3. Sierra Leone's self-sufficiency policy
Rice being the number staple food for the Sierra Leonean
people, the government has always established policies to achieve rice
self-sufficiency. But the realities of the global market and the dependence of
the people on a staple food heavily subject to price variation has put entire
communities in a vulnerable state of food security.
a. Sierra Leone's rice dependence
Since its independence, Sierra Leone's agricultural
development policy have essentially been fixated on accomplishing rice
self-sufficiency. Rice is a staple food for 90% of Sierra Leoneans but it is
also an important source of employment and income for rural communities
15 The price of imported rice first increased by 35%
in real terms in Sierra Leone.
16 Sierra Leoneans and Guineans farmers have a
historically long-standing trade relations.
11
(Bah 2013). According to the Africa Rice's17 report
: «the yearly rice consumption in Sierra Leone is amongst Sub-Saharan
Africa's highest with 104 kg, largely supported by small scale farmers»
(AfricaRice Center 2017). In contrast, the offer doesn't seem to match the
growing demand. 530 000 MT of milled rice is required to sustain the
consumption of the Sierra Leonean population annually. The country has not been
able to produce enough rice to meet its local consumption demand for decades
(Conteh, Yan et Sankoh 2012) and reached its peak rice self-sufficiency between
the 70's and 80's with around 80 to 90% (GoSL, WFP et UNICEF 2010) and its
lowest in 2000 with 50%.For that reason, the remaining portion of rice has to
be imported at increasingly expensive prices.
b. The strategy of self-sufficiency
«Rice self-sufficiency by 2013» was the latest
benchmark set by the government. In order to achieve this goal, Sierra Leone
deployed considerable amount of resources and launched largescale operations
that combined both direct and indirect government action. The targets of these
operations were small scale farmers who represent 90% of the farming community
(Conteh, Yan et Sankoh 2012). To go along with the plan, the government
intended to extend the rice paddy area used for to 830 000 hm2. This way, the
hope was to increase productivity and secure the income and food security of
smallholders (Bah 2013). Unfortunately, the government's strategy was not the
most suited, as the productivity difficulties that Sierra Leone is faced with
don't come from lack of space but rather from lack of multiple other factors
such as technology, labour force, involvement and targeted development. Farming
is still essentially artisanal and farming techniques are mostly outdated and
unproductive. The scarce labour force coupled with the absence of involvement
from a large part of the farming population further constraint the
productivity. This is due to the fact that Sierra Leoneans have to engage in
approximatively three activities in order to subsist. In farming populations,
they engage in:
· Cash crop, which provides them with `quick cash'
· Food crop, which helps fulfil their recommended dietary
needs
· Income Generating Activities (IGA), which consist of
small businesses in order to increase the household's income
17 Formerly known as West African Rice Development
Association
12
At the moment, food crop doesn't cover the needs of the
population as food and especially staple foods are partly imported from abroad.
Large scale cash crop is hardly sustainable because it requires a lot of
investments that neither farmers nor the government are capable of providing.
Also, the need for quick cash discourages farmers from making long-term
commitments and investments and prefer a mean of subsistence that brings in
money quicker. This partly explains why IGA is the mean of subsistence favoured
by the people. Lastly, the government failed to develop existing and abundant
rice fields like the `bolilands', which have great potential for productivity
and possibly reducing food insecurity (ACF 2005). As a result, the realization
of most operations in agricultural sector were unfortunately unsatisfying and
did not help create to desired effect.
According to Joseph Sam Sesay, the Minister in charge of
Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security in 2014:
«The country's excessive rice dependency could cost the
food security target. He calls on the Sierra Leoneans to change their habits
and go for alternative goods cultivated domestically, such as, yam, cassava or
sweet potato.» (Ighobor et Harsch 2014).
The former Minister was inspired by Nigeria and Ghana which
were avid consumers of rice but managed to reduce their consumption by
incorporating substitutes. But as we mentioned before18 strategies
to substitute the population's diet only resulted in higher levels of food
insecurity. As a silver lining, the government is spending less on food
importation. Spendings dropped from US$ 32 million in 2007 to US$ 15 million in
2013, while for the same period rice production almost doubled from 370,000
tonnes to 693,000 tonnes (AfricaRice Center 2017). Questions surrounding rice
remains eminently political in Sierra Leone, the determination of its price and
the measures taken with regard to it are continuously examined by the
population, in particular the rice farmers.
***
18 Part I, 2.a.
13
After a decade long civil war, Sierra Leone was in a
deployable state and a long national recovery was ahead. The government had to
deal with an economy that nearly stopped during the hostilities, the worst
human development level of the world, child soldiers and a population either
lost to war or displaced in neighbouring countries. However, by the early 00's
Sierra Leone became an example of post-conflict recovery. Unfortunately, both
the 2007 food crisis and the Ebola virus outbreak frustrated the recovery of
the country leading to a failure to reach the MDGs. Although those two events
slowed Sierra Leone's progress, they also highlighted the fragility of the
economic system based on agriculture and self-sufficiency. The variations of
prices on the global market coupled with economic and sanitary crises unsettle
a country supported by poor agricultural communities who barely subsist with
their crop. The government's stubbornness to achieve self-sufficiency combined
with the population's rice dependency showed a real lack of adequate governance
and hurt efforts made towards poverty reduction and food security
improvement.
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