By Franklin Sisabu Bendu
The impact of COVID -19 is evolving every day. In response, countries are adapting in dynamic ways to address the ever-growing challenges of the pandemic.
Economic forecasts have been revised downwards and will continue in that direction until the economically advanced countries start to see a decline in infections and in number of deaths. Many developing countries are adjusting to the impact of COVID-19 and it is sad to see how unprepared these countries are.
In Sierra Leone, the adverse impact of COVID -19 will be with us for several months and will take a few years for our economy to get back to the projected growth path that was envisaged over the medium term.
However, in the midst of these challenges, the attention of government should also be directed to areas where progress can be made that will have a long term national impact. One such area is food self-sufficiency, specifically rice production.
When the three-day lockdown was announced, it coincided with a reduction in fuel price, but there was no corresponding reprieve for citizens. We ended up paying more for the same commodities that were sold at a lower price few days earlier. Basic food items became gold – Tapalapa bread was absent on the streets of Freetown on the eve of the lockdown. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought home the hard reality that as a nation, we are not food self-sufficient. We rely on importation of rice, onions and other food items to meet our consumption demands. COVID -19 will have an adverse impact on our food supply chain, especially rice.
Rice is our main staple food but one in which the country is still grappling to produce at industrial scale. National outputs remain at subsistence level and characterized by low yields. This can be attributed to years of neglect as we have failed, as a country, to adapt farming methods to new technologies. In addition, low investments in research and development and untimely importation of seeds, fertilizers and agrochemicals have also not helped in improving the situation.
The economic costs of relying on imported rice are high and rising. As can be seen from Graph 1 below, rice imports over the years have produced substantial burden on the exchange rate. Since 2007, the amount of foreign exchange spent on rice importation has been on the increase with the exception of 2016. In 2015 as part of the Ebola emergency response, the World Bank supported massive improved seed rice distribution which led to increase in yields and production. This resulted in the availability of rice in 2016 from local production and 2018.
The amount of foreign exchange spent on rice import is estimated to have reached an all-time high in 2019 (US$ 256 million). This imposes substantial burden on the exchange rate and translates into increase in retail price and inflation.
In nominal terms, government expenditure on agriculture has been very low. In the post-conflict period, excluding wages and salaries, government (recurrent and development) expenditure excluding donor funds peaked at US$ 8.6 million and hit an all-time low in 2018 with the sector getting only US$ 2.7 million (graph 3). Such disbursements are unlikely to ever make a country food self-sufficient.
The disparity between policy pronouncements and reality
In the post-conflict period (since 2002), various government strategies have had agriculture as one of the main sectors that will contribute to economic growth and poverty reduction. In the first Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP – I), pillar two focused on promoting pro-poor sustainable growth. In the Agenda for Change (2005 – 2007), one of the strategic priorities was “enhancing productivity in agriculture and fisheries”.
In the Agenda for Prosperity, the aim of Pillar One was to diversify the economy given the subsistence nature of the agriculture sector. As with past development priorities, the current National Agriculture Transformation Programme (NATP) (2019 – 2023) has identified rice self-sufficiency as a top priority. It is imperative that government should match its pronouncement into actual support to the agriculture sector.
At the regional level, the Africa Union has also recognized the critical role of agriculture in promoting growth and reducing poverty in Africa. African Heads of State and Government at the Second Ordinary Assembly of the African Union in July 2003 in Maputo endorsed the “Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security in Africa” (Assembly/AU/Decl. 7(II)). The Declaration contained several important decisions regarding agriculture, but prominent among them was the “commitment to the allocation of at least 10 percent of national budgetary resources to agriculture and rural development policy implementation within five years”.
However, in the post-conflict period, the sector has been grossly underfunded for it to make any meaningful impact. It has been a case of rhetoric versus reality. Commitments have not been matched with actual disbursements. For a country aiming to achieve food self-sufficiency, we are a long way from making any meaningful progress in meeting this objective. As shown in Graph 3, Sierra Leone is nowhere near the 10 percent commitment under the Maputo declaration. In fact, it has been on a downward trajectory, from 2.5 percent of the total expenditure in 2003 to 0.5 percent in 2019.
Over the coming months, there will be challenges in importing rice into the country due to the disruption COVID-19 will bring. We have seen countries imposing restriction of exports on certain essential items in order to preserve domestic supply. Furthermore, shipping costs are bound to increase, especially to countries where the pandemic will still be present. All of these are bound to have an impact on the cost of imported rice and consequently on the retail price to citizens.
At the moment, government’s attention is focused on fighting COVID-19. However, in fighting the pandemic, government should not lose focus on addressing other challenges that the pandemic has brought about. While developed countries have a range of instruments to ease the pain on their economy, developing countries need to ensure the consequences of the COVID-19 are not worse than the pandemic itself. In advanced countries, the agricultural sector contributes less than 10 percent of their GDP but produces enough to feed their population. In Sierra Leone, the agricultural sector contributes nearly 50 percent of our GDP, but still cannot feed the population because our production is at a subsistence level.
Despite years of policy commitments and pronouncements, including signing up to international/regional obligations, we are lagging behind in terms of transforming our agricultural sector to enable us become food self-sufficient. It is time to change this narrative and ensure the rhetoric becomes reality. The COVID - 19 pandemic has only worsened an already dire situation and the aftermath of the pandemic will reverse any minimal gains we have made in the past 10-12 years in the agriculture sector.
Plan of action - interventionist policy over the short to medium term
As the government is putting in place policies to mitigate the impact of COVID-19, agriculture and especially food security should be a premium element of the package of policies. Government should play an important role in partnership with the private sector, complementing their efforts rather than replacing them in the market. The government needs to undertake a few policy measures.
First, there should be a strong political commitment to increase resource allocation to the agriculture sector, with the aim of boosting food production. The adage “put your money where your mouth is” cannot be more apt at this point in time. The current allocation to the agriculture sector will not make any meaningful impact towards food production. The Ministry of Agriculture should lead the process in preparing, procuring, cultivating, harvesting, processing and marketing of rice in the short to medium term. This can be done in collaboration with the financial sector, local farmers and private investors.
Second, it is also important that we get the vital statistics that will indicate total rice consumption, estimated hectares of arable land that will meet local demand, and type of high yield rice variety that can be cultivated all year round.
Third, it is crucial that inputs such as capital equipment, seeds, pesticides and fertilizers are imported on time. This will require the procurement process to start on time and funds to be released to ensure timely delivery of inputs.
Furthermore, Government should also ensure the existing donor supported programmes on improving food productivity are re-assessed with a view to focusing on rice production. Where possible, funds should be re-programmed towards ensuring the necessary structures and inputs are in place to increase rice production.
Additionally, there is need to invest in irrigation schemes that will ensure rice producing areas have water throughout the year. Donor partners like the World Bank and the UN Food and Agricultural Organization could be approached to provide technical and financial support. In addition, government should be committed to strengthening research and development of higher-yield strains of rice, with the objective of increasing yields in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way.
Moreover, investing in post-harvest processing to ensure the end product is of better quality in order to be able to compete with imported rice and attract local demand.
Our over-reliance on imported rice is unsustainable and underscores the need to boost domestic rice production to meet demand. These policies will also help in providing employment and income for youths in the rural areas, increase consumption of other goods and will also help curb the rural-urban migration. The biggest mistake we can make is to believe that it is easy to do and that we already know enough to do it. Efforts must be massive, concerted, and sustained to be able to succeed. Government’s commitments must be met and continued. Short term political concerns with food must be translated into concrete policies to improve food self-sufficiency.
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