Governance, morality and food security in sub-Saharan Africa

Governance, morality and food security in sub-Saharan Africa

Agric. Admin. & Extension 28 (1988) 245-264 Governance, Morality and Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa* J. M. A. Opio-Odongo Department of Agri...

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Agric. Admin. & Extension

28 (1988) 245-264

Governance, Morality

and Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa*

J. M. A. Opio-Odongo Department

of Agricultural Economics, Makerere PO Box 7062 Kampala, Uganda

(Received

13 May 1987; accepted 3 August

University,

1987)

SUMMARY This paper is concerned with the search ,for food security in sub-Saharan A,fiica. Its main thesis is, since government interventions in agriculture may result in vulnerahilitl~ to a,food crisis, a government must therefore bear the rc~.sporzsihilit!,forprotecting those M’hobecome vulnerable as a consequence of its hehaviour or that of other agencies operating under its auspices. Planning ,fbr,fhoci.sec.urit~ embodies strategic behaviour which results in some degree of u depc~ndenc~~ or vulnerabilit~~ relationship between (i) producers, consumers and the government or other agencies, and (ii) government and other agencies (domestic or ,fbreign). Therefore, proposals are made regarding (a) the fkmlcwwk ,for strategic screening of interventions in the d@erent foodrelatcdpolic:~~ ureus in order to minimize vulnerability, and(b) the safeguards .ftir ensuring thut the inevitable dependency or vulnerability relationships do not degenerute into exploitation and hence SOWthe seeds of.famine or other t~9pe.sqj’ crisis.

INTRODUCTION Governments in sub-Saharan Africa are currently struggling to recover from the well-known agrarian crisis which Michael Lofchie26 has succinctly portrayed as a situation where ‘an increasing number of African countries cannot feed themselves. In many, domestic food production is inadequate to supply the minimal needs of growing populations and earnings from exports * A revised version of a paper presented at the African Round Table Lecture series, Joint Ccntrc for African Studies, Stanford University, CA 94305-2319, USA, 8 April 1987. 245

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J. M. A. Opio-Odongo

are insufficient to permit enough food imports to make up the difference’ (P.3). While a consensusexists on the nature and magnitude of the crisis, the types (but not relative importance) of the factors that havecontributed to the crisis, and the need for remedial measures, a fundamental difference of opinion exists on the strategies for crisis resolution. This is evident from a review of the two major documents that have beenprepared in responseto the crisis. The Acclerated developmentin sub-SaharanAfrica: An agenda,for action, which has beensponsoredby the World Bank44 (better known as the Berg Report), complains about the policies of African governments and then proposesa tactical programme best known as ‘structural adjustment’ meant to revive Africa’s traditional export-led economic growth. Consequently, it de-emphasizesthe adoption of food self-sufficiencyas a priority policy goal. The Lagos Plan of Action, which preceded the Berg report and was sponsored by the Organization for African Unity (OAU),33 alternatively recognizes the need for policy adjustment, but nonetheless exhorts its constituency to break away from the discredited export-led growth and strike a new direction with the goal of food self-sufficiency as one of the priorities.’ This fundamental differencebetweenthe Berg Report and the Lagos P/an ofAction derives from the interpretation of the crisis. The Berg Report seems to view the crisis as being a post-colonial phenomenon precipitated by inappropriate government policies and exacerbatedby the otherwise normal periodic fluctuations in the world market forces with the attendant trauma on Africa’s comparative advantage as an exporter of raw materials. But the Logos Plan of Action views the crisis as a culmination of the chronic structural pathologies of African economies that have beennurtured by the dependencyrelationships betweenAfrican countries and the industrialized world. Accordingly, it emphasizes,among other things, the need to forge effective collective self-reliance, establish regional institutions to promote collective bargaining, trade, and the development of technological and managerial capabilities for self-sustaining development. Food selfsufficiency therefore is considered a priority goal becauseof the belief that ‘people who cannot feed themselves are not in control of their destiny’ (p. 361).7 Nevertheless, viewing the crisis as a culmination of a long-term debilitating processin the management of the political economies of Africa directs specialattention to government intervention in the economy; this is a phenomenon the negative effects of which have been recognized in both documents and in the general literature on the agrarian crisis. The ubiquity of government intervention suggeststhat it must have had a profound influence in the generation of vulnerability of sub-Saharancountries to the

