A half-decade after the devastating drought of 1991-92 in Southern Africa, meteorologists tracking another appearance of the El Niño weather phenomenon -- a strong predictor of scarce rains in the region -- are warning that a new drought is likely toward the end of this year. But in facing such a threat, Southern Africa today is a changed region, with greater agricultural capacities and different strategies for staving off famine.
To begin with, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is a larger and more diverse regional grouping than during the previous drought. It now includes post-apartheid South Africa -- a large grain producer and sophisticated trader -- as well as tiny Mauritius, a relatively affluent net food importer.
Peace in Mozambique and the absence of war in Angola mean better harvests and reduced food aid, at least in years of good rainfall. For the first time since independence, Mozambique in 1996/97 grew enough maize -- 1,043 mn tonnes -- for its own needs. Angola, however, still faces a cereal deficit of more than 530 mn tonnes, according to estimates by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
But the greatest change in Southern Africa is market liberalization. The region is in transition from a highly regulated grain marketing system. Consequently, the concepts and strategies for food security are under review, while liberalization itself has had contradictory effects on Southern Africa's millions of food producers.
Previously, governments in Southern Africa, through their grain parastatals, controlled maize prices, imports and exports, duties, licences and foreign exchange. Consumer prices generally were kept artificially low. Efforts to stimulate production came in the form of subsidies to producers (cheap fertilizer, pesticides, seeds) and to parastatals (transport and storage).
These policies proved too expensive to be sustainable in the long-term. In the 1990s, with the increasing prevalence of structural adjustment programmes, to which liberalization is central, governments have been allowing the private sector and market forces into this highly sensitive area. However, the pace of change has differed from country to country, and so have the effects.
In South Africa, where the Maize Board no longer fixes domestic prices nor controls either imports or exports, a large and sophisticated private marketing system took over smoothly.
At the other end of the spectrum, Zambia moved earlier and further than any other SADC country in its grain marketing reforms -- but with catastrophic effect. In 1992, the parastatal maize marketing agency was abolished, prices left to the market and government subsidies removed. Change was unavoidable for the nearly bankrupt government, but the shock was too great. A vacuum was created that the private sector could not fill, due to a variety of reasons (tight credit, high interest rates, high debt levels, low liquidity, a poor transport network, lack of information and unclear government policies). The result was market collapse.
Zambian food losses were minimized only because 1992 was a drought year, with a much smaller crop to market and with external food aid helping to bridge the gap. After the initial shock, a private grain trade is slowly maturing but still faces many hurdles.
Zimbabwe has liberalized the domestic marketing of maize, but the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) still controls exports and imports of white maize, except for food aid contracts. Saddled with a large government debt, conflicting mandates and political pressures, the GMB lacks direction. A recent editorial in the government-owned Zimbabwe Herald said: "The government wants to keep the GMB as a parastatal because of its strategic importance, [but] maize marketing is crying out for large independent buyers prepared to compete with each other on price and service."
Although prices to farmers remained static, consumer prices went down.
Following the removal of marketing regulations, small-scale mills mushroomed.
People bought whole grain, took it to be milled, and got cheaper mealie-meal,
Zimbabwe's staple food.
Photo: World Bank
Malawi is at a much earlier stage of change. The parastatal Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (ADMARC) now only buys residual amounts, reselling them when needed to keep prices low. But ADMARC's financial constraints are hurting its storage and transport services, thus opening the door to private trade. In 1995, for the first time, Malawi filled its strategic grain reserve through a tender, which was won by ADMARC but in competition with other bidders.
In Mozambique, the Cereal Marketing Board previously tried setting a floor price, but for this year's crop it has liberalized prices. However, its lack of cash, coupled with a marketing system ruined by civil war, means that farmers in the remote maize-surplus northern provinces have sold at lower prices -- if and when a buyer appears.
One common argument for liberalization has been that freeing prices and providing greater market incentives will encourage farmers to grow more. So has liberalization boosted food production? "There is not enough evidence, not enough time to say," answers Mr. Caesar Chidawanyika, senior programme officer with the World Bank.
