CARL K. EICHER AND JOHN M. STAATZ

Food Security Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa

BACKGROUND

At the beginning of the independence period in 1960, ·the 45 states in sub-Saharan Africa (hereafter referred to as Africa) were basically self-sufficient in food. In fact, a few countries- e.g., Nigeria and Senegal -were significant exporters of groundnuts to Europe. At the same time as African states were winning their independence in the early 1960s, India was caught in a food crisis that led to a large inflow of food aid that lasted for 15 years (1955-70). Today, while much of Africa faces a food crisis, India is feeding750 million people, has 30 million tons of grain in storage, plans to sell several million tons of wheat in world markets this year and recently donated 100,000 tons of food aid to Africa. Although India has made substantial progress in improving its food security and is now self-sufficient in food, it has neither solved hunger nor poverty. Nevertheless, as Lele (1984) describes in detail, India's experience is instructive for African states and donors; it shows the time that it took (25 years) to achieve self-sufficiency and that food self-sufficiency does not automatically solve other food security goals - i.e. access of all members of society to a nutritionally adequate diet.

DEFINING FOOD SECURITY

The term 'food security' was highlighted during the 1974 World Food Conference in Rome, where discussions of food security were influenced by events of the early 1970s. Rising international grain prices and lagging food production in many low-income Asian and African countries raised the spectre of mass starvation. During the 1974 conference, proposals to increase food security focused on (a) increasing food production in food-deficit countries, thereby reducing their dependence on unstable international markets; and (b) creating a co-ordinated system of national and international grain reserves. However, food security proposals paid little attention to demand issues, such as ensuring that nutritionally vulnerable groups had the resources necessary to gain access to an adequate diet.

While famine has faded from much of Asia since the mid-1970s, both

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famine and chronic hunger have become more prominent in Africa, leading not only to massive short-term relief efforts but also to crash programmes to increase food production. In dealing with Africa's present crisis and the chronic problems that underlie it, it is important to recognise that many of the hungry in Africa, particularly the chronically hungry, are malnourished not because the aggregate supply of food (domestic production plus potential imports) is inadequate but because the poor lack the resources to gain access to the food that is available. Improving the food security of the poor requires measures to help the poor increase their purchasing power (Reutlinger and Selowsky 1976) or what A. K. Sen (1981) has called their food entitlement. Siamwalla and Valdes have defined food security as ensuring that 'food-deficit countries, or regions or households within these countries ... meet target ievels of consumption' (1984, p. 190), a view that incorporates the effects of both supply and demand.

Our definition of food security is similar to that of Siamwalla and Valdes. We define food security as the ability of a country or region to assure, on a long-term basis, that its food system provides the total population access to a timely, reliable and nutritionally adequate supply offood. 1

Our definition of food security implies that:

(1) The food security situation of a country needs to be assessed by looking at the access of individuals or households to an adequate diet. It is not sufficient to look at average food availability per caput on a national or regional basis; some notion of how consumption is distributed among the population is also needed. Therefore, a key step in food security analysis is the identification of the malnourished.

(2) Assuring an individual's access to a nutritionally adequate diet requires that an adequate supply of food be available and the individual has some claim on it, either because he produced it or because he has other sources of real income that can be exchanged for it. Consequently, increasing domestic food self-sufficiency and building domestic grain stocks do not guarantee a country's food security and may actually weaken it if done in a costly manner that reduces the income of the poor. Promoting cotton production or non-farm employment in the Sahel, for example, may do more to increase smallholders' food security than insisting that they increase their production of millet.

The issue of how the cultivation of cash crops affects farmers' food security may also depend on the time horizon one is considering. In many countries (e.g., Mali and Rwanda) state monopoly marketing of cash crops generates a sizeable propor­tion of total government revenues. Even if cash crop production

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reduces farmers' food security in the short run, it may be one of the few available means of financing the rural infrastructure needed to improve food security in the long run.