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agrarian crisis. If this is true, have there been recognitions and commitments by governments in the region to assume moral responsibilities for their actions? Do existing political and legal codes embody moral principles which safeguard the population against vulnerabilities caused by opportunistic interventions by either their governments or other agencies operating under government auspices? These questions are about ethics in agricultural development which unfortunately have rarely been raised or entertained in many African countries. Yet having been entrusted with (or usurped) considerable power, governments are expected to exercise such power with great responsibility. Thus, ethics in agricultural development has been chosen as the gist of the present analysis because of a conviction that the success of whatever recovery programme a country adopts will depend, first and foremost, on the will and commitment to intervene responsibly and, in the event of unforeseen consequences of interventions, to assume responsibilities in ameliorating them. Only then can external resources be combined with the will and power of a people to pursue food self-sufficiency, collective selfreliance, and self-sustaining national development as the common good. VULNERABILITIES

AND

MORAL

RESPONSIBILITIES

The major premise here is that whoever harms or endangers the common good (e.g. food security) by deliberate policy interventions has a prima facie obligation to prevent or remedy that danger or harm. From this follows the basic thesis that because government interventions in agriculture or the economy may result in vulnerabilities to crisis, especially food insecurity, a government must therefore bear the responsibility for protecting those who become vulnerable because of its actions and choices. In explicating the thesis, an attempt is made (a) to provide conceptualizations of vulnerability and moral responsibility,(b) to indicate what constitutes a moral failure, and (c) to propose a principle of protecting the vulnerable as well as a strategy toward modes of agricultural management or governance of the rural economy which minimize vulnerability. The position taken here has been considerably influenced by the works of Aiken,’ Goodin,i7 and Kent.” Vulnerability may be construed as a predisposition to, or threat of being under, harm by some agent. By definition, therefore, vulnerability is a relational concept, demanding that the object and agent of vulnerability be specified. In our case, the object of vulnerability is the segment of a population experiencing agrarian crisis (e.g. famine); and the agent is any agency, including government, whose actions and choices affect others. The predisposition to harm could result from acts of commission or omission by the agent(s) in question.

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Holding such agents morally responsible for their actions or choices means that we expect them to be answerable for their behaviour in accordancewith the prevailing social (or legal) conventions. If in the process of determining the moral failures of such agents it is established that they were truly unable to foreseethe consequencesof their actions or choices for the interest of others, given the available pertinent information, then they should be exonerated.6q35 But they may still be expectedto remedy the harm done if, and only if, they have,or could be provided with, the meansto do so and are the only ones in the position to help. Alternatively, should it be establishedthat the agentswillingly ignored or negligently failed to consider the consequencesof their actions or choices for others, then it is incumbent upon them to make good the harm done. This, however, assumesthat there exists an adequate information system to guide moral judgement. Nevertheless,acting responsibly simply means that an agent must act ‘with due regard for the consequencesof [its] actions and choices’ (p. 113).” Following from the recognition of moral responsibility is the principle of protecting the vulnerable, which therefore is consequential upon the central injunction that agents’actions and choicesbe framed in sucha way that they provide consequences which protect the interests of those who are particularly vulnerable to such behaviour. Since it is usually the welfare of the population that is at stake, this principle is precisely welfare consequential.36*37In practice, protecting the vulnerable would involve reallocation of time, energy,money and other resourcesin order to avert or ameliorate harm to others resulting from specific actions or choices. At this juncture, however, three pertinent questions must be raised: Could government interventions in sub-Saharan Africa have been responsible for the vulnerability to drought and famine? How did governments respond to the agrarian crisis? What lessonscan be learned from the experienceswith the agrarian crisis which may facilitate the institutionalization of modes of governance which minimize vulnerability? These questions are addressed below. GOVERNMENT

INTERVENTION

IN AGRICULTURE

To ‘intervene is to enter into ongoing systems of relationship, to come between or among persons, groups, or objects for the purpose of helping them,’ and the motivation for the assistancemay ‘range from helping the clients make their own decisions about what kinds of help they need to coercing clients to do what the intervenor wishes them to do’ (p. 15).2At the risk of the danger of an over-generalization, it may be argued that the actions and choices of governments in sub-SaharanAfrica have manifested this double-edged kind of benevolence. Lord Lugard’s celebrated ‘dual

