The World Bank has fore, called for a new commitment to regional trade in the West African Sub-region to accelerate agricultural production, boost growth and ensure food security.
World Bank in a recent report, ‘Connecting Food Staples and Inputs in West Africa: A Regional Trade Agenda for ECOWAS Countries’ called on Nigeria and other governments in West Africa to move beyond nationally-focused food policies and address regional trade within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to link farmers with consumers in the region’s booming urban areas.
“Food staples belong at the heart of the ECOWAS agenda on agriculture,” said World Bank senior economist and lead author of the report Jean-Christophe Maur. He said the importance of cross-border cooperation to secure food supply, as well as manage common natural resources, regional diseases and security challenges, has been made painfully clear in recent years.
According to Maur, now is the time to act and embrace regional trade for what it is—the opportunity to feed populations, reduce poverty, generate jobs and promote shared prosperity.
The report obtained by The Nation builds on the lessons of the World Bank report, “Africa can help feed Africa,” and examines the specific circumstances in West Africa, which is home to one-third of the continent’s population, and bringing new analysis to the food staples trade and policies in the region.
The report regretted that though Africa has tremendous agriculture potential with more than half of the world’s fertile yet unused land, countries on the continent are increasingly dependent on food imports from the rest of the world.
It stressed that regional trade in West Africa is key to food security and agricultural development, and can play an important role if supported by policies and commitments from neighboring countries.
“Trade across borders will create economies of scale in food production, expand opportunities for producers, and sharply reduce the vulnerability of families, especially the poor, to price volatilities, drought and other shocks,” the report added.
An active regional agenda exists in West Africa, and regional institutions such as ECOWAS have shown initiative with the recent adoption of harmonized trade and quality control rules for seed and fertilizer markets. Yet despite commitments to integration, many of the 15 ECOWAS member states are pursuing policies to support national self-sufficiency, including import bans on food staples from neighboring countries.
The report stated that because of lack of adequate regional policies on trade across borders, food producers in West Africa suffer from poorly managed transport and warehousing, a lack of financing, and fragmented supply chains such as refrigeration for perishables, all of which hamper the sale of food staples.
Responding to the report, the Director-General, Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA), Mr. Emmanuel Cobham, said local industries need protection against the influx of foreign products in the wake of the implementation of the ECOWAS Common External Tariff (CET).
NACCIMA‘s position on the policy is that manufacturing companies need some level of protection against the influx of foreign products that the tariff favours. Cobham said since the CET regime has commenced, government may need to consider ways by which the hardship on importers and manufacturers alike could be alleviated.
Under the new policy, goods are grouped into five categories of tariff rates: zero, five, 10, 20 and 50 per cent. Goods dutiable under the zero per cent category are special drugs as well as industrial machinery and equipment.
Under the five per cent category, goods dutiable include raw materials and other capital goods.
Those dutiable under the 10 per cent category are intermediate goods while finished goods attract 20 per cent import tariff.
Finished goods that can be manufactured locally, however, attract 35 per cent import tariff. But the World Bank seems unimpressed by the success so far recorded by the policy in the region.