(3) In most food-deficit African countries, however, there is justifica­tion for putting substantial emphasis on improving the productivity of the staple food system. The majority of the poor in Africa are engaged in subsistence food production. In the short run, one of the most direct ways of increasing their real incomes is to increase the productivity of their main enterprise, staple food production, which may increase the availability per caput of home-produced foods, raise cash incomes by generating a marketable surplus of grains, or allow subsistence food needs to be produced with fewer resources, thus freeing resources for other income-earning activities. Impro­ving the productivity of the food system involves not only generating improved on-farm technologies but also investing in marketing, processing and transport of staple crops. Farmers are often understandably reluctant to try to increase their income through specialisation if there is not a reliable market for food. In addition, the off-farm components of the food system can generate substantial employment for rural people who have limited access to land and hence would derive few direct benefits from improved farm-level technology. In the long run, efficient input and output markets are a key in developing the intersectoral linkages that characterise economic development, which by generating increased incomes reduces food insecurity.

( 4) Food insecurity has both transitory and chronic dimensions. 2

Transitory food insecurity occurs when an individual's food consumption level falls below adequate levels because of short-run (intra or inter-seasonal) fluctuations in supply or effective demand (real income). Chronic food insecurity describes a situation where an individual persistently lacks the real income to assure an adequate diet.

(5) Improving a country's food security typically requires both short­run and long-run measures. Short-run measures involve interven­tions to assure that the poor have access to food through various forms of real-income transfers, such as rations and subsidised distribution of food. Such short-term solutions are needed to address both transitory food insecurity (e.g. famine relief) and chronic food insecurity (e.g. targeted food subsidies). Long-run solutions involve creating food production and distribution systems that assure adequate access of the poor to food through income generation and an efficient supply system for food, either domesti­cally produced or imported. The long-run solution therefore essentially lies in economic development, with particular emphasis on income generation for the poor. One of the key tasks of food security analysis is to devise short-run solutions that do not have

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deleterious long-run effects. For example, how can food aid be used for short-term relief without undermining the long-term development of the domestic food system?

CAUSES OF FOOD INSECURITY IN AFRICA: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

What explains widespread hunger in Africa, a continent in which certain areas have substantial agricultural potential (F AO/UNFP A/liAS A 1982), at a time when world food prices are near historic lows? The answer lies not only in recent droughts but also in the failure of African states to develop economic systems that generate sufficient real income for the poor to assure access to adequate food produced at home or purchased in the market. Developing such systems is not easy, but one fact is apparent: since most of the poor live in rural areas, the neglect of agriculture and related rural industries throughout much of the post-in­dependence period has been a major contributor to food insecurity in Africa. This neglect of the rural economy has stemmed from a misunderstanding of the relationships between agriculture and other sectors in the developing economy and a failure of both donors and African governments to make the medium- to long-term investments necessary to stimulate rural development: investments in physical infrastructure, rural institutions, agricultural research and human capital. Many African countries have also been unwilling to face the long-term threat to their food security posed by rapid population growth.

Although statements from the latest OAU summit indicate an increased awareness that underinvestment in agriculture lies at the root of Africa's current economic and food security problems, historically African governments and donors have seriously misunderstood (a) the role of agriculture in national development at this stage of Africa's economic history and (b) the strategic importance of a reliable agricultural surplus as a foundation for the expansion of the industrial sector. As a result, the past two decades have been characterised by scores of poor decisions regarding ranches, state farms, settlement programmes, and government tractor-hire schemes. Gaining political consensus between national leaders and donor agencies on the place of agriculture in the economic development strategy of African states is the starting point in dealing with food security issues over the coming 10 to 15 years. This consensus, in turn, needs to be translated into a commitment to fostering rural institutions (farmer co-operatives, local governments, etc.) that have enough autonomy to respond to local conditions and opportunities and to begin to build a domestic constit­uency that will support policy reforms that favour rural areas. Obviously, the politics involved are complex and potentially disruptive, which may explain why such changes are often slow in coming (Bates 1981; Johnston and Clark 1982).

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A political consensus in favour of paying increased attention to agriculture needs to be reflected in new investment priorities. Chief among these are investments in improved marketing systems, agricultu­ral research and human capital.