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mandate’ of the British in Africa epitomizes that kind of benevolence.The mandate charged the colonizers to (a) help the natives develop their resources for the natives’ own good; and (b) use those same resourcesto produce raw materials that were required by the British industries. Indeed historical evidencesuggeststhat other European powers which ruled Africa had similar mandates.40v42 In any event, before 1900‘many parts of sub-SaharanAfrica, especially West Africa, were engaged in a process of relatively autonomous development, tied to the European world in a limited but important manner through the intermediary of merchant or state trading agents on each side, who were in turn linked, in some casesambivalently, to political authorities on each side.. .’ (p. 402).40Similarly, ‘Regardlessof when food production took hold in various parts of Africa, it is clear that farming was well established throughout the bulk of the continent by the time the American crops-maniac (cassava),the sweet potatoes, corn (maize), and peanuts (groundnuts)-entered the sceneafter 1492’(p. 153).12 Colonialism therefore came as a form of intervention into ongoing African agricultural and economic systems geared basically to serving domestic interests. Overseeingthesepre-colonial systems were the different native governments which, although consideredby Western commentators as having been authoritative and exploitative, evinced considerable moral responsibilities for the vulnerable.27v38What Shenton and Watts have discerned from the pre-colonial record on Northern Nigeria may not have been unique to the area. They draw two important conclusions from their analysis of that historical record, namely (a) that the adaptations to the possibility of food shortageswere embedded within and inseparable from the constitution of society itself; and (b) that given the low level of productivity resulting from the technological limitations of the means of production, the societal responseto crisis worked reasonably well.38 But when colonial governments subsequently acquired monopolistic rights over African resources and successfully incorporated the colonial economies into the imperial (and later, world) economic system, the main emphasis was on the promotion of import-export trade to the neglect of food security as a development priority. In essence,they specifically intervened in agriculture in order purposively to mediate the relationships betweennative producers and the production environment as well as those between the producers and the traditional appropriators of surplus (use value) in order to facilitate the expansion of export agriculture. Examples of such interventions include: 1.

The introduction of land laws which either endorsedthe existing land tenure systemsor creatednew onesto suit the political interests of the

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2.

3.

4.

colonizers2* In the British colonies, for example, land laws were instrumental in the empowerment of rural elites who became the confederates in promoting indirect rule and export agriculture. Hence the support for either communal or private tenure depended on the political circumstances with which the colonizers were faced.4 Consequently, where private tenure became dominant, the promotion of export agriculture and the price controls on food crops discouraged investments in food production. And in places where communal tenure became dominant, the prohibition of commercial transactions in land made the capitalization of agriculture difficult. This situation, together with the price controls on food crops, acted as disincentives to surplus production of food crops. The introduction of agricultural research,extension and credit, with a strong bias for the promotion of export crops and large-scale production schemes (dry-land or irrigated). This bias meant that investments were concentrated within the export sector thus undermining the local food system. The proclivity for modern methods of production, especially the mania with tractorization and large-scale production schemes,have resulted not only in lack of significant gains in production, but also in fostering ecological degradation and directing the efforts of local producers participating in them away from food production. These kinds of initiatives representedwhat Rene Dumont has described cogently as a ‘false start’ in the development of African agriculture.i3 The introduction of different forms of taxes payable in cash meant that men had to devote a considerable proportion of their labour time to cash-generating activities. Export cropping and migratory wage-labouring were the more common options which, to some degree,adversely affected local food production. In the case of the British colonies in West Africa, the monetization of taxation in Hausaland also resulted in the dissolution of state granaries which were the repositories of earlier commodity-based taxes.The colonial government believed that it ‘had little use for large supplies of grain’ (p. 57).38This, therefore, reducedthe capability of local food systems to buffer production shortfalls and hence making them more vulnerable to famines. The creation of labour reservoirs to supply cheap migratory labour to the plantations and mines. This had two major effectson the food situation in the target areas. First, because wives of migratory labourers had to become de facto heads of households with all the responsibilities incumbent upon them, considerable proportions of the labour time which they usually devoted to food crops had to be

