Food Production or Food Aid?: An African Challenge

• Author: Willy H. Verheye
• Position: Research Director, Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders (Belgium), and a long-time consultant to international development organizations

Food production is not keeping pace with Africa's rapidly growing needs. Aid programs in the 1970s and 1980s were considered a temporary solution to the most appalling famines, but Africa's food shortage appears to be worsening. This paper discusses the reasons for this situation and ways to address it.

Despite massive technical assistance and a growing share of international development aid-between 1990 and 1996, sub-Saharan Africa received approximately 26 percent of all financial aid allocated to developing countries (Bhattacharya and others, 1997)-Africa still produces too little food. Although total food production in real terms has increased, rising from an index of 100 in 1965 to 221 in 1998, it declined, on a per capita basis, from 100 to 86 over the same period (FAO, 1965-98). For some of these years, the reduced yields can be attributed to drought, but climatic conditions cannot explain the long-term trends in agricultural production. At the start of this new century, Africa is even more dependent on food aid than it was 35 years ago.

This situation has serious political implications, especially in light of the overall perception that Africa's land potential is still largely untapped (FAO, 1991). Over the past twenty years, many African countries that had been food exporters have become net importers. Not only have they become dependent on foreign aid, but their increasing food bill has become a serious budgetary and political obstacle to progress and growth. Sierra Leone, which exported rice in the 1960s but is now importing it at an approximate cost of $22 million a year, is a case in point. One cannot help but question the relevance of the existing system of food aid, which was initially introduced as a temporary solution and has now reached approximately 80 million tons of cereals a year (WHO, 1996).

The origin of the problem appears to be neither climatological nor technical (such as the quality of the soil): abundant rain has fallen in West Africa over the past several years, and there are now solutions for most technical problems. Rather, the problem is linked to socioeconomic issues and to the inability of traditional structures (there is little or no tradition of making a living by producing for the market) to adapt to the needs of a rapidly changing society.

Population trends

Africa today is experiencing two major demographical trends. First, the continent's population is increasing at an average rate of 3-4 percent a year and has almost doubled in the past 25 years; it is expected to reach 1 billion within the next few years. Second, the number of people employed in agriculture has decreased significantly (from 74 percent in 1965 to 57 percent in 1998); this decline is associated with the drift of young males from rural areas toward urban and industrial centers. These two trends are seriously undermining the traditions of rural African societies, which, for centuries, have centered on a subsistence economy and local food self-sufficiency.

In Sierra Leone, for example, the population increased from...