Since 1970, food production has been growing at half the rate of growth of population in Africa. With the exception of maize in southern Africa, the recent introduction of hybrid sorghum in the Sudan and a few other local examples, there is no backlog offarmer-tested food crop technology (Spencer 1985; Eicher 1985). After 25 years of independence, most African states and donors do not have well-devised empirically tested strategies to increase production of rain fed crops (especially sorghum and millet), irrigated crops, and livestock.

The evidence of the past 25 years shows that the direct international transfer of technology - especially plant material - from Asia, Europe and Nqrth America to Africa - is not working as anticipated (Eicher 1984). In short, there is a gap between technology transfer in theory and practice. The absence of a strong indigenous scientific community in national research services makes it difficult for African states to screen and borrow technology from neighbouring states and regional and international centres and adapt it to local conditions. Finally, there is growing evidence that there is a gap between the expectations and the actual achievements of the International Agricultural Research Centres (IARCs) in Africa (Eicher 1985).

Developing new technologies and rural institutions requires large numbers of trained people. By any yardstick -literacy rates, percentage of school age population in secondary schools and universities, and percentage of expatriates in scientific, managerial and academic staff positions- Africa has fewer trained personnel than any other area in the Third World. What is the response of donors to this situation? The World Bank approved two education projects in Africa in fiscal year 1984, representing 3.6 per cent of its education portfolio, or $25 million out of $694 million of IBRD and IDA funds (World Bank 1984). USAID currently spends $20 million per year to support African institutions of higher education in agriculture and to finance 250 scholarships for overseas training of Africans in agriculture at the undergraduate and graduate levels (USAID 1985, p. 7). What explains the modest response by two major donors to Africa's crushing human resource problems? Investment in human capital should receive greatly increased priority in the coming decades.

Even if increased investments result in rapid growth in the total food supply, availability per caput may grow very little or even decline due to rapid population growth. Africa is the only region of the world where the rate of growth of population is increasing. Population growth rates among African countries of 2.5 to 4.4 per cent are crucial variables in the population, hunger and poverty equation. The total fertility rate (number of living children per woman) is around six in urban areas and eight in rural areas in Africa. But, there is little serious debate in Africa- even

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among academics- on population and family planning. The distinguished Kenyan economist, Philip Ndegwa, is one of the few African social scientists to advocate family planning. But even he approaches this issue with caution:

In my view, and here I know I am treading on dangerous and controversial ground, there is little sense in a family having so many children that it cannot look after them properly in terms of food, health, education and employment (Ndegwa 1985, pp. 141-2).

Most demographers agree that family planning programmes have been ineffective in Africa in the 25 years of independence and that no African nation displays any significant sign of fertility decline (Caldwell and Caldwell1984). Africa's population 'treadmill' is a major challenge to the agricultural sector, implying that the supply of food needs to grow three to five per cent per year through domestic food production and/or imports.

In summary, no single factor can explain the success or failure of agricultural policies in a particular country. Africa's food insecurity problems, the result of a complex interaction of factors, have been building up for two decades. The solution to these problems lies in the development of short-, medium- and long-term policies and programmes to increase agricultural production (food, cash crops and livestock), expand rural and urban incomes and increase the access of the poor to the available food supply. Developing policies to achieve these goals is difficult and involves hard tradeoffs, as the following examples illustrate.

COUNTRY ILLUSTRATIONS

Many African nations have adopted explicit food security strategies and have prepared food security plans. In this section, we briefly examine the strategies of two countries: Senegal, a food-deficit state, and Zimbabwe, a food exporter.

Senegal Senegal is currently importing about 1,000 tons of rice a day, mostly broken rice from Asia. The Senegalese government is faced with several tough questions: Should food production be increased on rainfed or irrigated land? Are different policies needed to protect the food security of different target groups (for example, urban or rural people)? What role should international trade play in these policies? What are the interactions between short-run and long-run policies to achieve food security? What is the appropriate role of the state in helping assure food security?

Since the nineteenth century, Senegal has followed a policy of agricultural specialisation, exporting groundnuts and importing broken rice, not only to supply urban areas but also for rural areas. The state has historically played an important direct role in agricultural trade, holding

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the legal monopoly on the groundnut trade, rice imports and, until1980, coarse grains marketing. Hence, price and marketing policies have had major effects on the government budget as well as on food security.