Food

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in sub-Saharan

A,frica

251

diverted to other activities including cash cropping. Second, because labourers in the mines and plantations were treated basically as cost items, food prices had to be regulated at ridiculously low levels in order to maintain low wages (at or below subsistence) without evoking labour unrest. Such low wages could not generate effective demand for wage goods such as food, and, coupled with low food prices, dampened the initiative for surplus food production. Notable exceptions here were Kenya and the Rhodesias (Zambia and Zimbabwe) where the white settlers lobbied for the promotion of food crops, especially maize.’ 2 Thus, as Lemarchand has convincingly concluded, ‘the colonial record provides ample proof of food crisis originating not just from adverse climatic conditions but also from policy decisions that, directly or indirectly, profoundly undermined the viability of indigenous food systems’ (p. 26).22 The promotion of export agriculture in particular ‘meant a reduced production of food. When less was grown, there was less to store as reserve in case of a natural or economic disaster’ (p. 73).” Consequently, family reserves were quickly depleted as was the case in Mali where the ‘demands to work the commandant’s fields, [and to] supply labour for building the colony’ (p. 16)5 exacerbated production shortfalls. Precisely, colonial interventions contributed to the vulnerability to the agrarian crisis. In the case of post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa, government interventions in agriculture represent an elaboration of a colonial heritage, excepting, of course, those in Ethiopia which was never colonized. Invariably, the interventions have reflected the competition of vested interest groups in the management of the agrarian economy. The interventions have often been justified as a means of ensuring effective management of the means and relations of production. Nature has had to be tamed and the exploiters of local producers kept at bay! In a recent article on the food crisis in sub-Saharan Africa,32 an attempt was made to demonstrate the manner in which such interventions fostered or exacerbated vulnerability to the crisis. The interactions between the degrees of proneness of the ecosystem to drought, the dynamism of the forces of production (e.g. technology), and the rigidity of the institutional structure (reflecting the relations of production) were shown to result in the different crisis types, shown in Table 1. This typology will be used to provide some illustrative examples of the manner in which government interventions in agrarian management induced or exacerbated vulnerability to drought and famine. The examples will follow a brief review of the range of choices and political constraints that faced the post-colonial governments which influenced the nature of the interventions in agriculture.

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J. M. A. Opio-Odongo TABLE

1

Types of Food Crisis Rigidity of institutional structure

Dynamism of the productive forces

Less

More

Vulnerability

of ecosystem to drought

Less

More

More

Crisis very rare (1)

Crisis usually averted (2)

Less

Crisis incipient but could be widespread (3)

Crisis frequent and widespread (4)

More

Crisis induced but localized (5)

Crisis frequent localized but buffered (6)

Less

Crisis induced and widespread (7)

Crisis intractable and widespread (8)

Source: Opio-Odongo.3’

As Lofchie23 points out, the post-colonial regimes inherited welfareoriented statesat a time when the economic and industrial capacities of the countries were not strong enough to meet the welfare needsof politically highly participant populations. They were therefore confronted with problems of acute uncertainty of state revenue and the integration of divergent interests in order to avoid upsetting the fragility of the state machinery.41 Initially they pursued the agricultural development strategies of their colonial ex-masterswhich emphasizedexport-led growth. But social, political, and economic pressures soon compelled most of them to reconsider the merits of the development strategies in vogue. By the mid-1960s therefore, even if export promotion was retained in order to ensure foreign exchange earnings, some countries introduced changes in the socio-economic organization of production. Hence, while some countries continued to embrace capitalism, maintaining open-door policies for foreign investment, others turned to socialism, emphasizing the promotion of collective ownership of the means of production. The range of the attendant development strategieshas beencategorizedby Wallerstein4’ as either conservative or radical, and by Ndulu3’ as either liberal or state capitalist or national-collectivist. But, did the modifications in development strategiesinduce or exacerbatevulnerability to agrarian crisis? A definitive answer to this question is impossible in the light of the available evidence. Nevertheless, the demonstrated lack of a strong

