The food security challenge for southern Africa

This paper considers food security aims and instruments against a background of changed circumstances internationally and regionally. The international changes discussed are: a sharper focus on achieving macro-economic stabilization, which inter alia has led to closer scrutiny of what the public sector should be financing, and a decline in funding for agriculture; a reduced role for governments in commercial-type activities; the shift towards greater integration of world markets; and changing prospects for international aid flows. Regionally, southern Africa is moving away from a past of conflict and inward-looking economies, towards greater cooperation and trade, and less interventionist economic management.The commendable SADC food security strategy paper of June 1997 is considered, and its implications drawn out. The main messages are that (a) household food insecurity results from poverty, (b) national food insecurity results from faltering development and weak external trade performance, and (c) future strategies must therefore lie with greater efficiency in the use of resources and with patterns of development which are most effective in creating employment and incomes. Arguably there is therefore no case for a food security agenda that is separate from broad-based development aimed at poverty alleviation. This understanding of food security is at variance with some of the policies and development programmes in the region. Promotion of self-sufficiency in grains, specific food-security instruments, and controls over and interventions in markets may all be counter to improving food security for the region if they hinder policy and institutional reforms called for by the wider development agenda.The main roles for governments in promoting food security are discussed in terms of creating an enabling environment for development, correcting for market failures, and targeted measures to achieve social objectives. Food security needs both an urban and a rural focus, and involves all economic sectors. For rural areas, governments' roles may usefully be defined in terms of supporting household strategies aimed at raising and stabilizing incomes through livelihood diversification, intensification of farming, and migration.Two priority policy areas which are central to achieving food security objectives are discussed at some length: trade policy and the promotion of smallholder farming. The roles of government in these areas are discussed in the light of economic theory and past experiences in the region. A vision for a future trade regime is outlined, and strategic interventions by governments are identified. The challenge for governments in supporting smallholder farming is, first, to define with greater rigour than in the past the priority uses for public funds, and, second, to find much more efficient ways of delivering services than in the past. It will otherwise be difficult to make a case for reversing the decline in public funding for the sector.The paper ends with brief discussions of the roles for aid and for SADC in promoting food security, and with a question of whether a new initiative is needed to strengthen trade policy skills in the region.