Over the past 15 years drought has reduced domestic foodgrain and groundnut production; this has combined with a depressed world market for groundnuts and other stresses on the government budget due to oil shocks, world-wide recession and the growth of the 'rural development bureaucracy' to draw into question Senegal's agricultural strategy. In recent years, Senegal has imported on average roughly half its annual cereal consumption and if present production and population trends continue, the country will produce only a third of its food grain needs by the year 2000 (Abt Associates 1985, p. iii).

In order to deal with the worsening situation, in 1984 the government announced its 'New Agricultural Policy', part of a general economic reform package (plan de redressement) launched in 1979. The plan called for increased food grain self-sufficiency, primarily through irrigated rice production in the Senegal River Valley and millet and sorghum production in the Groundnut Basin; a greatly expanded role for the private trade and farmers' co-operatives in input and output marketing; and a reduction in the activities of regional development administrations and parastatals. The goal is to produce 75 per cent of the nation's food grain consumption by the year 2000 and to reach self-sufficiency as soon thereafter as possible.

In implementing the new policies the government has had to face competing objectives (e.g., its desires to assure consumers' foodsecurityin the short run and to stimulate long-run agricultural growth through higher prices to farmers) and the difficulty of developing an institutional environment favourable to the private trade after years of heavy state involvement in the cereals market. For example, in early 1985 the government raised the price of imported rice by over 20 per cent in order to reduce the government's budget deficit and to stimulate production of millet, sorghum and locally produced rice. Yet, when the price of millet and sorghum rose in response to this change, there were calls by some government officials for strict price controls of these cereals to help protect consumers. Furthermore, the effects on the food security of the poor of the policy of promoting self sufficiency primarily through price policy has probably been mixed. The cost of rice production in the large irrigated perimeters of the Senegal River Valley is extremely high by world standards (Ndiame 1985) and investing in these perimeters has reduced the funds available for development of rainfed crops in higher rainfall areas, such as the Casamance. Because the traditional millet and sorghum varieties respond only modestly to modern inputs, increases in the domestic supply of these foodgrains in response to higher relative prices is likely to be forthcoming only at a high marginal cost (in terms of greater input use and/or diverted groundnut exports). In addition, the lack of clearly defined rules governing the private trade has hindered its ability to play the role envisaged for it in the new agricultural policy. (For details see Sow and Newman 1985).

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These high costs of production draw into question the strategy of trying to assure food security through foodgrain self-sufficiency. Dakar is a major seaport and the preferred staple of many Senegalese, broken rice, is usually available on the world market at a relatively low price. It may make more sense to try to assure Dakar's food security through imports, while promoting rural food security through the increased production of local foodgrains and export crops. Alternatives to rice production in the irrigated perimeters of the north (e.g. vegetables and tomatoes for canning factories) need to be considered as Senegal seeks more cost-effective ways of assuring the food security of its people.

Zimbabwe When Zimbabwe became independent in 1980, it inherited a dual agrarian structure composed of about 5,000 large commercial farms and 700,000 smallholders. At independence, the fundamental problems in agriculture were the low productivity of smallholders, widespread poverty among rural workers on large commercial farms, a large landless population and a rural infrastructure that had been battered during the warfare of the 1970s (Blackie 1981). In 1981, the government identified the 'achievement and maintenance of food self-sufficiency and regional food security (in Southern Africa) as an important national objective' (Zimbabwe 1981). In attempting to improve the food security of its population, the post-independence government has tried to balance redistribution of income to the urban and rural poor, who are at the most risk nutritionally, with the need to maintain the productive capacity of the agriculturally based economy.

Despite the substantial incidence of poverty and malnutrition among families of rural smallholders and workers on commercial farms (World Bank 1983), Zimbabwe has decided to maintain its dual production structure in the short run because its 4,200 commercial farms are producing about 50 per cent of the cotton, 50 per cent of the marketed surplus of maize, and 99 per cent of the tobacco crop, a major earner of foreign exchange. The government has, however, tried to improve the food security of the rural poor by raising the minimum wage of farm workers (to Z$600 per year)3 and by purchasing commercial farms on a 'willing buyer-willing seller' basis to transfer to the landless. At the same time, aggressive steps are being taken to help smallholders expand their rainfed production, especially of cotton and maize, and to promote smallholder irrigation (Rukuni).