Liberalization will likely change crop patterns, as farmers shift their production in response to market signals. The SADC food security unit sees cereal production moving northwards towards better rainfed areas in Zambia, Mozambique and northern Zimbabwe. However, transport infrastructure there is poor and will require substantial investment and improvements. Zambia's northern farmers, whose low-value maize often rots for lack of transport, may switch to high-value crops like tobacco, sunflower and groundnuts, which are more profitable for traders and truckers.
In Zimbabwe, many smallholders are switching from food crops to cotton and tobacco. Paprika, for example, fetches Z$2,500 a tonne, while maize brings only Z$1,200 a tonne.
Beyond the impact of market forces, variable rainfall also means that rainfed maize production is becoming unviable in parts of Southern Africa. One answer is crop diversification. Drier regions would be better suited for growing drought-resistant crops like sorghum and millet. But change is not easy. "You talk to many officials at ministries of agriculture about food," says Mr. Roger Buckland of the SADC food security unit, "and the first thing they think of is a corn cob."
Has liberalization helped smallholders, who grow the bulk of the region's food? "It has widened choices of markets, but has disadvantaged small-scale farmers," says Mr. Chidawanyika. He adds, however, that this is "a transitory phase."
Larger-scale commercial farmers can
play the new game well. They have access to markets, information and credit,
while smallholders do not. Moreover, relatively few small farmers are surplus
producers, and only those able to market surpluses have benefitted from
improved producer prices. Meanwhile, as they adjust to the loss of state
subsidies, poorer farming households remain vulnerable to the higher costs
of agricultural inputs and increased user charges for social services.
Even for those who can market small surpluses, prices are not always favourable. "Sometimes, when private traders are monopsonists [sole buyers], they push prices down," says Mr. Chris Eldridge of the Save the Children Fund (SCF), a non-governmental organization (NGO) active in the region. According to Mr. Eldridge, "The net result [of liberalization] has been, for many rural producers in Southern Africa, a combination of both state failure and market failure."
Even for proponents of market liberalization, the state has a continuing role to play. In the initial stages of market liberalization, they argue, governments should act as facilitators, providing coherent policies and messages and a stable economic environment.
For Mr. Chidawanyika, the state should monitor food stocks; create an environment that motivates producers; abolish regulations that discourage private trading, such as price controls; discourage monopolies, since market success depends on bringing in as many players as possible; and enforce rules on plant and animal health. In addition, and not least important, governments should service those areas where it is not profitable for the private sector to operate.
According to Mr. Mark Smulders, FAO food security expert, government agricultural extension agencies also can provide clear and updated messages "to help smallholders cope with transition" to the new realities of agricultural markets.
An effective government role is especially important in remote regions and for the poorest sectors of society. Successive droughts in the 1990s, combined with structural adjustment and the AIDS pandemic, have eroded the capacity of many rural households to recover. "Poverty exists; drought accelerates it," says Mr. Reginald Mugwara, SADC food security sector coordinator.
Since private companies operate for profit, the provision of safety nets is left to the state. Governments, squeezed by tight budgets, in turn often bounce the ball back to NGOs. A regional study on food security by the Save the Children Fund stresses that 80 per cent of any successful effort in preventing a drought from turning into famine lies with villagers themselves. But their efforts are invisible compared to those of aid agencies.
To be more effective, any intervention by governments and donor organizations "must understand rural people's response and efforts," says Mr. Eldridge, who coordinated the SCF study.
**Box 1**
The working definition of "food security" has been shifting in recent years, from referring almost exclusively to the amount of food physically available in-country, to now also encompassing people's access to food. "The access side of the coin means that household coping strategies, income generation and safety nets are much more on the agenda," says Mr. Roger Buckland of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) food security unit.