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association between development strategy and the occurrence of crisis l9 suggeststhat either the strategieshad no direct influence on the crisis or that vulnerability to the crisis could have beeninduced or exacerbatedby any of the strategies if the preconditions for buffering it were ignored. The latter interpretation seems the more plausible, and we will pursue it through illustrative examples following from the crisis typology in Table 1. Our first example is in crisis Type 7 which occurswithin an ecosystemthat is principally less prone to drought. But how could drought or famine be induced within such an ecosystem?A very likely possibility is a system of governancewhereby unjust social, economic and legal orders, coupled with the greed for foreign exchange that may result in mortgaging a country’s critical resources to foreign investors, results in the neglect of food production or environmental conservation. Feudal Ethiopia under the late Emperor Haile Selassieprovides an empirical example of this situation; the inequality in land distribution (which made 90 per cent of the producers tenants on feudal estates), and the expansion of large-scale export agriculture aswas the casein Awash Valley, acceleratedthe marginalization and vulnerability of peasant families to food crisis. In short, the ‘government plans, tax incentives, credit policies, and infrastructure projects abetted large-scale commercial agricultural enterprises engaged in producing cash crops for export . . . while the laws and policies governing resourceallocation for agricultural development.. . failed to promote and often retarded the production of food for domestic consumption by small-scale farmers and pastoralists’ (p. 52).2’ Consequently, a country which had been considered by some development experts as a potential bread basket for the Horn of Africa and the Middle East lo was transformed into one of severefamine in the 1970s. The secondexample is with referenceto crisis Type 8 which occurs in an ecosystem that is principally drought prone. The most likely events which may translate occasional droughts into famine include the undermining of traditional means of coping with drought, reckless land management especially in pursuit of quick and handsome profits, and the careless substitution of so-called modern methods of production and management for the local producers’ indigeneous technical knowledge and management strategies. What has transpired in the Sahelian countries lends support to this processof exacerbatingdrought and translating it into famine.15Mali is the empirical example used here. Export-cropping based especially on soilmining crops, sometimes under conditions of large-scale mechanized production and the neglect of the traditional means of coping with drought and living peacefully with the environment, made the country more vulnerable to famine.sg24

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J. M. A. Opio-Odongo

In the case of the remainder of French West Africa, Ball indicates that ‘Throughout the twentieth century, successiveFrench administrators and West African governments have attempted to maximize the returns from the livestock sector while minimizing the inputs. The failure of this strategy and the inherent ecological danger were demonstrated in the 1968-73 drought’ (p. 521).3Elsewhere,other forms of intervention have beenblamed for some of the crisis types identified in Table 1: for instance, Tanzania’s agrarian crisis (Type 3) has beenattributed to its villagization policy of the 1960~;~~~~~ Mozambique’s crisis (Type 3) has been linked to similar socialist development strategy;29and Botswana’s ecological degradation (Type 6) has been attributed to the intrusion of commodity relations and modern technology which hasprovided the impetus for the privatization of the water and grazing land even in areas of considerable ecological instability.’ The post-colonial record also provides ample proof of food and agrarian crises originating not only from adverseclimatic conditions but also from government interventions in agriculture. It is to the responsesof colonial and post-colonial governments to the food crisis that we now turn. GOVERNMENT

RESPONSES TO FOOD CRISIS

The examplescited above indicate that government interventions had either induced or exacerbatedthe food crisis. So do the detailed casestudies in the two more recent books on the food situation in sub-Saharan Africa.“*‘* Even if the weight of the evidencefrom thesesourcewere not overwhelming, it would still be necessaryto examine the manner in which governmentsmet their moral obligations. This is because,under a crisis situation, it is to governments that citizens turn when all else fails ‘in the belief that their government and its representativeshave a duty to protect them’ (p. 25).16It is in this context that we seek to establish whether or not there have been casesof moral failures by governments. Moral responsibility to the vulnerable was often invoked by traditional rulers as a justification for collecting tributes from, and enforcing food reservesfor, their subjects.27,38But how did the colonial and post-colonial governments guard against or act to ameliorate the effectsof a food crisis? An adequate answer to this question requires a comprehensive case-bycase evaluation of the situations in the different sub-Saharan countries which is beyond the scope of this paper. Nonetheless, an attempt is made here to provide examples of the behaviour of colonial and post-colonial governments in the wake of a food crisis. In the colonial era when some of the interventions resulted in food production shortfalls, reactions were mixed. One category of reactions which characterizeda moral failure comes from Northern Nigeria. Here the