The government has generally followed a price policy favourable to agriculture, even when this may have increased the food insecurity of the urban poor in the short run. In 1983-4, the government eliminated Z$100 million of consumer subsidies on wheat bread, meat, dairy products, and refined maize flour. In an attempt to lessen the impact of these changes on the urban poor, subsidies were retained on coarsely milled maize meal and the minimum wage was increased. Following a three-year drought, the government raised maize producer prices by

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28.5 per cent in June 1984, four months before planting time for the 1984-5 crop. With very favourable weather, farmers responded with a record maize crop of approximately three million tons, with a large increase coming from smallholders. Zimbabwe is now developing trade agreements to sell 500,000 to 750,000 tons of maize in southern Africa.

Although the experience of Zimbabwe is frequently cited as an example of the successful use of price policy to stimulate production, not all the increase in production should be attributed to higher prices and good weather. Farmers were able to respond to these because they had access to well-functioning input and output markets, an extension system that has given increasing attention to smallholders in recent years and one of the strongest agricultural research services in Africa. For example, in 1980, Zimbabwe had 201 agricultural scientists and spent 2.52 per cent of its agricultural GDP on research, compared with an average of 1.16 per cent for other countries with a comparable level of income per caput (Evenson 1984). Zimbabwe became the first country after the US to develop hybrid maize varieties, in 1949, after 17 years of research. Yet, although hybrid varieties were available to smallholders ten years ago, it was only with improvements in the marketing, credit and extension systems, an end to the disruption caused by war and a more favourable price policy that smallholders widely adopted the new varieties. The experience of Zimbabwe underlines the important interactions among technologies, institutions and agricultural policies in affecting food security.

In spite of its success in increasing total food production and becoming a maize exporter, the long-term food security of Zimbabwe also depends on its ability to deal with its rapid rate of population growth, nearly three per cent per year, which may undermine availability of food per caput. As the experience of India demonstrates, achieving food self-sufficiency (in the sense of becoming a food exporter) is not necessarily synomymous with achieving food security.

THE RESEARCH CHALLENGE FOR AGRICULTURAL ECONOMISTS

Applied research by agricultural economists has played an important role in more clearly defining the nature of food security problems in Africa; additional work is needed in several areas to contribute to improved food security policy. Yet research on food security in Africa is hindered by two major constraints: the lack of reliable data and the small numbers of African economists engaged in policy research.

The data base for food security analysis in Africa is extremely weak relative to that for Asia and Latin America. For example, the authors of Food Policy Analysis, drawing on their Asian experience, argued that the starting point for food policy analysis in the Third World is 'usually a food balance sheet, which most countries now publish on an annual basis' (Timmer, Falcon and Pearson 1983, p. 22). But we are unaware of any

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African country that publishes a food balance sheet on an annual basis. Moreover, Lele and Candler (1984) report that the basic data sets on agricultural production (FAO and USDA) vary widely from one another, often showing opposite trends in production for the same crops. In Nigeria, current estimates of the area under given crops vary by up to a factor of five depending on the source of data. The lack of reliable data can lead to highly questionable 'empirical' analyses or the formulation of food security policies almost solely on the basis of economic theory without knowledge of crucial parameters, such as the magnitude of demand and supply response and of institutional constraints, that determine how theory works out in practice.

Experience has shown that economic policy research is just as location-specific as technology development, such as maize breeding. A relatively large number of African economists are engaged in preparing feasibility studies for donors, but few are engaged in long-term research on local policy problems. This reflects the small total number of African economists, the pressing demands they face in appraising and managing externally funded projects, and the low priority that donors and African states have given to developing indigenous capacity to develop data bases and to carry out economic policy analysis. Developing such capacity is, however, an essential component of the institutional development needed to deal with food security issues and to carry out effective policy discussions with donors. Without a greater commitment of resources to developing indigenous policy analysis capacity, much of food security research in Africa may continue to be characterised by the discontinuities and lack of knowledge oflocal conditions that often characterise the work of short-term external consultants.

