Food trade and food policy in sub-Saharan Africa: old myths and new challenges

Patterns of agricultural trade and policy are changing rapidly. Africa is being squeezed not by formal World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations but through the rearrangement of agricultural subsidies in developed countries, changes in trade preferences and Africa’s inability to participate in setting standards. Africa faces the prospect of paying more for the cereals it imports and earning less from its agricultural exports.

Research from the UK's Institutefor Development Studies reviews the ‘old’ and ‘new’ trade agendas and implicationsfor food policy and food security in Africa. It examinesthe likely effects on three groups of Africa’s agricultural exports:traditional products (such as beverages) that are exported to a relativelyundifferentiated, liberal world market; other traditional exports (such as beefand sugar) exported to markets heavily influenced by agricultural protectionism;and non-traditional products (such as horticulture) exported to marketscharacterised to a greater or lesser extent by protectionism.

Sub-Saharan Africa has becomeincreasingly dependent upon imports. Contrary to popular belief, this is notprimarily a result of food aid – which has formed a relatively small anddeclining share of food imports. A significant part of the foreign exchangeused to pay for imported food comes from agricultural exports. Any change ineither side of the trade equation could affect indirectly the food security ofindividuals and regions.

The sugar market highlights how importers of Africa’sagricultural exports are set to gain increasing bargaining power. Under theEU-ACP Sugar Protocol countries in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group receive a price relatedto the European Union (EU) domestic price. As each beneficiary of the SugarProtocol has a fixed quota, Tate and Lyle, the dominant processor anddistributor, cannot play one country off against another. This will change whenthe sugar trade is liberalised under the EU’s ‘Everything but Arms’ (EBA)initiative – allowing all least developed countries to sell unlimitedquantities of any product except arms to the EU.

Europe’s public health fears andmoves towards more rigorous sanitary and phytosanitarystandards (SPS, on  foodsafety and animal and plant health) also raises new hurdles for Africanfarmers:

• Concerns about pesticide residues are leading Europeansupermarket chains to focus purchasing from larger farms which find it easierto comply with SPS standards.
• SouthernAfrican beef exports could be at risk as the EU reacts to the threat of bovinespongiform encephalopathy (BSE) by ranking countries by perceived degree ofrisk.
• Outbreaksof foot and mouth disease (FMD) in Europe may lead the EU to demand not onlythe long-established practice of keeping disease-carrying buffalo apart from FMD-free cattle but also extensivecertification that small producers would be unable to meet because of the costsinvolved.

Erosion of Africa’s preferential access to Europeanmarkets and rising import costs seem inevitable. There may be little that countriesin sub-Saharan Africa can do other than to negotiate delays to give them more time to adjust.

The authorargues that:

• Standards beingimposed have been influenced by agribusiness technical knowledge to suit theirconvenience.
• Countrieswhere livelihoods and food security are affected by new forms of SPS standard mustbe assisted to participate as equal partners in scientific discussions.
• Higherstandards demanded on the world market and the increased cost of feedingAfricans from imports highlight the need for considerably more support for Africa’s agricultural sector.

Despite the publicity given to ‘reform’ of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy and Doha round of tradenegotiations, we are not about to see anything resembling liberal trade inagriculture. EU ‘liberalisation’ aims to sustain European production but toreshuffle the subsidies and taxes to make them less costly to the Europeanbudget and more easily defensible in the WTO.