SPECIAL REPORT :Food security challenges in West Africa: A focus on agriculture Availability of food as well as one’s unfettered access to it is often taken for granted. But the lives and livelihoods of millions can come under threat when that privilege is absent. Over the past seven years, populations across the world have faced various degrees of food shortages, some with very damning humanitarian consequences. According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, food security can be said to exist when “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”.[1] The term “food security’ therefore refers to food sufficiency, marked by the freedom from hunger and fear of starvation. There are four major dimensions of food security: availability of food, access to food, adequate utilisation of food, and stability of food supplies at all times.[2] In most West African countries, food security is best understood in terms of agricultural productivity, because agriculture maintains an intricate dominance in the region’s economy. Local food production and animal husbandry account for much of the daily food and nutrition needs of West Africans and is the major employment and income generating activity for the rural poor.[3] In terms of agricultural produce distribution and marketing, local agricultural activity connects communities and people into complex local, trans-national and regional food value chains, through which food access and availability is guaranteed across West Africa and beyond. Agriculture for the region is therefore a very important factor of socio-economic existence, which if distorted in any way, could compromise food supplies to millions. Ironically, however, persistent food shortage arising from constraints on agriculture is exposing many West Africans to threats of extreme hunger and starvation, with adverse effects on rural livelihoods. Chief among the factors that constrain agriculture in West Africa are stability challenges, which include conflicts and political instability. Conflicts in West Africa have often led to complex humanitarian crises that are complicit in incidences of cyclical famine, hunger and malnutrition. For instance, conflict in Liberia and Sierra Leone during the 1990s left the two countries with very low levels of agricultural productivity during the same period when Ghana’s stability guaranteed it one of the highest levels of food security in Africa.[4] More recently, the Boko Haram insurgency in northern Nigeria, ethno-religious conflicts in Central Nigeria as well as resource conflicts related to oil exploitation and environmental degradation in the Niger Delta, have negatively affected the availability and affordability of food. Many rural farmers have been displaced while others restricted from going to their farms because of security checks and the militaristic counterterrorism approach of the government. Also, since fighting in northern Mali began in January 2012, over 350,000 people have migrated to safer areas in the south of the country, as well as to outlying areas of Algeria, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mauritania, Guinea and Togo. Aside the effects that this has on agricultural production, trade routes to markets in the north of Mali have also been disrupted while humanitarian activities were greatly hampered through 2012 and the first semester of 2013. This naturally translates to higher prices and unavailability of critical food stuffs.[5] Another dimension of food insecurity may come up around the issue of land grabs. The Liberian government is currently struggling to address accusations of complicity in land grabs, emanating from some land deals which it entered in to with multinational companies to develop large oil palm plantations in the west of the country. This is generally a threat to the livelihoods of Liberia’s poor rural smallholder farmers, majority of which are women.[i] Climate change also poses threats to agriculture in West Africa. For example, in 2012, it was reported that, for the third year in less than a decade, poor rainfall and high food prices placed millions of people in the Sahel at the risk of extreme hunger[6], while flooding between June and November 2012 displaced over 6.5 million people in 6 West African countries, with Nigeria bearing over 90% of the weight.[7] What is more is that weather shocks have become more frequent and less predictable in recent times further deepening the vulnerability of populations to food insecurity. Little wonder, Mali’s Ministry of Agriculture reported a 40% fall in cereal production in 2012 as a result of flooding and irregular rainfall, which limited the availability of Bourgou, a local supplementary food forage for lean seasons.[8] The effects of weather shocks and climate variability in the West African Sahel are cyclical and very complex. A recent food security trends analysis on Niger by the World Food Program (WFP) found that two years after the 2009 food crisis, several families have not been able to recover despite above average crop yields in 2010. Such cyclical poverty causes a lot of the people to embrace negative coping mechanisms, especially “distress migration” that forces them to go out in search of better economic opportunities. As a field report by Refugees International claims, many poor food insecure families (including children of about 12 years) in Burkina Faso go on to secure work in the gold mines, while in Niger, most of the distress migrants usually move from rural areas to the cities in search of trading opportunities.[9] Pests and disease also cause serious damage to crop yields across West Africa. Between 2003 and 2005 desert swarms of locust attacked and seriously damaged farmlands, causing severe food shortages in up to 24 countries with Niger at the epicentre. By June 2012, there existed a threat of their return with hundreds of thousand hectares of farmland under threat in Niger and Mali, with Nigeria also coming on the danger list this time around.[10] Addressing these challenges holds great promise for viable solutions to ending hunger, malnutrition and under-nutrition in West Africa, majority of whose countries are positioned at the lowest rungs of the World Food Security Index of 2013.[11] In the short- to medium-term, governments, international humanitarian NGOs and other stakeholders are focusing on addressing immediate food shortages and scarcity challenges through food distribution and refugee management programs that help to strengthen resilience and stability for communities. For example, between 2011 and 2012, Oxfam International launched an emergency response programme in the north of Mali targeted at increasing access to food and protecting livelihoods for 59,000 vulnerable people through cash transfers, ‘cash for work’ programmes, food distribution, and improving access to animal fodder for families who depend on rearing livestock.