A sustainable future for Africa through continental free trade and agricultural development

Abstract

Developing and integrating agricultural markets may be key to address Africa's sustainability challenges. By modelling trade costs from farm-gate to potential import markets across eight African regions, we investigate the impact of individual components of continental free trade and the complementary role of domestic agricultural development through increased market access for farmers and agricultural intensification. We find that free trade would increase intra-African agricultural trade six-fold by 2030, butas it does not address local supply constraintsoutside food imports and undernourishment would reduce only marginally. Agricultural development could almost eliminate undernourishment in Africa by 2050, at only a small cost of increased global greenhouse gas emissions. While continental free trade will be enabled in Africa through the African Continental Free Trade Area, aligning this with local agricultural development policies will be crucial to increase intra-African trade gains, promote food security and achieve climate objectives. MainAgriculture plays a key role in ensuring a sustainable future for Africa. Currently, about 19% of the African population is undernourished 1 . Despite rapid growth in agricultural production in Sub-Saharan Africa since 2000 2 , food production did not keep up with increasing food demand thereby building up a high dependency on imports from outside Africa 3 . While international imports increase food availability and diet diversity 4 , they also imply risk from global market uncertainty 5 , especially for countries with high food insecurity and volatile export earnings 6 . Further, production growth in the past decades in Africa relied mainly on cropland expansion rather than yield intensification 2 , driving deforestation and related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 7 . Future food demand is expected to continue to grow rapidly in Africa as income increases 8 , the total population doubles 9 and the urban population almost triples 10 by 2050. Meeting this demand without increased import dependence or cropland expansion poses a major challenge 11,12 . In this context, the modernization and regional integration of agri-food systems can be key to eliminate hunger, ensure sustainable production growth and induce broader economic transformation in Africa 2,13-15 . In the past decades the modernization of developing countries' food systems lowered food prices and reduced seasonal variation in food supply 16 . Agricultural productivity growth under the Green Revolution in Asia, Latin America and Middle East tripled global crop production, while being land sparing and emission saving 17 . Improved access to domestic and international markets may in theory also reduce pressures on natural resources by relocating agriculture to the most productive areas, though impacts in the past decades have been negative instead due to deforestation and cropland expansion effects [18][19][20] . In Africa, there is still a huge potential to develop domestic agricultural markets and expand internati...

Risk-Adjusted Strategies to Protect Food Supply and Farmer Livelihoods in West Africa

“…While this paper does not address the complexity of the implementation challenge, here we point at the most obvious factors. Trade liberalization is a prerequisite to obtain the benefits of risk pooling, and therefore further economic integration in the region is required [1,29,46]. In order to sell food surpluses in good years and optimally allocate crop production over a larger area, appropriate investment in the distribution infrastructure is necessary [47].…”

Growth, fiscal and welfare implications of trade liberalization in Africa: A macro‐micro modeling assessment of the Senegalese economy

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The impacts of polycrises on global grain availability and prices

“…Fourth, a SPEM allows for embedding different types of shocks, including price shocks, supply shocks, and shocks to bilateral trade costs (e.g., trade bans). Although SPEM are usually set up for longer-term (partial) equilibrium simulations 44,45 , for instance given decreasing trade tariffs or cost, we adjust the standard SPEM formulation to make it suitable for shock simulations in the short-term (e.g., one-off shock). Moreover, we introduce stocks in the modelling framework, which are essential to understand supply shortages in the short-term but are usually omitted for future-orientated model applications.…”

“…At the baseline, the SPEM model assumes that the decision to supply from certain regions is purely based on cost differentials of the total landed cost of goods (that is the cost to produce crops and ship to the consumer). However, there are non-cost elements which determine where countries source from, and hence, the model need to be calibrated on existing trade data to capture cost and non-cost related factors that determine the supply network of speci c countries 44,46 .…”