This has led to a major change in concerns about strategic grain reserves (SGRs). In the 1980s, countries felt safe only when they held in their silos enough maize for a year's consumption. But storing maize is expensive (one estimate puts it at $62 a tonne per year). Also, today's earlier weather forecasts allow for better planning, making it less necessary for governments to have large stocks. For example, in July, when the first warnings of another drought were issued, South African and Zimbabwean traders began scouting world markets for cheap maize.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Bank recommend an SGR covering three or four months' consumption, coupled with a cash reserve to import food. By August, Zambia held an SGR of 130,000 tonnes; Mozambique and Tanzania, 50,000 tonnes each. The smaller countries, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, have scarcely any reserves at all; in the words of one food security expert, "if in need, they pick up the phone and place an order in South Africa." However, landlocked Zimbabwe and Malawi, where food shipments take up to three months to arrive from coastal ports, prefer to hold on to larger stocks (180,000 tonnes for Malawi; a minimum of 500,000 tonnes, going up to 930,000 tonnes for Zimbabwe).
In July, SADC ministers of food, agriculture and natural resources agreed that the existing regional food reserve scheme should be transformed into a financial facility. This follows the shift from national self-sufficiency to a trade-based regional approach. The Trade Protocol signed by SADC countries in 1996 makes food movements among countries nominally easier. But trade is still hampered by protective tariffs and complicated border and customs regulations. "We need bold decisions: free flow of people and goods among SADC countries," says Mr. Reginald Mugwara, SADC food security sector coordinator.
Today, food commodities appear on the region's young commodity exchanges. Grain prices are quoted on Zimbabwe's television evening news. But, to date, liberalization has been more of an internal process. "It is too early to see signs of greater inter-regional trade," says Mr. Caesar Chidawanyika of the World Bank.
To boost trade, experts argue, public and private investment is needed for roads, railways, storage and training of traders to improve the marketing chain. The region's transport network is not yet geared to low-value, high-volume food staples.
Tough plant and animal health standards and controls also must be enforced so pests do not spread through the SADC region. There is a bad precedent: one uninspected food aid shipment from Tanzania to Zambia introduced the dreaded larger grain borer. This bug, now firmly established in southern Zambia and northern Zimbabwe, can reduce yields by up to 40 per cent.
Severe trade imbalances and an unequal trading environment cause problems within the region. South Africa, for example, gives incentives to its agricultural exporters, making it harder for producers in other countries to compete. Meanwhile, SADC grain trade patterns are highly variable, going from large maize surpluses to large deficits when drought hits.
Commercial traders, food security experts and aid agencies agree on one thing: market transparency and coherent government policies are essential. "Politicians try to sidetrack market liberalization to look after their own constituencies, but governments need to stick to decisions," says Mr. Mark Smulders, an FAO food security expert. "Better governance goes hand-in-hand with market liberalization."
**Box 2**
Among the top priorities for economic development in Africa is "the transformation of African agriculture through research and technology transfer," says Professor Maurice Onanga, Chairman of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), established in February 1997 by Africa's main subregional agricultural research institutes. But breakthroughs in agricultural research are lagging far behind the continent's need to ensure increased production and food security. According to estimates by the UN Conference on Trade and Development, public investment in agricultural research and extension services in sub-Saharan Africa has generally been less than 1 per cent of agricultural GDP, compared with more than 2 per cent in the faster-growing Asian countries, where "green revolution" innovations did much to boost average farm output.
Beyond resources, another problem facing research in Africa is developing new seed varieties and technologies adapted to very specific local conditions, which are more difficult and highly varied than in Asia. This requires not only strengthening national research institutions, but also increasing the direct involvement of farmers' organizations, the private sector, non-governmental organizations and other users of new agricultural technologies.
Promoting increased funding and more appropriate research have been key goals of the Special Programme for African Agricultural Research (SPAAR), a coalition of donor institutions and research organizations based at World Bank headquarters in Washington. Although SPAAR has been seeking to increase African participation since 1995, and its February 1997 plenary session in Mali for the first time included a sizeable number of farmers, Prof. Onanga noted that "there is still a perception that [SPAAR] is a coalition of stakeholders largely dominated by donors."
FARA was launched during the plenary to enhance the leadership role of African agricultural research institutes, both in setting their own research agendas and in coordinating their approaches to donor institutions. Mr. Jean-Louis Sarbib, World Bank Vice-President for Western and Central Africa and the current Chairman of SPAAR, supported this initiative. FARA's establishment, he said, was "a major step forward in the effort to regionalize African agricultural research and to ensure that the responsibility for setting the research agenda would be in African hands."
