Reducing poverty in sub-Saharan Africa through investments in water and other priorities

That Africa has become a net importer of food and of agricultural products, despite its vast agricultural potential, is puzzling. Using data mainly for the period 1960-2007, this report seeks to explain Africa’s food-trade deficit since the mid-1970s. The core finding is that population growth, low and stagnating agricultural productivity, policy distortions, weak institutions and poor infrastructure are the main reasons. A typology of African countries based on data between 2000 and 2005 reveals that the state of food import dependency is different across the continent and varies according to countries’ levels of income. Although the few and relatively rich countries in Africa had the highest net food imports per capita (USD 185 per year in real terms), they had ample means to pay for their food import bills using revenue from non-agricultural sources. Conversely, the majority of the Africa’s low-income countries (mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa), where twothird of its population lives, had been net food importers; they imported far less food per capita (USD 17 per year) but had difficulty covering their food imports bills, as their export revenues were limited. Overall, between 1980 and 2007, Africa’s total net food imports in real term grew at 3.4 percent per year, but this growth was mostly fuelled by population growth (2.6 percent per year); the increase in per capita food import was only about 0.8 percent per year. Food consumption on per capita basis grew only at about 1 percent per year, while food production grew at an even smaller rate of less than 0.1 percent per year. The slow growth of food consumption and imports per capita is consistent with the weak economic growth and unchanged dietary pattern in the continent. Food import share, regardless of income levels, is relatively small and represents less than 5 percent of per capita income (GDP per capita). Because the share of food expense in household income is generally high in Africa, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, that the share of food imports over GDP is small implies that domestic production has largely contributed to feeding Africa’s population. Still, domestic food production has remained relatively low and increased only by 2.7 percent per year, just barely above population growth rate. This implies that any increase in per capita consumption had to be met by an increase in imports. The weak growth in food production arises from various constraints including those linked directly to agricultural productivity. Data and evidence from literature highlight that technical, infrastructural and institutional constraints share the blame. Likewise, distortions arising from both internal and external economic and agricultural policies (especially the protection and subsidies from developed countries and taxation on food production within Africa) have affected food productivity, production and trade in Africa. However, the examples of a few successful practices in African agriculture and the fact that the domestic food production has managed to keep up with population growth inspire optimism that the future is not all dark. There is a lot of room for improvement for agricultural productivity in these low-income countries to the point at which production growth outpaces the growth of population and per capita consumption. David Hallam Director Trade and Markets Division A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s v This report benefits from the valuable contributions and comments made by Nikos Alexandratos, Aziz ElBehri, David Hallam, Suffyan Koroma, Jamie Morrison, Alexander Sarris, Josef Schmidhuber, Ramesh Sharma, and Marcela Villarreal. Technical support from Rita Ashton and Claudio Cerquiglini is gratefully acknowledged.

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Why has Africa become a net food importer? Explaining Africa agricultural and food trade deficits.

The role of lower-order urban centres in regional development constitutes an important subject of debate. The existing controversies in the literature and the lack of empirical data to support the optimistic assumptions of policy-makers and planners inspired a team of geographers at Utrecht University in the 1980s to start a programme of comparative studies on the role of small towns in a selected number of regions. These regions were considered to be representative for four types of context with respect to the functioning of small towns-a south-east Asian and a Sahelian context, the context of agricultural colonisation and export production areas in central America and southern Africa, and the context of industrialising borderland areas in northern Mexico. The findings from the comparative studies and from recent literature allow us to challenge optimistic assumptions about the development role of small towns. The divergent character of the selected contexts and the differential impact of regional condit...

Small Towns and Regional Development: Major Findings and Policy Implications from Comparative Research

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Food security in South Africa: key policy issues for the medium term

The study assesses the pattern of disparities in socio-economic development at the district level in India applying the Wroclow Taxonomic technique (following Ewusi. Social Indicators Research 3(1) 75–110, 1976, and Arief. Social Indicators Research 11(3) 259–267, 1982) based upon optimal combination of selected socio-economic development indicators. In order to get a clear picture of regional socio-economic disparities in India, the level of development is assessed separately for agriculture, industrial and infrastructural sectors and the districts are classified into four development categories according to the values of the constructed development index. For bringing about uniform regional development and improving the quality-of-life, model districts for disadvantaged districts have been identified and potential targets for various social amenities have been estimated. An attempt has also been made to compare the levels of socio-economic development among various regions in India. The constructed socio-economic development index shows that India’s Southern region is far more and symmetrically developed in comparison of Central and Northern regions. The results show that wide disparities in the level of socio-economic development exist among different districts within and between different regions of India. The level of development in infrastructural service sector is found to be positively and statistically significantly associated with the overall socio-economic development indicating that the growth and progress of the sectors have been going hand in hand in the country. The results show that in Northern and Central regions of India the level of industrial development does not significantly influence the agricultural and overall socio-economic development while agricultural development influences overall socio-economic development. The study suggests that low developed districts require improvement in most of the indicators for enhancing their levels of overall socio-economic development.

Pattern of Regional Disparities in Socio-economic Development in India: District Level Analysis

This paper analyses the spatial distribution of rural services in selected regions of three states in India (Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu), based on data collected over three decades. In spite of economic disparities between regions, Christaller's Central Place Theory provides a framework in which to examine demographic, functional and spatial characteristics of settlements in these regions. In all regions, there has been a tremendous improvement in rural service provision, since the late 1960s, especially in smaller sized settlements. Over time, more complex services in particular, have become more widely available. In Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, the introduction of new agricultural technologies was largely responsible for stimulating such improvements, whereas in Maharashtra they were a consequence of urban industrial development in a metropolitan city. The government played a critical role in this process during the earlier stages of development of the regions, which facilitated greater involvement of the private sector at later stages. The changes in rural service provision are further examined in the context of decentralized service centre planning in India. The analysis suggests how the concepts and methodologies employed in this study might provide the basis for a more integrated regional approach to planning and policy formulation for rural service provision at the district level in India.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3059972.pdf

Rural Services, Rural Infrastructure and Regional Development in India

This paper discusses the provision of rural infrastructure in Southern Africa by drawing on two case studies from Zimbabwe and Zambia. It takes the centre-periphery model of regional development as a point of departure for explaining the differences between communal or smallholder African farming areas and large-scale commercial European farming areas in both countries. It observes that the imbalances noted in rural infrastructure provision between different regions are a function of colonial modes of production, agroecological endowments and levels of agricultural development. It finds strong similarities in these aspects between the two countries. The importance of developing peripheral agricultural areas, largely the domain of smallholder farmers, is discussed in the context of overall regional development. The policy implications of the centre-periphery perspective for infrastructure provision are presented. These include the need for both private and public sector investment, and comprehensive planning policies that are cognizant of the variations in the centre-periphery model as observed in the two countries.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3059722.pdf

Yassir Islam

Papers

Rural Services, Rural Infrastructure and Regional Development in India

Rural Infrastructure and Agricultural Development in Southern Africa: a centre-periphery perspective