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dissolution of the aforementioned traditional state grain reservesand the growing need for cash to meet different obligations had begun to make peasant households more vulnerable to famine. Their vulnerability to the babbanyunwa (literally, great hunger) of 1914was a clear manifestation of this.38 Yet the colonial government chose not to act to protect the vulnerable. Instead it systematized its methods of revenue assessmentand tax collection. It was not until the second major food shortage of 1926-27 (JZMMZY k~~na) that the idea of instituting a famine reservewas entertained. Even then it had to be shelved because ‘officialdom feared that instituting of reserves would inculcate in the peasantry a dependenceon government relief; an argument reminiscent of the attitudes behind the British Poor Laws of the previous century’ (p. 59).38 Consequently, further government interventions resulted in worse famines. For example, during the 1940sthe war situation impelled the colonial government to enforce (a) the conscription of labour for the northern Nigerian tin mines and (b) the ‘groundnut campaign’ to meet the (northern) Nigerian quota. Both measures were essentially gearedtoward buffering the effectsof World War II on the tin and groundnut supply to Britain and the allies. But the consequenceof thesemeasures‘for large areasof the north was famine, strikingly similar to the contemporary Great Bengal Famine of 1943’ (p. 60).38 However, in British East Africa the colonial states’ reactions to the consequencesof their interventions in agriculture represented forms of moral responsibility. In the case of Tanganyika (Tanzania), for example, deliberate actions were taken to safeguard local food security which had begun to be undermined by the promotion of export agriculture. Two such measuresare noteworthy. In the 1920sordinances were enacted in order to ensureadequate food production at the household level and to control the movement of food stuffs within districts during periods of expected shortages.Secondly,in responseto the worst incidence of famine in Bugufi in 1930, an institutional mechanism was established to ensure effective responseto disaster. As Bryceson (pp. 301-2)’ points out: ‘Circular No. 33 of 1930entitled “Famine and Famine Relief” set out explicit administrative procedures for dealing with famine, from monitoring early warning signs to the final accounting of food issues. Emphasis on precautionary measures to be taken in drought-prone areasincluded the planting of reservesof drought resistant crops and the establishment of village or regional food stores.Relief work projects were to be designatedin advance as well as positions of food stores in the event of famine. All the District Officers were instructed to write annual “after the harvest food supply” reports. If famine relief was

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dispensed,attempts were made for recipients to pay at the time of issue or the next harvest, in kind or cash, but if the peasantscould not pay, relief was to be given free at the Government’s expense,unless for special reasonsit was consideredthat the native administration should pay.’ Others may have reasonsto question the moral validity of such measures. But the morality of such actions may be viewed as deriving basically from the simple fact that irrespective of whatever the ulterior motives which prompted such measures, they were nonetheless pursued also with a countervailing good (food security) in mind. And this certainly is by no means an apology for the colonial enterprise. In the post-colonial era, government responseshave also been mixed. A casefor moral failure has been made of the general systematic corruption and systematic greed, false pride, and the deliberate manipulation of the disaster (food crisis) for political advantage.16,21,43This callousness has often resulted in considerable, but avoidable, loss of life. The most publicized of such moral failures was that of the late Emperor Haile Selassie’sregime in Ethiopia which chose to delay famine relief despite the knowledge, made available to it by domestic and foreign agencies,that the food situation was worsening especially in Wallo Province.‘6’43 Nevertheless,moral responsibility has also beenexercisedby some postcolonial governments in sub-SaharanAfrica. Wiseberg (p. 302)43notes the cases of Nigeria and the Sahelian countries, particularly Senegal and Mauritania. The government of Senegalis on record for having ‘made severe sacrificesin its own use of transport facilities to assist Mali and Mauritania to meet their cereal import needs.. .‘. The Government of Mauritania, in January 1973,established an Emergency Fund to which each wage earner was expectedto give one day’s pay per month, and every company 1 per cent of its monthly turnover towards ‘famine relief’. In Nigeria, $75 million was committed to famine relief in its northern states and $15 million towards relief in the Sahel. Generally, the widespreadinterest that beganin the early 1980sin seeking food security through national food strategiesthat were to be evolved under the auspices of the World Food Council45 signalled the emerging consciousness of governments of their moral responsibilities to their subjects. Indeed by early 1982, Cape Verde, Gambia, Kenya, Mauritania and Nigeria had already prepared their initial strategy. Cameroon, Madagascar, Mali, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, and Zambia were expectedto complete initial strategy by late 1982 or early 1983.Benin, Congo, Liberia, Ruanda, Senegal,Uganda and Sudan were considering offers for technical assistancefor strategy preparation by 1982.

