How the EU starves Africa into submission – CapX

kawuli:

eatingmuffinsinanagitatedmanner:

commissarchrisman:

It is estimated that Africa imports nearly 83 per cent of its food. African leaders are seeking ways to feed their peoples and become players in the global economy.

In the second edition of The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa, I argue that Africa can feed itself in a generation. However, efforts to achieve such an ambitious goal continue to be frustrated by policies adopted by Africa’s historical trading partners, especially the European Union.

There are at least three ways in which EU policies affect Africa’s ability to address its agricultural and food challenges: tariff escalation; technological innovation and food export preferences.

African leaders would like to escape the colonial trap of being viewed simply as raw material exporters. But their efforts to add value to the materials continue to be frustrated by existing EU policies.

Take the example of coffee. In 2014 Africa —the home of coffee— earned nearly $2.4 billion from the crop. Germany, a leading processor, earned about $3.8 billion from coffee re-exports.

The concern is not that Germany benefits from processing coffee. It is that Africa is punished by EU tariff barriers for doing so. Non-decaffeinated green coffee is exempt from the charges. However, a 7.5 per cent charge is imposed on roasted coffee. As a result, the bulk of Africa’s export to the EU is unroasted green coffee.

The charge on cocoa is even more debilitating. It is reported that the “EU charges (a tariff) of 30 per cent for processed cocoa products like chocolate bars or cocoa powder, and 60 per cent for some other refined products containing cocoa.”

The impact of such charges goes well beyond lost export opportunities. They suppress technological innovation and industrial development among African countries. The practice denies the continent the ability to acquire, adopt and diffuse technologies used in food processing. It explains to some extent the low level of investment in Africa’s food processing enterprises.

@kawuli? Would you add anything?

So in addition to the stuff on import tariffs the article goes into the issue of the EU essentially exporting extremely restrictive policies on GM crops. That part’s actually fascinating–there are publicly developed GM technologies to deal with disease in bananas in Uganda (where they’re a staple food, not just a tasty snack) and to control a very annoying moth pest in black-eyed pea (aka cowpea) in Nigeria. Both of these are potentially super useful! 

This is the kind of thing that I’m talking about when I say “GM technology is fine, the problem is the application.” These are publicly developed technologies that could have wide-ranging benefits. I worked with black-eyed peas aka cowpea. Pest control is a HUGE issue. GM cowpea doesn’t fix the problem of needing better seed commercialization systems, and you’ll need different varieties for different conditions, which is why it’s important not to focus on GM to the exclusion of all this other important stuff. But still, potentially very helpful. These varieties–developed by public research institutes, not big corporate nonsense, remember –can’t be released, because of overly restrictive biosafety rules which are in many cases promoted by the EU and EU and North America based NGOs. 

The one thing that this article doesn’t go into is dumping of exports from the EU into Africa. The one I’m most familiar with is powdered milk. The EU subsidizes the everloving hell out of agriculture, so EU-produced milk powder is super cheap. To the point where in Mali it is cheaper to buy imported powdered milk than to buy local milk. Which means that farmers who would like to get into dairy production can’t do so, because they can’t compete. Not because their costs are higher–they are definitely not–but because European milk powder is artificially cheap. 

How the EU starves Africa into submission – CapX