Red tape aggravates food woes in East Africa

Stringent quality standards, red tape and unawareness of the customs union top the list of challenges that the East African Community heads of state face in their renewed bid to promote free flow of agricultural commodities in the region to avert looming hunger.

While policy experts acknowledge that the region has a capacity to produce enough food for its population, official barriers have slowed the movement of food crops from surplus to deficit areas, leading to glut in some parts as others within the region grapple with hunger.

“Maize for instance, is the most traded agricultural commodity in the EAC region but official barriers still make informal trade in grain more appealing within the fully-fledged custom union,” says Mr Mainza Mugoya, a programmes officer at the East African Federation of Farmers.

The region’s heads of state have organised a special summit in Arusha next month aimed at crafting the region’s food security and climate change policy that seeks to eliminate all the official and informal barriers that hinder trade in grain.

The summit is expected to approve a food security and climate change draft policy, which the EAC Secretariat has been working on.

However, the document is yet to be fine tuned by the Sectoral Council on Agriculture and Food Security incorporating ministers in charge of Environment and Natural Resources and other related dockets

The EAC leaders will be meeting just weeks after the food security meeting by the South African Development Community’s (SADC) council of ministers which kicks off in DR Congo today and whose outcome is expected to have far-reaching ramifications for the region.

Maize imports from SADC member states like Zambia, South Africa and Malawi have sustained the EAC region in times of drought.

Going by latest campaigns, however, the SADC member states are expected to press for the building of domestic reserves instead of exports.

The bloc is also expected to rally members’ food resources to fight hunger in neighbouring countries like Lesotho and Zimbabwe where the number of food vulnerable population have been growing rapidly

Over the last two years, Kenya and Tanzania have issued orders banning the sale of grains outside their borders following a prolonged drought which climaxed in the 2008 high food prices.

When they last met in Arusha in November last year to sign the common market protocol, the region’s leaders only lamented the appalling level of trade in agricultural commodities but failed to order for the removal of official sanctions.

“The Summit directed the urgent development of a climate change policy and strategies to address the adverse impact of climate change, including determining how surplus food in one country can be shared in countries that are worst hit,” said a communiqué issued after last year’s summit meeting.

Samuel Ruto, a programmes manager with the East African Grain Council reckons that most of the grains that are traded in the region usually come from locations cross to the borders.

This is because the region still lacks a proper information system which can enable farmers in rural areas to know about food shortages in far-flung areas.

“Like in Kenya, most of the grains we get from Uganda usually come from northern region which is near to the border with Kenya and because of the current drought, we have seen maize coming all the way to Kasese, through Kampala into Kenya,” Mr Ruto told the Business Daily in an earlier interview.

Farmers however maintain that even lifting government bans on grain trade would not necessarily lead to free flow of grains as other governance issues come into play.

To sell grain across the borders, the EAC quality standards demand that a trade must show a phytosanitary certificate, usually obtainable only in the capital cities.

The grain must meet a moisture content level of 13.5 per cent (compared to 14 per cent international standard), while the level of organic or foreign matter must be minimal for the consignment to be allowed into any EAC country.

“EAC standards on grain is more stringent than what other authorities, including bulk buyers like World Food Programme or national cereal bodies like Kenya’s NCPB ask for and the most unfortunate thing is that very little is done to sensitise farmers about these stringent conditions to promote formal cross border trade,” said Mr Mugoya.

Kenya is currently grappling with a huge maize production deficit of 16 million bags following eight seasonal harvest failures.

Some in the Government, insist that the State should continue to provide the duty-free incentive to allow the private sector to source maize from Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) states while another group argues that tariff walls should be erected once again to compel millers to exhaust the limited stock available within the region first.

“We will continue to sell maize flour at current prices as long as the remaining 1.5 million bags that we secured before the lapse of the duty-free facility can last but the consumer must be ready to shoulder additional cost that will be incurred if import duty is reintroduced,” Ms Paloma Fernandes, the Cereal’s Millers Association CEO, said late last month.

Other than the official barriers, the region’s heads of state are expected to agree on a common an early famine warning system that will update member states of available food types or deficits from time to time.