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TRADE-EAST AFRICA: How to Safeguard Food Security in EPAs

Rosalia Omungo

NAIROBI, Sep 21 2007 (IPS) - Government leaders and exporters in east Africa are adamant that certain products be excluded from the economic partnership agreements (EPAs) to prevent detrimental effects on the livelihoods of the majority of people in the region.

The EPAs are trade agreements which the European Union (EU) is negotiating with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states.

Its existing trade agreement with the ACP-signed in Cotonou, Benin, in 2000-has to be replaced as it is regarded as non-compliant with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, given its exclusion of non-ACP developing states.

The WTO granted the EU a special exemption that allows it to continue giving ACP exporters preferential access to its markets until December 2007. But what will happen to products essential to livelihoods or vulnerable to foreign competition when the deadline has expired?

This is especially of concern, given the hefty subsidies that European farmers receive while east African producers toil without government support. European products are therefore artificially cheap and can be dumped on African markets while east African products are too costly to export.

‘‘We have ended up with imports from other countries that are much cheaper, pushing out similar Kenyan produced items,’’ trade and industry permanent secretary David Nalo said at a workshop in the Kenyan capital Nairobi last month.

As an example, he referred to powdered milk from Europe which the government blocked in the early 1990s by hiking tariffs to protect its dairy industry, which now indirectly supports three million people. ‘‘If we allowed the powdered milk to be imported into Kenya, it would have totally destroyed the industry.’’

Products regarded as sensitive are especially those from the agricultural and manufacturing sectors. The domestic market remains a critical outlet for Kenya’s mostly impoverished small-scale farmers. They are not able to compete against imported products or in export markets.

One of the reasons is poor infrastructure, particularly roads, communication, irrigation and technology development. Moreover, ‘‘technical barriers like stringent requirements in fish production makes exporting fish out of reach for our farmers’’, Miriam Omolo, trade programme officer at the non-governmental Institute of Economic Affairs, told IPS.

Nalo insisted that ‘‘we have a defensive interest to protect our farming from being destroyed. It could be the source of agro industrialization. We do not want it to be eroded.’’

He also said that the sensitivity of agriculture necessitates a transitional period of 25 years to ease east African states into reciprocity with the mighty EU. ‘‘We do not want to be talking about agro industries on the one hand and then we are opening too much and we destroy local industry.’’

EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson also had mentioned transitional periods of ‘‘up to 25 years’’ earlier this year.

Secretary general of the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), Erastus Mwencha, has said that COMESA states are seeking a period of 25 years to phase in liberalisation under the EPA. However, 25 years may still not be long enough, he told the press last month.

Compiling the regional list of sensitive products has been a complicated process, he said. A ‘‘very exhaustive inventory’’ of products had to be drawn up.

Kenya’s list of sensitive products includes mostly agricultural products, such as sugar, coffee, tea, wheat, meat, fisheries, poultry, dairy products, potato starch and soya beans. Processed foods on the list include dried fruit, roasted coffee, sausages, flour and fruit juices.

Other products include woven fabrics, clothing, tableware and kitchenware, cigarettes, paints, tubes, boxes, hides and skins and cotton yarn products.

They were selected using criteria such as vulnerability to imports; employment of large numbers of people, especially low-income earners; rural development; and Kenya’s production capacity. The central criterion was food security-whether the commodity is part of the basic Kenyan food basket.

The Kenya Institute of Public Policy Research and Analysis (Kippra) has stated that unforeseen import surges can affect food security, livelihoods and rural development. Agriculture is the main employer and contributor to the gross domestic product (GDP) of low-income countries.

Being one of them, Kenya is in a similar situation as agriculture contributes 16 percent of GDP and 75 percent of the workforce is in agriculture.