Domestic Food Pricing Policy, Food Aid and the Food Crisis in Africa

Abstract

Multiple regression techniques are employed to examine the impacts of domestic food pricing policy, food aid, and food imports on domestic food production in sub-Saharan Africa. It is found that agricultural input factors: fertilizers, arable lands devoted to domestic cereal production and the general productivity of the land under cultivation, exert the most significant impacts on domestic food production. On the other hand, the policy variables of interest: price control, food aid and food importation, were found to exert insignificant impacts. A major implication of these findings is that, in the short run, African governments may do well to concentrate their efforts in improving, enriching and expanding the arable lands devoted to domestic food production, other things being equal. Over the long term, innovative manpower development programs, especially those relating to women, and less dependence on the vagaries of climatic conditions, on food aid and food imports may become essential. In addition, African governments need to support their farmers with price incentives rather than price control.