Resource information
The report Africa Can Help Feed Africa
(World Bank 2012) showed that increasing food staples1
supply can be met by better connecting African markets to
each other. That report called for a stronger focus on
removing trade barriers and building on the forces of
regional integration. This report builds on the lessons of
Africa Can Help Feed Africa by looking into the specific
circum¬stances met in West Africa, home to one-third of the
continent’s population and to some of its most vulnerable
countries. Staple foods are the main source of calories in
Africa and in West Africa. In that region, rice, followed by
maize and cassava, provides the main source of calories in
coastal countries, with millet and sorghum being an
important source of food in Sahelian countries (Haggblade et
al. 2012). The challenge of food supply is particularly
acute in West Africa with some of the world’s fastest
growing populations, including urban populations. West
Africa’s 2011 population of 342 million is expected to
increase to 516 million by 2030 and to 815 million by 2050
(United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs,
Population Division 2013); in this time frame, the region’s
urban population will grow from 44 percent to 63 percent of
the total population (United Nations Department of Economic
and Social Affairs, Population Division 2014). As this
report will show, strong reasons exist to bring a more
strategic focus on promoting regional trade. The first
compelling reason is that there is already a sizeable amount
of trade in the region, revealing existing important
complementarities between countries in the ECOWAS space.
Because a large share of this trade is informal, this
reality is not always well taken into account. A second
reason is that developing these complementarities by
facilitating trade and creating the regional soft and hard
infra¬structure to incite cross-border flows would further
enable (a) the exploitation of comparative advan¬tages and
economies of scale in the region; (b) access to and
diffusion of better production technologies; (c) competitive
access to inputs, research, and extension services; and (d)
improved security in the face of shocks that lead to food
crises. Finally, a third reason is that existing national
policies that affect trade are, by and large, inefficient
and incoherent at the regional level; therefore a better use
of policy making and institutions is needed to achieve food
policy objectives.