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Much more recently, through the auspicesof the Economic Commission for Africa and the United Nations General Assembly, the African governments have also proposed a priority prgramme for economic recovery for the period 1986-90 in anticipation of considerable external financial support.3g The programme includes three short-term measures aimed at combating food emergencies,namely (a) creating and sustaining national emergency preparedness, (b) establishing flexible and efficient regional networks of crop protection agencies,and (c) establishing national food security arrangements. In the medium term the emphasis will be on increasinginvestments in agriculture; increasing food production; restoring, protecting and developing arable land; establishing remunerative produce pricing policies; increasing the use of fertilizers, improved seeds and pesticides; establishing reforestation, drought and desertification control programmes including firewood schemes,and so on. Evidently, many of the governments in sub-SaharanAfrica have evinced conscious efforts to seek national food security. There are, of course, different ways of meeting this need. But the searchfor food security takes place at a time when many of the governments are faced with constraints that severely limit the range of choices available to them. Hence, the probabilities are high that food security-oriented interventions in agriculture, or the economy as a whole, would produce other forms of vulnerability or exacerbatethe current food insecurity. These constraints include: (1) the frequent political instability which complicates the determination of the common good; (2) the increasing uncertainty of state revenuegiven the unfavourable world market situation, especially the low prices for certain agricultural raw materials; and hencethe temptation for a greater promotion of export agriculture; (3) the unequal partnership with agribusinessfirms which may undermine the promotion of staple foods that have no export value; and (4) the growing tendency among the more powerful food-surplus countries to indulge in punitive food diplomacy, thus making any reliance on food aid riskier now than before. It is to the implications of these constraints and the other aforementioned factors regarding the food situation in sub-SaharanAfrica that we now turn. IMPLICATIONS The analysis so far has establishedfour empirical facts on the food situation in sub-Saharan Africa. These are: (a) that government interventions in agriculture have often induced or exacerbatedfood insecurity; (b) that the reactions of governments to the food insecurity have beenmixed, including cases of moral failures and those of deliberate efforts to avert food

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insecurity; (c) that most governments in the region have recently begun to seek national food security; and (d) that certain factors pose serious constraints to the search for food security thus minimizing the range of choices available to governments. Two main implications follow from theseempirical facts. First, becausea government will ultimately bear the blame for moral failures, especially given the usual promises by headsof state that they stand to ‘protect the lives and property’ of their people, it is imperative that it establishes an institutional mechanism for ensuring that its own agenciesand others acting under its auspices intervene in agriculture responsibly. Second, because planning for food security essentiallyembodies strategic choicesand actions which inevitably creates some dependency or vulnerability relationships betweenproducers (or consumers)and the different agenciesoperating in a country, it is necessarythat a government enacts and enforces legislations which forestall the translation of these relationships into those of exploitation. In elaborating on thesetwo implications, food security will be construed as ‘the ability of individuals and householdsto meet their staple food needs on a year-round basis from home production, the domestic market, or imported food’ (p. 257).14Hence,any actions or choicesthat are made in the search for food security which result in the inability of individuals and households to meet their food needson a year-round basis from any or a combination of the aforementioned sourceswould produce food insecurity. Regarding the institutional mechanism for ensuring that interventions in agriculture are made responsibly, only the generic characteristics of such a mechanism are proposed here. Differences in the prevailing circumstances between sub-Saharan countries preclude specifications on the nature and location of the mechanism within the economy,which nonethelessare beyond the scope of the present analysis. The three main generic characteristics of the institutional mechanism for responsible intervention in agriculture would be: 1.

2.

3.

Specific ethical parameters which reflect the dominant agrarian or societal values.Such parameters would provide the basisfor rational decision-making on the merits of all relevant policy options and the alternative courses of action for each one of them. A dynamic information system consisting of both indigenous and modern technical, managerial, and other forms of relevant data. Without it, the ethical screening of relevant policy options and the alternative courses of action within a policy domain would be difficult and very haphazard. An analytical capability which permits comprehensive ex anre

Food security in sub-Saharan

Land

tenure

Food

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Marketing Others

Fig. 1.

Vulnerability-minimizing scheme.

appraisal and ex post evaluation of the agrarian situation such that: (a) the consequences of a given form of intervention can be determined as much as possible; (b) the groups that are potentially vulnerable to a given form of intervention are identified; (c) the net social benefits of an intervention are determined; (d) appropriate remedial measures are specified in order to ameliorate the undesired consequences of certain interventions; and (e) necessary legislations are enacted such that agencies which may choose to intervene irresponsibly are made accountable to society. Again, the existence of a dynamic information system would facilitate this process. Figure 1 provides an illustration of the kind of scheme which would incorporate these characteristics in the process of screening different forms of intervention. Use of such a scheme would force agencies which choose to intervene in agriculture explicitly to recognize the consequences of their choices and actions for the welfare of others in society and to expect to be held accountable for such consequences. Indeed, the scheme would be of particular value in screening some of the topical policy options facing governments in sub-Saharan Africa. Among these are the following: 1.

