solutions from those suggested at world summits.
Firstly, there is an urgent need for countries to change their development paths -from a rent-seeking economy to sustainable and profitable industries.
Secondly, the agricultural sector needs to be revitalized. Women, who have been primarily responsible for the agricultural sector, have been neglected: they have little help and no investment is made in skills and infrastructure.
This will have to change. More work needs to be done to shift the division of labour and governments need to allocate more resources to the agricultural sector by educating, encouraging and rewarding farmers, as well as searching for better deals in national and international markets.
Lastly and most importantly, the developed world needs to work towards fairer practices and opening of spaces for the developing world.
The food crisis has once again highlighted the very serious contradictions plaguing the current world economy.
Inamahoro Claudine, Peace and Security Fellow at King’s College London, Intern, Security Sector Governance Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)
