Global food prices have surged in recent
months causing large spikes in the price of rice,
maize and wheat – the main staples in many African
diets. On average, these three basic staples account
for 20 percent of the food consumed and provide about
30 percent of the calories in sub-Saharan Africa.
However, food is not a luxury and demand will not
therefore be significantly depressed by rising prices.
This surge has led to requests for emergency food
aid in some countries, while in others, citizens have
rioted in the streets.
To note is that the bullish market in
foodstuffs is driven by real fundamentals. Prices
are high because stockpiles are depleted, and forecasts
for production in many commodities are poor. Prime
farmland has been turned into subdivisions, pollinators
are dying while the global population is exploding.
The manufacture of biofuels is also creating another
problem. With biofuels, one begins to see the interaction
of higher oil prices with food supplies. These high
oil prices have driven up the cost of agricultural
inputs, like fertilizers, and transport and very recently,
the introduction of export restrictions in some countries.
To protect domestic supplies, tightened world market
conditions for some key food crops, like rice have
made the situation even worse. Speculation, hoarding
and panic buying may also have played a significant
role.
Countries dependent mostly on imported cereals (wheat,
maize and rice) have been experiencing substantial
domestic price increases and consequently, the impact
on households’ food security has been very high.
Emergency food aid can address some of the immediate
impacts on the most vulnerable groups, however, availability
of food aid tends to be lower when global food prices
are high, as food previously provided as aid goes
to other uses. Purchases of food for emergency aid
are also now more costly.
The countries facing high food prices
and financing their own food programs, therefore,
require enough resources to meet food import needs.
Reducing import tariffs and domestic taxes on food
can lower domestic prices, while cash transfers can
improve the purchasing power of the poor, as can public
works programs. Some countries have in the past imposed
export bans and set price ceilings and these approaches
have not been effective. While they often reduce the
prices that consumers pay, they similarly reduce prices
that farmers receive and choke off increased production
in the next season. The most effective response to
high prices is, therefore, to increase supply through
faster growth in agriculture and productivity gains
of basic food crops.
Recognizing the importance of food
security
– and its policy implications – the African
Economic Research Consortium (AERC) addressed this
issue during the plenary session of its week-long,
region-wide biannual workshop for economic researchers
and policy makers. The workshop was held in Mombasa,
Kenya, from 31 May to 4 June 2009 at the White Sands
Hotel. More than 200 participants are expected to
attend, including researchers, doctoral students
and senior scholars from about 20 countries in Africa,
as well as resource persons from Europe and North
America.
The plenary session, the 30th in a
series spanning more than a decade, took the theme Global
Food Price Shocks: Causes, Consequences and Policy
Options in Africa. Chaired by
Harris Mule, Chancellor, Kenyatta University, the
session commenced at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday, 31
May. Four presentations by distinguished economists
highlighted the event. Philip Abbot of the Purdue
University, West Lafayette, USA presented a
paper on “Recent
Global Food Price Shocks: Causes and Consequences
in Developing World”, while Christopher Adam
of University of Oxford, United Kingdom,
presented
“Managing Macroeconomic Impact of Global Food
Price Shocks in Africa”. Chris Ackello-Ogutu,
of the University of Nairobi, Kenya, and Bernadette
Kamgnia, University of Yaoundé II, Cameroon,
made presentations on “Managing Food
Security, Implications of Recent Food Price Shocks
in Africa”
and “Political Economy of Recent Global Food
Price Shocks: Gainers, Losers and Compensatory Mechanism”,
respectively.
The biannual took place in three
day-long concurrent sessions, beginning on Monday,
1 June. The sessions featured the work of AERC-supported
research teams and students from its Collaborative
PhD Programme (CPP). There were 79 presentations
in all, including research proposals, work in progress,
final reports and PhD thesis research proposals.
The presentations covered a wide range of topics
that fall into the five main areas of AERC’s
thematic research programme: poverty, income distribution
and labour market issues; macroeconomic policies,
investment and growth; finance and resource mobilization;
trade and regional integration; and political economy
and sectoral policy issues.
An important curtain-raising conference
was convened ahead of the main workshop. The conference
organized by AERC in collaboration with the University
of California at Berkeley and sponsored by the Ford
Foundation, as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation was held on 27-30 May, with the expected
participation of about 100 people. The conference
addressed the topic Research Frontiers
in Agriculture for Development in Sub-Saharan Africa.
This conference was a follow-up on the World Development
Report 2008 on Agriculture for Development. Its
objective was to present state of the art research
on the competitiveness of smallholder farming
in sub-Saharan Africa in the current global context
for agriculture and rural development, and to
explore avenues for future research. It had
six research sessions and a training meeting on
impact analysis applied to agriculture and rural
development.
The African Economic Research Consortium
is a leader in policy-oriented economic research in
the continent, and its biannual research workshops
have become the largest gatherings of professional
economists in sub-Saharan Africa. The Consortium was
established in 1988 as a public not-for-profit organi¬zation
devoted to building capacity for economic policy research
into problems pertinent to the management of the continent’s
economies. This is carried out through two main programmes:
research and postgraduate training in economics. In
response to the special needs of the region, the AERC
Research Programme uses a flexible approach to improve
the technical skills of local researchers, allow for
regional determination of research priorities, strengthen
national institutions concerned with economic policy
research, and facilitate closer ties between researchers
and policy makers. The Training Programme augments
the region’s pool of economic researchers by
supporting collaborative graduate programmes in economics
– at both master’s and PhD levels –
as well as improving the capacities of departments
of economics in local public universities. AERC is
supported by donor govern-ments, private foundations
and international organizations.
# # #
For more information about this workshop or AERC,
please contact:
The Executive Director
African Economic Research Consortium (AERC)
Middle East Bank Towers, 3rd Floor, Milimani Road
Tel: (254-20) 273-4150 / 273-4157
Fax: (254-20) 273-4173
exec.dir@aercafrica.org
communications@aercafrica.org
# # #
