Policies and Strategies for 
Promoting Rice Production and 
Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa

Regional Workshop

Africa Rice Center (WARDA)
Cotonou, Benin

7-9 November 2005

RATIONALE

Rice is a major source of livelihood to smallholder farmers, processors and traders and is a major food for urban and rural dwellers in West and Central Africa, where the demand for this staple is growing at the rate of 6% per annum—faster than anywhere else in the world. In Eastern and Southern Africa, where rice is not a traditional food, annual per capita consumption is also increasing and has reached 15 kg. For sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), rice consumption has grown by 5.3% over the period 1995 to 2001, while production growth rate during the same period is only about 2%. 

To meet the high demand for rice, imports increased over the same period by 8.4% per annum, thus, SSA now accounts for 20% of total world rice imports. Given this trend, SSA countries are spending more than US$1.2 billion annually on rice imports, depriving these countries of scarce foreign exchange that could instead be used to import strategic industrial and capital goods. 

Among the SSA countries, the bulk of the projected increase in rice imports and consumption is expected from Nigeria, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Liberia. Most of these countries have suitable agro-ecologies for increasing their domestic rice production; however, they may continue to rely on imports if policies to adequately promote domestic production and development of regional markets are not put in place.

While research advances have contributed to solving some of the most important supply side and production problems, the policy and technological environments in which rice development occurs are still limiting factors. The recent development and release of the NERICA rice varieties, is an example of technologies for solving supply side constraints. Despite this technology breakthrough, for rice dissemination networks such as the African Rice Initiative (ARI) and other donor-supported projects to be successful, such programs require good national or regional macro- and micro-economic policies and trade policies that support the development of a competitive domestic rice sub-sector. 

Over the past 2 years, international rice prices have been increasing and are still on an upward trend as rice consumption worldwide outstrips production more and more. This development enhances the competitiveness of rice production in SSA. Also, it is now a year since the declaration of 2004 by the UN General Assembly as the “International Year of Rice”. Given these developments and the growing significance of rice as food and in the economy of SSA countries, there is an urgent need to bring together policy makers, researchers, farmers, and the private sector (traders and millers) to review recent developments in the domestic, regional and international rice markets, and to take stock of their effects on the rice sub-sector in SSA, so that recommendations on priority action and strategies can be made to promote food security and competitive rice production in the sub-continent.