The AU has set 2009 as the date for the adoption of a treaty that will establish a common agricultural market encompassing 944 million consumers.

By Robert Adandé, Cotonou

Despite its immense agricultural potential, Sub-Saharan Africa remains the only place in the world to import virtually all of its food. This is anything but good in these trying times of famine and inadequate nutrition across the continent. It was precisely to prevent this that 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 organisation had already requested that a feasibility study be done to analyse the legal and economic issues that this project would entail as well as the national and regional political mechanisms that would be able to promote the sale of agricultural products across the continent.

An “open” continent

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. The void is compensated with imported goods, increasing 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%). Despite its image as an importer, Africa is exporting more and more. 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.

There is some good news, however: inter-African agricultural trade is growing. 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%. Inter-African exports of cereals is over 60% for the Union of the Arab Maghreb (UMA in French) and 90% for other regional areas.

There is some good news, however: inter-African agricultural trade is growing. 

Free trade

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 (export earnings, import quantity or high production potential). During the food protection summit of heads of state and the government of Abuja, rice, legumes, corn, dairy products, beef, poultry, palm oil and cotton were identified as being products that would fall in this category. 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.

Three market models

The study offers three common market models. The first is liberalisation across the continent. The same rules would apply to all African countries. In the second case scenario, liberalisation would occur only within regional economic communities with identical timelines and standards. But this option has two drawbacks. It prevents the creation of a continental common market and raises the issue of a country having allegiances to several regional economic communities.

The third alternative is the combination of the two prior models. Regional economic communities would be the collective basis of the common market but an accelerated procedure would be put in place for countries wishing to proceed to the immediate liberalisation of trade. The African Union’s blueprint for the implementation of the common market provides for the adoption of a state-approved protocol to speed up the liberalisation process in which regional economic communities are already involved. The protocol would also address liberalisation at the continental level with the removal of tariff and non-tariff barriers for all goods and services in 2019.