Regional Integration For Food Security In Southern Africa

The food crisis in Southern Africa is compounded by socio-economic, health and environmental problems. There is a diminishing income-generating labour supply and a low food production rate in areas which may be beset by drought, famine, HIV/AIDS or conflict. That agriculture is a viable sector for economic growth is posited on the fact that this sector provides a livelihood for some 70% of the region's population. Nevertheless the continent has failed to produce enough food for consumption. The acceleration of the process of globalisation has exacerbated the difficult and imbalanced agricultural environment, in which poor countries must operate, which, so this volume maintains, can only be addressed through integrated approaches at a regional level. Furthermore, the failure of so many international food relief programmes indicates that an approach harnessed by the regional bodies such as Nepad and SADC may be the most effective strategy to ensure the prospect of food security.

The cooperation approach of the SADCC countries; Other regional cooperation schemes; Regional market integration and food security; Alternative regional cooperation arrangements to stabilize food consumption.

Southern Africa experienced acute food shortages during 2002 and 2003.

Developing countries are active participants in the formation of regional trade arrangements (RTAs), but viewpoints differ on the desirability and on the efficient design of regional integration. The first objective of this paper is to review the regional integration debate for those involved in the preparation of food security strategies among developing countries. The paper concentrates primarily on the economic arguments while acknowledging that political motivations may often be the primary driving force behind RTAs. The second objective of the paper is to identify the potential role which regional integration arrangements might make to promoting food security among their members.

Despite a long history of regional integration and a multiplicity of regional organizations in southern Africa, the effect of regional integration on economic growth and poverty reduction remains debatable or elusive. This causes many to doubt whether regional integration is in actual fact an effective poverty-reduction strategy. Accordingly, the focus of this book is to explore and analyze whether specific Southern African Development Community (SADC) trade integration policies, especially the trade liberalization regime, have produced economic growth and reduced poverty in the region. While it is generally agreed that economic growth is the panacea to poverty reduction, there is little evidence as to whether regional integration in Africa is associated with economic growth in the countries concerned and subsequently leads to poverty reduction. The book makes recommendations on how the SADC FTAs can contribute to poverty reduction and socioeconomic development, and goes on to suggest policy proposals on how to enhance the contribution of the FTAs to poverty eradication and economic development. It also identifies specific activities to be undertaken to enable supply-side and productive competitiveness interventions to support the FTAs and contribute to economic development. The potential constraints and negative impacts of the FTAs are investigated and highlighted, and possible solutions are recommended and motivated.

The right to food is guaranteed in South Africa’s Constitution as it is in international law. Yet food insecurity remains widespread and persistent, at levels much higher than in countries with similar levels of per capita GDP and development, such as Brazil. In this book, leading local and international researchers on food security and related policy work have come together to create the first systematic and trans-disciplinary analysis of food security and its multiple dimensions in South Africa and the southern African region. Drawing on Amartya Sen’s entitlement theory to identify the key drivers of hunger, they see food insecurity as a chronic, structurally based condition rather than only resulting from natural environmental disasters, temporary economic shocks and household vulnerabilities. The authors focus on a range of policy options and choices to provide short-term and longer-term solutions to the systemic causes of unemployment, failing rural livelihoods and traditional subsistence production. They also emphasise the linkages between the social and economic dimensions of food insecurity and use an integrative, interdisciplinary approach to analyse the reasons why these conditions persist and what can be done to address them. Importantly the book brings together work undertaken at local and national levels in new ways so that policy-makers, researchers, human rights advocates and social and economic scholars are better able to make the links between macro- and micro-processes of development.