[12] In the long term, more coordinated planning approaches are being employed. Here, West Africa is considered as the pioneering region in terms of implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Plan (CAADP), as many of the member states are at more advanced stages of upgrading their agricultural policies.[13] In fact, CAADP’s four main pillars – improving land and water management, increasing market access, addressing food supply chain issues and investing in agricultural research – naturally tie in with the objectives of the ECOWAS Agricultural Development Policy (ECOWAP).[14] Also, the Global Alliance for Resilience Initiative (AGRI, a multilateral initiative towards accelerating West Africa’s food and nutrition security by facilitating the development of “shared visions” in helping communities to build resilience. Policy leadership for the AGIR rests with the ECOWAS and the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), while the European Union (EU) and the Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS) are supporting partners.[15] But there is room for more that can be done as far as boosting food availability and accessibility across West Africa is concerned. At the macro level, there is a need for regional and national authorities to build on relevant global and continental multilaterial institutional frameworks towards increasing interstate coordination and exploiting bilateral cooperation opportunities that aim to boost capacity. In specific terms, West African States must intensify cooperation with one another around intra-regional institutions like the Niger River Basin Authority (NRBA), The Mano River Union (MRU) and the Chad Basin Authority (CHAD), towards solidifying agricultural progress in these countries. Governments also need to focus on improving the capacity for planning, addressing budgetary constraints and inadequacies, and integrating agricultural policies with other relevant national policies and programmes. At the micro levels, food availability and accessibility can be boosted through focusing on the needs of small-scale agriculture. Such needs include modernisation of agricultural methods, increasing social protection for smallholders, provision of basic amenities at rural levels to check-rural urban drift, granting subsidies on essential farm inputs, developing value chains, and intensifying pest and disease control. Achieving on these things will go a long way to boost food security in West Africa in accordance with the ECOWAS Vision 2020 of “an ECOWAS of the people”. --Kop’ep K. Dabugat currently works at the West African Civil Society Forum (WACSOF) as Program Officer. Notes and References [1]Food and Agricultural Organisation (1996) World Food Summit Plan of Action, at: fao.org/docrep/003/w3613e/w3613e00.HTM(last visited 24.09.2013) [2]See Food and Agricultural Organisation (2006) ”Food Security”, Policy Brief, Issue 2, June 2006. Available at: ftp://ftp.fao.org/es/ESA/policybriefs/pb_02.pdf(last visited 24.09.2013) [3]International Fund for Agricultural Development (2001) Assessment of Rural Poverty in West and Central Africa at: ifad.org/poverty/region/pa/english.pdf,particularly pages 24-26 of the report(last visited 26.09.2013) [4]Margarita Flores (2004) Conflicts, Rural Development and Food Security in West Africa, ESA Working Paper 04-02, available at: ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/007/ae057e/ae057e00.pdfp. 3 (last visited 24.09.2013) [5]Oxfam international website article titled “Mali: Ensuring Food Security in Gao Despite the Conflict”, dated 28.01.2013, at: oxfam.org/en/emergencies/crisis-mali/ensuring-food-security-gao-despite-conflict(last visited 25.09.2013) [6]It is estimated that over 18 million people were in the danger of experiencing extreme hunger, with up to 1 million children at risk of death from starvation. See Oxfam (2012) “Learning the Lessons? Assessing the response to the 2012 food crisis in the Sahel to build Resilience for the future” 168 Oxfam Briefing Paper, April 13 2012, at: oxfam.org/sites/oxfam.org/files/bp168-learning-the-lessons-sahel-food-crisis-160413-en_1.pdf(last visited 24.09.2013) [7]The following figures have been given: The Gambia: 8,000, Senegal: 30,000, Mali: 10,000, Benin: 10,000, Niger: 531,000, Nigeria: 6.1 million. See IDMC (2013) Global Estimates 2012: People displaced with disasters, report published in May 2013at: internal-displacement.org/8025708F004BE3B1/(httpInfoFiles)/99E6ED11BB84BB27C1257B6A0035FDC4/$file/global-estimates-2012-may2013.pdfpages19-20 (last visited 25.09.2013) [8]Oxfam International Website Article titled “Mali: Ensuring Food Security in Gao Despite the Conflict”, dated 28.01.2013 at: oxfam.org/en/emergencies/crisis-mali/ensuring-food-security-gao-despite-conflict(last visited 25.09.2013) [9]See Refugees International (2013) “Sahel: Recurrent Climate Shocks Propel Migration; resilience efforts face challenges : refugeesinternational.org/policy/field-report/sahel-recurrent-climate-shocks-propel-migration-resilience-efforts-face-challeng(last visited 25.09.2013) [10] See ThisDay Live article of 12 June 2012 at: thisdaylive/articles/nigeria-on-edge-as-niger-mali-get-locust-alert/117806/(last visited 26.09.2013) [11]Download document published by The Economist at: https://google.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CFwQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffoodsecurityindex.eiu%2FHome%2FDownloadPressRelease%3FfileName%3DEIU_DUPONT_GFSI-2013%26fileExtension%3Dpdf&ei=SKxCUp3aCInftAbE_IGYCg&usg=AFQjCNGmV4oh88Fk1tVuNwN19glFT2uJMg&sig2=2obdNwABv_yKLVOxr7B3VA(last visited 25.09.2013) [12]See “Mali: Ensuring Food Security in Gao despite the Conflict” at: oxfam.org/en/emergencies/crisis-mali/ensuring-food-security-gao-despite-conflict [13] Country Status Updates at caadp.net/library-country-status-updates.php(last visited 25.09.2013) [14]See Regional Agricultural policy for ECOWAS, ECOWAP. Available at: diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/IMG/pdf/01_ANG-ComCEDEAO.pdf(last visited 26.09.2013) [15]See Global Alliance for Resilience Initiative (AGIR) (2013) “Global Alliance for Resilience. AGIR-Sahel and West Africa, AGIR Regional Roadmap” at: oecd.org/swac/publications/AGIR%20roadmap_EN_FINAL.pdf(last visited 25.09.2013) Source: westafricaninsight
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 16:05:38 +0000
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