Introduction
The changing food balance situation
Projections of food balance situation
Delineation of the region being considered
The scope and objectives of the study
Methodological aspects: Data sources and reliability
1.01 Livestock production constitutes an important economic activity in most countries of sub-Saharan Africa¹ - The estimated average share of the livestock subsector in the agricultural income (i.e. agricultural GDP) of sub-Saharan Africa as a whole in 1980 was about 1796, but there is a great variability of this share between countries and subregions. For instance, the range in the share for individual countries was from about 2.2% for Gabon in Central Africa to about 86.3% for Mauritania in Western Africa for 1980 while the average share by subregions was from 6.4% for Central Africa to 31.4% for Eastern Africa (Jahnke, 1982).
¹ The countries included in this region of the world and their groupings are given in Table 3.
1.02 A consideration of how much the livestock subsector contributes to the national income (GDP) attributable to agriculture is just one of the methods of assessing the importance of the livestock subsector to the national economy. However, it would be more enlightening to assess the importance of the livestock subsector in terms of its contribution to food production, especially when dealing with a situation such as exists in sub-Saharan Africa whereby production of food toward higher levels of self-sufficiency is of great concern.
1.03 Milk constitutes a significant proportion of the value of all livestock food products in sub-Saharan Africa (about 56%), while livestock food products also constitute an important proportion of the value of total food products in the region. Actual estimates of the share of different types of major food products in the value of total food products in sub-Saharan Africa for the year 1977 are given in Table 1. The data in Table 1 suggest that dairy development may be expected to play a major role in bridging the gap between the local food production and consumption in sub-Saharan Africa.
Table 1 - Production of Major Types of Food Products in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1977 by Quantity and Valuee
|
Type of Food Product |
PRODUCTION |
||||
|
Quantity |
Valuee |
Share in Total Value |
Share in Value of all LP* |
||
|
(million metric tons) |
(1000 US$) |
% |
% |
||
|
1. Major Staple Food Crops: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
- cereals |
36 |
5,016,600 |
42.5 |
n/a* |
|
|
- non-cerealsa |
32 |
4,459,200 |
37.8 |
n/a* |
|
2. Livestock and Poultry |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Products: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
- meatb |
3 |
463,770 |
3.9 |
19.9 |
|
|
- milkc |
6 |
1,313,580 |
11.1 |
56.3 |
|
|
- eggsd |
0.5 |
557,450 |
4.7 |
23.9 |
LP* = livestock food products; n/a = not applicable.a/= aggregate of rootcrops, pulses, groundnuts, bananas, and plantains, all in cereal equivalents.
b/= aggregate of meat of indigenous cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and poultry, all in carcass weight equivalents.
c/= aggregate of cow, sheep and goat milk. but excludes camel milk, in whole milk equivalents.
d/= estimated to be less than a half million tons, but rounded to the nearest half million ton.
e/ = values based on average unit values (prices) of world imports and exports of respective products in 1977.
SOURCES: Paulino and Yeung (1981); FAO Trade Yearbook (1979), and FAO Production Yearbook (1979), with unit value assessments and calculations by the author.
1.04 Sub-Saharan Africa is the home of about 8% of the world human population (1980 estimate²), yet the region produces only about 4% and slightly more than 1% of the world's meat and milk products respectively (Addis Anteneh, 1984). Sub-Saharan Africa's per caput food production is generally below the world average, except in the case of per caput production of non-cereal staple food crops (Table 2).
2 Calculation based on figures from the FAO Production Yearbook (1981).
Table 2 - Average per caput Food Production in the World and Sub-Saharan Africa by Major Food Types in 1977
|
Type of Food |
Production in kg per Caput |
||
|
World |
Sub-Saharan Africa |
||
|
1. Major Staple Food Crops: |
|
|
|
|
|
- cereals |
320 |
115 |
|
|
- non-cerealsa |
50 |
100 |
|
2. Livestock and Poultry Products: |
|
|
|
|
|
- meatb |
30 |
10 |
|
|
- milkc |
150 |
20 |
|
|
- eggs |
6 |
2 |
a = aggregate of rootcrops, pulses, groundnuts, bananas, and plantains, all in cereal equivalents.b = aggregate of meat of indigenous cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and poultry, all in carcass weight equivalents.
c = aggregate of cow, sheep and goat milk, but excludes carrel milk, in whole milk equivalents.
SOURCE: Calculations based or. data compiled from Paulino end Yeung (1981).
1.05 Rapid increases in both human population and per caput disposable income in the face of slow or stagnating growth in food production in most of the member countries of sub-Saharan Africa have resulted in sub-Saharan Africa shifting its trade position in food products from a minor net exporter in the early 1960s to a major net importer in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The food situation in sub-Saharan Africa presents an even more gloomy picture when one examines the growing trade deficit situation on dairy products. Even though sub-Saharan Africa has managed to maintain a close balance between production and consumption of meat during the last two decades, the imports of milk and milk products have more than doubled during the same period (e.g. see Addis Anteneh, 1984).
1.06 Estimates of food production and the effective demand in sub-Saharan Africa by the year 2000 indicate a staggering food deficit, particularly in the major livestock products (meat, eggs and milk). The deficit in the case of milk is estimated to be over 10 million tons by the year 2000, and such a gap can be closed only if the growth in milk production during the 1980s and beyond far surpasses the growth rate of the last two decades in sub-Saharan Africa's livestock production (between 2% and 3% per annum) and reaches record levels of at least 5.3% per annum (Paulino and Yeung, 1981).
