ACTESA reveals Africa spends US$19bn on food import yearly

ACTESA reveals Africa spends US$19bn on food import yearly
By Fridah Zinyama
Friday May 30, 2008 [04:00]

AFRICA currently spends an estimated US$19 billion per year on commercial food imports, Alliance for Commodity Trade in Eastern and Southern Africa (ACTESA) leader of the design team Dr James Nyoro has said. In a presentation at the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) Secretariat, Dr Nyoro said of the total of US$808 billion in maize bought and sold in the Comesa region in recent years, only approximately US$ 30 million 3.71 per cent is traded among member states. Dr Nyoro said the amount spent on food imports demonstrates the immense opportunity for trade in agricultural commodities in the region.

“The continent therefore needs to do something about the food security,” he said.

Dr Nyoro said ACTESA was therefore, created as an initiative aimed at enhancing trade in staple foods like maize, beans, bananas and cassava.

He said Comesa countries should therefore take advantage of the food crisis that is currently prevailing as they could produce to meet this demand.

“If you look at the rising food prices, a challenge is being presented to us and this means that we need to improve food production in the region,” he said.

Dr Nyoro said it was important to help small and medium scale farmers in the region to increase their food production as they contributed about 80 per cent of the food in the region.

“Once this is done, improving marketing of the staple crops will therefore become necessary,” he said.

Deputy minister for agriculture and co-operatives Daniel Kalenga urged Comesa to come up with mechanisms that would help to systematically commercialise staple crops if the region was to increase food production.

Kalenga said ACTESA was an important effort by the leaders in the Comesa region to respond to high food prices and sustainably address regional food security.

“We know that Comesa is one of the biggest producers of cassava and bananas in the world but because of lack of markets large amounts of cassava quantities in Comesa countries, including here in Zambia are never harvested,” he said.

Kalenga said Comesa was now aggressively moving to motivate farmers of staple crops in the region by developing an industrial base in which to help subsistence farmers improve production.

“The objectives of the ACTESA programme are to increase farm incomes by engaging farmers with emerging market institutions to improve commercialisation and profitability of staple crop production,” he said.

Kalenga noted that the other objective was to significantly increase staple crop trade at regional level and catalyse industrialisation through commercialisation of smallholder producers in the value chain.