Africans working together to feed Africa
Speaking of Roger Thurow, take a minute to read his newest blog post at Global Food for Thought. In it, he stresses the need for African countries to work together to tackle continent-wide hunger.
He cites Rwanda as an example:
Rwanda, for instance, is landlocked, and depends on its neighboring countries for ports and transport to the sea to market any surplus agriculture production. And it is a small country, unable to deploy economies of scale in purchasing supplies such as fertilizer and seed. President Kagame and Agriculture Minister Agnes Kalibata have stressed that Rwanda’s success in improving agriculture production will be limited with regional success.
Rwanda agriculture will only flourish if regional markets flourish, and regional transportation, regional communication, regional infrastructure.
The goal of the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative, also called Feeding the Future, is to create the conditions for Africa’s farmers to grow enough food to feed their families and also have surpluses to sell on the markets. If there aren’t sufficient markets to absorb the surpluses, prices of the commodities fall and farmers lose incentive to grow as much as they can. It has happened over and over again in Africa and has kept African agriculture from advancing.
Thus, Boaz notes, “surplus production is a regional aspect. You produce a surplus in your country, you need a region to sell it in.”
Read the whole piece here.
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March 2, 2010 at 4:21 am
Totally agree with Roger! Its time for Africans to internally sell their products! There is no point in looking and trying to sell into a new market or region if goods can be sold to the neighbours.
Best Wishes
Marieme Jamme
@mjamme on twitter