1.07 Various authors have used the terms "sub-Saharan Africa" and "Tropical Africa" to refer more or less to the same geographical land mass, sometimes with minor differences in terms of the names and actual number of countries included, and sometimes without specifying individual countries (for instance, see Jahnke (1982); Paulino and Yeung (1981); and Montgolfier - Kouevi and Vlanovou (1981)). This makes the reconciliation of results or data presented in different reports by different authors difficult. For this reason, the names of the countries included in the region referred to as sub-Saharan Africa in this study have been given in Table 3.
1.08 In this paper, sub-Saharan Africa as a region is divided into 4 subregions, namely Eastern Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, and Western Africa, the countries included in each subregion being given in Table 3.
Table 3 - Member Countries of Sub-Saharan Africa and Their Regional Groupings
1. Eastern Africa subregion:
- Comoros
- Djibouti
- Ethiopia
- Kenya
- Seychelles
- Somalia
- Sudan
- Tanzania
- Uganda
2. Western Africa subregion:
- Benin
- Chad*
- Gambia*
- Ghana
- Guinea
- Guinea-Bissau
- Ivory Coast
- Liberia
- Mali*
- Mauritania*
- Niger*
- Nigeria
- Senegal*
- Sierra Leone
- Togo
- Upper Volta*
3. Central Africa subregion:
- Angola
- Burundi
- Cameroun
- Central African Republic
- Congo
- Gabon
- Rwanda
- Zaire
4. Southern Africa subregion:
- Botswana
- Lesotho
- Madagascar
- Malawi
- Mauritius
- Mozambique
- Namibia
- Reunion
- Swaziland
- Zambia
- ZimbabweNOTE: Total Membership = 44 countries and 4 broad subregions.* Members of the Sahel group of countries in Western Africa (IFPRI classification).
1.09 Some authors further subdivide the Western Africa subregion into (i) West Africa (consisting of Benin, Ghana, Guinea Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Togo), and (ii) the Sahel group (consisting of Chad, Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, and Upper Volta) - see Paulino and Yeung (1981). Other authors have used the term "Sahelian countries" to include Sudan (see ILCA Bulletin No. 10 of December 1980), but Sudan is classified as belonging to the Eastern Africa subregion in this paper. Understanding of these groupings is important when one compares production and consumption performance using data from different sources.
1.10 The existing and the projected food balance situation in sub-Saharan Africa calls for an intensified effort to accelerate the rate of the development of the agricultural sectors³ of the economies of the countries of the region if sub-Saharan Africa is to avert a major food crisis in the future.
³ Both crop production and livestock production subsectors
1.11 This paper is based on a study of the trends of production, consumption, and prices of dairy products in sub-Saharan Africa. The major focus of the study is on the nature and the scale of operation of the dairy marketing structures, with a view to identifying areas in which improvements or reforms in marketing could contribute more effectively to the overall objectives of the dairy development policies in the region.
1.12 The analysis is biased toward an examination of the marketing of domestically produced milk and milk products, including the marketing of imported but locally reconstituted whole milk powder and recombined! (skimmed milk powder and butteroil. However, the paper also briefly examines what has been happening to the imports of other dairy products during the last two decades. A major objective of the appraisal is to assess what impacts various government dairy development and marketing policies may have had on the production and consumption of dairy products in sub-Saharan Africa. Hopefully, ah understanding of these policy impacts can help in the formulation of more appropriate policies for further dairy development in the region.
1.13 This study is principally based on the review and analysis of internationally published aggregate statistics on production trade, consumption and prices with regard to dairy products in individual countries and regions within sub-Saharan Africa. The major data sources are the FAO Production Yearbooks and FAO Trade Yearbooks (various annual issues), but other relevant published and unpublished official reports, documents and conference papers are also used. Such papers and documents ape given in the list of references. The study starts from a working assumption that such data are of acceptable reliability, even though a number of economists have pointed out weaknesses in the aggregate production, trade, and consumption statistics that are recorded and reported by the FAO, particularly for developing countries - for instance, see Paulino and Yeung (1981).
1.14 The major weakness with internationally published aggregate agricultural statistics for developing countries is attributed to methods of data collection. Efforts to improve the quality of agricultural statistics in developing countries must necessarily take a long time and improvements can only occur with economic development. Therefore, the only alternative when evaluating the performance of the agricultural sectors of developing countries over time is to make prudent use of existing data sources.
1.15 Even though the study starts from a working assumption that existing data are of reasonable quality, there are some analytical problems which arise from the fact that data are not available for some countries within the sub-Saharan Africa region. In some cases, data coverage is incomplete, a factor which may lead to an underestimation of the true situation in the region - especially in the case of on-farm dairy production estimates. However, it can be reasonably assumed that such data paucity and discrepancies do not interfere with the main thrust and essence of the analysis and the implications of the results vis-a-vis the main policy issues in livestock development in the region.
1.16 This study is organised in five major parts. The first part gives the background to the study. The second part examines and analyses trends in dairy production, trade and consumption, including a brief evaluation of developments in prices for dairy products. The third part examines and evaluates the marketing systems of dairy products, the main emphasis being on the nature of marketing structure, while the fourth part of the study examines and evaluates the impacts of government policies toward the marketing of dairy products. The final part of the study aims to identify critical issues in dairy development and marketing policies in sub-Saharan Africa that need further research.