The food security situations in the 45 countries of sub-Saharan Africa are extremely heterogeneous; hence, research needs to be tailored to the needs of each country. Nonetheless, we see four areas where additional research could contribute to improved food security policy in many of these countries.

(1) Grain reserves, imports and food aid If food security involves not only increasing the available supply of food but also ensuring that the poor have access to that supply, then there is a need to replace the goal of 'food self-sufficiency' (autarky) with the broader goal of 'self reliance', i.e., developing an appropriate mix of domestic production, trade, price, technology, marketing and other policies to supply food in a cost -effective manner while increasing the real income of the poor. Developing such a policy mix requires a much more detailed understanding of how internal trade and aid can be used to achieve food security goals. Research on the use of trade and stocks to stabilise domestic grain supplies has been a rna jor focus of work by the US Department of Agriculture, IFPRI, and other international organisations. Much of this has focused on the appropriate design of storage facilities; the management of stocks; the relative efficacy of using food reserves

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versus insurance approaches, such as the IMF's compensatory financing facility, to ensure stable food supplies; and the possible roles of commercial imports and food aid in achieving food security (see, for example, Goreaux 1981; Huddleston 1984). This research has been very useful in demonstrating the high cost of stabilising grain supplies solely through a system of grain reserves, but it has often implicitly assumed that most agricultural production passes through well-functioning markets and that governments hold a significant share of total stocks, assumptions that are particularly inappropriate in Africa (Lele and Candler 1984). Similarly, researchers have paid relatively little attention to the role of private storage in national food systems.

Given the budgetary constraints facing many African countries in the coming decade, the resources generated by food aid may be one of the few means available to finance improvements in domestic food systems to enhance food security. Yet there is a paucity of research on the efficiency offood aid (Reutlinger 1984) and the management and creative use of the resources generated by food aid (both the funds derived from food aid sales and the physical capital created through food-for-work projects).

But without clear provisions for using food aid and the funds it generates to improve the marketing systems ... food aid may meet short-run needs at the expense of long-term development ... More research is needed on the policy processes and institutional constraints within countries before policy makers can know how much food aid they can use effectively (Huddleston, 1984).

(2) The interactions among technologies, institutions and policy Agricultural economists have long been involved in research to describe agricultural production and marketing systems in Africa, diagnose their problems, and prescribe ways of improving performance. Such research produces knowledge that is essential in designing effective food security policies. There is a need, however, to avoid looking at production, marketing and policy issues in isolation; the design of effective food security policies requires an understanding of the interaction of changes in institutions, technologies and policy on a country's food security. In addition, those engaged in micro-level studies, such as farming systems teams, need to keep in mind the key policy issues that are important for food security when designing their studies. For example, recent emphasis by donors on policy reform has focused mainly on market liberalization and price policy. How a change in price policy affects farmers' production decisions depends on how the private and public marketing systems work, the nature of the available technology (e.g., what is the yield response of traditional varieties to fertilizer?), access to additional production resources and alternative income-earning possibilities. Planning effective policies to increase food supplies and rural incomes requires knowledge of these factors and of the interactions among them. Yet many of the discussions of policy reform remain at a macro, largely

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abstract, and often ideological level. The results of dozens of supply response studies suggest that without complementary agricultural research, extension, and institutional reforms, price policy is unlikely to have a marked impact on increasing aggregate food production (Helleiner 1975; Eicher and Baker 1982). Agricultural economists can make an important contribution to improved food security in Africa by undertaking micro-level research on the combination of price policies, institutional reforms, and technological packages needed to increase agricultural production and improve the access of the poor to food.

