Keeping Track of Food Prices

As food prices in East and Central Africa refuse to fall, a regional initiative is helping decision makers cope.

Rising food prices in 2008 brought food security to the center of politics in East and Central Africa. In Kenya, for example, where the price of maize in October 2008 was double the level in January 2007, strong public pressure at political rallies prompted government leaders to impose a maize export ban and allow duty-free imports.

To help decision makers cope more effectively with the food price crisis, the Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (ReSAKSS, http://www.resakss.org/), in collaboration with the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in East and Central Africa (ASARECA), closely monitored food prices in the region and their impacts during 2007-09.

In East and Central Africa, food price monitoring has shown that the food crisis is not over. Graph: ReSAKSS.

ReSAKSS is an Africa-wide network established to provide readily available analysis, data and tools of the highest quality to promote evidence-based decision making. It also improves awareness of the role of agriculture in development, helps fill knowledge gaps, promotes dialogue, and facilitates review processes in Africa. The East and Central Africa node of ReSAKSS, one of three working across Africa's regional economic communities, is hosted by the International Livestock Research Institute.

Starting in 2006, global food prices rose sharply, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, reaching record levels during the first half of 2008. But between March and June of that year, the global food price index stagnated, and it has decreased since then. Yet, in East and Southern Africa, food prices kept rising.

In Uganda, for example, even the cost of basic foods that are not traded internationally rose sharply in 2009. Between January and September, the prices of matooke (a national dish prepared from plantain) and cassava rose by about 50% and that of sweet potato by about 75%. Meanwhile, the price of maize in September 2009 was more than 130% higher than in January 2007. Milk prices also increased dramatically in 2009, partly because of drought in Eastern Africa.

Those increases caused enormous hardship in Uganda for poor consumers like Patricia Musiime, who gradually reduced her weekly purchases of milk from 2 liters to 1 liter and then finally to none. "The prices really hiked," she said. "A liter was at Shs 2,500. That's impossible!"

The continued rise of food prices in 2009 may have been the result of policy responses that were actually intended to counter the crisis. By December 2008, six countries in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) had imposed maize export bans, which restricted the movement of food from surplus to deficit areas, thus fueling the rise of food prices in deficit areas. Moreover, while relieving the pressure on prices in some domestic markets, export bans may have affected neighboring countries adversely. Other measures, such as domestic sourcing of food aid, which was employed by Ethiopia, also put upward pressure on domestic prices.

Ethiopia experienced the highest food price increases since March-April 2008. The Ethiopian Food Price Index (FPI) shot up by about 54% in 4 months, starting in April 2008. In December 2008, the highest food price increases were observed in Ethiopia and Kenya. A year later, Ethiopia and Uganda were among the countries still experiencing high food prices.

While no measures were implemented in Uganda to protect vulnerable urban households in 2009, the situation was handled differently in Djibouti. In April, the World Food Program (WFP) implemented a food-for-work program there, which targeted vulnerable urban households.

When faced with failed grain harvests, households in the region tend to rely more on cassava, a hardy root crop, which is widely grown across sub-Saharan Africa and serves as a kind of safety valve for many farms. Cassava, along with plantain (or cooking banana), sorghum, millet, sweet potato, Irish potato and teff, are often referred to as "orphan crops," because they tend to receive less attention from research and policy, despite their vital importance for food security.

Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi are the largest producers and consumers of bananas in Africa. In Kenya, the price of cooking bananas has increased, while in Uganda, the prices have been more volatile. Countries in Eastern and Central Africa experienced poor banana harvests in 2009, because of outbreaks of two diseases that year: bunchy top viral and banana wilt.

Sorghum, being less dependent on rainfall, is an important staple in semi-arid areas, particularly in Sudan, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia. Sweet potato requires less time and investment of resources to reach maturity, and like cassava, it becomes particularly important when supplies of other foods run short or when there is a prolonged drought.

The impacts of the food price crisis in East and Central Africa have varied significantly between countries, affecting the region's various staple crops in different ways. Since the crisis is clearly not over, ReSAKSS will continue to monitor trends across the region in 2010.