Adopting the structural adjustment programme being recommended by the World Bank given the domestic political situation and the unlikely strong external financial support. That is, what is the

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acceptable trade-off between economic efficiency and political stability? 2. Forging a strong alliance with the agribusinessfirms for large-scale food production as a shortcut to eliminating food insecurity. That is, what are the likely costs of this option for the availability of food to the peasant or smallholder families whose production systems may be undermined? 3. Permitting agro-chemical companies and food processingindustries to operate in the country unrestrained. What are the costs to society in delaying the enactment of specific national legal codes that could protect producers, consumers and the environment against the consequencesof irresponsible behaviour of such companies, for instance the dumping of chemicals that have beenbannedelsewhere? 4. Permitting the private sector, especially foreign agribusiness companies, to penetrate and gain monopoly control over the seed industry. With the growing profit-oriented biotechnology movement would such a monopoly power considerably undermine a country’s efforts toward food security and sustainable agricultural development? 5. Permitting parastatal organizations to enjoy monopsony power over the food market regardlessof how well they perform or reverting to the free market mechanism. What consequenceswould either option have for food security? 6. Continuing to depend on food imports despite the increasing tendency among the more powerful food-exporting countries to indulge in punitive food diplomacy and the uncertainty of the availability of sufficient foreign exchange to meet the import bill. That is, what are the likely costs to food security if the traditional comparative advantage principle is maintained?31 However, no claim is being made here that the proposed vulnerabilityminimizing schemeis a novel idea. Nonetheless,the fact that past actions or choices that produced vulnerability to ecological disaster and famine have been repeatedin most countries ’ 5 suggeststhat the ideas embodied in the schemehave either beenoverlooked or ignored. The latter situation is most likely the case because choices and actions that have induced such vulnerabilities have been a reflection of the hegemony of some special interest groups (indigenous and foreign) which compels governments to intervene in favour of such groups, or to refrain from interventions that undermine their interests,irrespective of the attendant vulnerability of other groups in society to the consequencesof such behaviour.5*‘5’21 In any event, the establishment of the institutional mechanism for

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ensuring that interventions in agriculture are made responsibly is, by itself, insufficient to avert food insecurity. By their very nature, governanceand policy-making usually create power-dependence relationships with the attendant potential danger that what otherwise should remain as ethically appropriate subordination of producers (or consumers)to other groups in society may be translated into defucto subordination of power. Such power may then be used by the stronger non-producer groups, for instance, to exploit the weaknessesof the producers. There is, therefore, a needto guard against this potential danger.There are two possible ways to circumvent the problem, namely (a) to encouragethe producers (or other vulnerable groups) to organize themselvesin order to defend against exploitation or other forms of harm; and (b) to enact legislation which forestalls the possibility of other groups acquiring and using unbridled power in their relationships with producers or other vulnerable groups. Indeed, both strategiesshould be applied simultaneously given the weaknessesof producer organizations and the generalineffectiveness of the bureaucraciesin sub-Saharan Africa. An effective implementation of these strategies coupled with a sound management of the institutional mechanism for ensuring responsible intervention would usher in an era of a benign mode2’ of agrarian management (if not governance).Most probably, this would undermine the interests of thosewho benefit from the statusquo.And given the weaknessof the producer special interest groups and the infancy of the environmental movement, a government that choosesto intervene responsibily by insisting on the fundamental principle of protecting the vulnerable from the consequencesof behaviours of change-inducing agenciesmay antagonize groups whose interests are undermined. Hopefully, by intervening responsibly a government may in the long run eliminate the food crisis, strengthen its legitimacy and authority, foster political stability and therefore be more capable of utilizing domestic and external resourcesavailed to it by others for sustainable development. A likely alternative, of course, is a deposition by groups whose interests it has undermined. CONCLUSION In this paper the issueof ethics in agricultural development is analyzed with special referenceto the agrarian crisis in sub-SaharanAfrica. The analysis is based on the premise that whoever harms or endangersthe common good (food security) has a prima facie obligation to prevent or remedy the attendant danger or harm. On the basis of available evidence,it has been

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establishedthat although government interventions in agriculture produced food insecurity the responsesof governments to the food crisis have been mixed, including cases of both moral failures and deliberate actions to remedy or avert food insecurity. But in recognition of the more recent efforts by most governments in the region to seek food security, proposals are made on how future interventions in agriculture could be made responsibly in order to ensure food security and minimize other related forms of vulnerability within the agrarian economies.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The author extends special gratitude to Stan Dundon and Richard Ryan for their valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and to Kim Mansur for excellent secretarial assistance.

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