(3) Food consumption studies In order to design effective food security programmes, one must first know who the malnourished are, what they eat and why they are hungry. In much of Africa basic information is sparse on the incidence and causes of chronic malnutrition and on the socio-economic characteristics of the malnourished. Methodological advances are needed to design more cost-effective means of gathering such information; traditional nutrition studies usually fail to elicit information on the relationship between income and consumption and conventional income-expenditure studies, especially when conducted in rural areas, are extremely costly. Yet without such information it is impossible to determine the most cost-effective way of increasing caloric intake in a given rural area; is it through improving home food production, reducing post-harvest losses, or expanding non-farm employment, coupled with improvements in the food marketing system? In urban areas, knowledge of the consumption patterns of the poor is needed to design programmes that protect the poor from bearing an undue burden of the painful structural adjustments that many African countries, Ghana and the Sudan, for example, are undergoing, often at the behest of international agencies such as the IMF.

( 4) National food security planning and the design of food strategies A number of African nations have developed national food strategies, often with external technical assistance from the EC. These documents typically outline broad goals for the food system and discuss general approaches to achieving these goals. More work is needed in examining whether the various goals are realistic and mutually consistent and in developing well-conceived strategies and effective implementation plans, including identification of the essential information needed to formulate food security policies. In some countries, food security planning has tended to be an exercise that is rapidly performed by short-term expatriate consultants and rapidly forgotten by government ministries. If this is to change, it is essential that African researchers and government officials be intimately involved in the generation and analysis of data on the food system and in the policy formation and programme design activities. This reinforces the need for donors and African governments to give high priority to developing local institutions to carry out economic policy analysis.

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IMPLICATIONS FOR DONORS

Beyond underlining the need to maintain food aid flows in the short run to deal with the present crisis, what guidance can be offered to donors? Simply increasing the volume of project-related aid is unlikely to solve African food security problems, because aid flows in many countries are constrained by the lack of absorptive capacity. For example, aid flows per caput in some African states are running at $50 to $75 per year compared with an average of $1.50 per yearin India <;>ver the 1951-70 period (Mellor 1979, p. 89). With a population only 16 per cent the size of Asia's, Africa received $8 billion of Official Development Assistance in 1982-3 from the OECD, OPEC, and the multilateral aid agencies, a larger amount of aid than Asia (excluding the Middle East) received. Kenya, for example, is finding it difficult to manage and impossible to evaluate the 600 projects that are currently being funded by 30 major donors.

Rather, there is a need for donors to reconsider the nature of the food insecurity in Africa and the types of programmes and policies required to deal with it. First, in planning longer-run policies, it is important to recognise that food security involves more than just expanded food production and grain reserves; ensuring access of the poor to food means attention has to be given to improving the efficiency of the food system and increasing the real income of the poor through a combination of employment generation, income transfers and redistribution of assets (e.g. access to education). Second, the current emphasis on 'policy dialogue' between donors and African governments, though useful, needs to be based on a better understanding of how the food system in a particular country works. How farmers, merchants and consumers respond to a higher relative price for a given crop is an empirical not an ideological issue; without a better knowledge base, much offood security planning in Africa will continue to be an exercise in 'planning without facts'. Hence, in the longer run, donors can make a major contribution to food security in Africa through helping expand indigenous scientific capacity in both the biological and social sciences, improve the quality of data on the food system and facilitate the development of the African scientific community to deal with both the biological and economic issues underlying food security. Donors should also recognise that policy reforms require time, both to build the domestic political support required to maintain them and to change the expectations of participants in the food system and hence their behaviour. It would be extremely unfortunate if policy reforms needed to improve food security were undermined because donors were impatient about the lack of immediate results.

NOTES

In preparing this paper, the authors have benefited from discussions with numerous colleagues at Michigan State University, the Institut Senegalais de Recherche Agricole, US AID (especially Don Anderson and Curt Reintsma), the University of Zimbabwe and the World Bank (especially Shlomo Reutlinger and 1. Price Gittinger). All responsibility for

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errors remains with the authors. The research supporting this paper was financed by the US Agency for International Development, Bureau for Science and Technology, and Bureau for Africa under a 'Food Security in Africa' Cooperative Agreement (DAN-1190-A-00-4092-00) with the Department of Agricultural Economics, Michigan State Univer­sity. 1Because of space limitations we do not enter into the debate concerning the standards for a 'nutritionally adequate diet' (see Poleman 1977). 2We are indebted to Shlomo Reutlinger for this distinction. 3Z$1 = US$0.65.

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