AFRICA - Africa plans on creating a Common Agricultural Market by 2009 to overcome food crisis

Rome (Agenzia Fides) - Despite its immense agricultural potential, Sub-Saharan Africa remains the only place in the world to import virtually all of its food. This is especially a problem in these trying times of famine and inadequate nutrition across the continent. In order to prevent this, the African Union decided to create a common market for African products – to ensure that nutritional requirements could be met across the continent while putting to good use the complementary rapport that already exists between various parts of Africa.
The project has arisen from the fact that despite the slight decline in malnutrition throughout the continent in the last few years (from 36% to 27% between 1979 and 2005), per capita food production in Africa continues to dwindle.
In order to compensate for the void, the African nations are forced to import goods, at a value in agricultural goods that went from 19 to 23 billion dollars between 1996 and 2005. Cereals made up the bulk of food imports (37%) followed by fats and oils (11%), dairy products (7.5%), fruits and vegetables (6.4%) and meat (4.3%).
Africa is also exporting more and more foods to more developed foreign markets. During the same period, exports rose from 17 to 21 billion dollars, consisting mostly of products such as coffee, cocoa, and tea, which collectively represent 51% of the continent’s export volume. Fruits and vegetables cover 21% of the remainder with sugar amounting to 6%. Therefore, Africa still faces a trade deficit of 2 billion dollars.
In the last 10 years, inter-African agricultural trade has grown. Since 1995, the rate of inter-regional trade, which shows the percentage of inter-African exchanges in overall trade in Africa, increased by almost 45%.
The African Union would like to go even farther by creating a common African market for agricultural goods, which would comprise over 944 million consumers with annual import figures amounting to 20 billion dollars. A free trade area would have to be created for a limited number of food products selected based on their nutritional importance and their role in the region’s balance of trade, such as: rice, legumes, corn, dairy products, beef, poultry, palm oil and cotton.
The implementation of this common African market will depend on a number of important issues, namely: doing away with duty on all strategic agricultural products, the adoption of a uniform customs scheduling system, the removal of quantity restrictions on agricultural products, the application of safety measures against illicit trade activities, the adoption of uniform sanitary standards, the adoption of technical norms to guarantee quality and facilitate production and trade, the incorporation of transportation in the creation of a common market to facilitate the circulation of people and goods.
The model underway by the African Union for establishing the Common Agricultural Market calls for a special Treaty among the African heads of state and governments, in July 2009. (LM) (Agenzia Fides 09/07/2008)