Obama’s Seeds for African Agriculture

Posted by Kofi Anku on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 4:21pm.

The United States, several West African nations and other developing countries are locked in a stalemate over US cotton subsidies preventing the completion of the Doha Round of global trade negotiations. 6.8 billion people await the passage of this accord and the confidence it will provide to jittery markets and economies in crisis.

Collectively, American cotton growers have received more than $3 billion in subsidies annually over the last eight years. That total amounts to approximately $1 million in subsidies for each of the 25,000 major growers. West African farmers are demanding the removal of these U.S. cotton subsidies that unfairly price them out of global markets. The Dean of Singapore’s School of Public Policy notes, “…In both moral and rational terms, the decision should be obvious. America’s rich cotton farmers are in the best position to make a sacrifice. If they cannot make a sacrifice, who in America can?”

In his address to Ghana’s Parliament on July 11, United States President, Barack Obama stated, “with strong institutions and a strong will, I know that Africans can live their dreams.” It’s extraordinarily unusual to tell your opponent in any negotiation to develop and assert a strong will. As President Obama marked this current African era as a “new moment of great promise,” one wonders if he is referring to the courage African states are demonstrating to protect their commercial interests in the face of tremendous US pressure. Obama went on to say, “I want to see Ghanaians not only self-sufficient in food, I want to see you exporting food to other countries and earning money. You can do that.” This wish, shared by every Ghanaian, stands as the most significant aspiration of the whole speech.

For Ghana and other African nations to gain food self-sufficiency, the United States must respond to the multinational efforts to eliminate the rice, corn, sugar and wheat subsidies-a central feature of the United States’ $298 Billion agricultural support package. So onerous to the developing world is this piece of legislation that even the European Trade Commissioner, Peter Mandelson has spoken out, calling it “one of the most reactionary farm bills in the history of the US”. Alternatively, African nations could opt to impose stiff tariffs on cheap imports from countries with subsidizes and encourage other developing nations to do the same. The $3.5 billion President Obama has pledged for new technologies and methods for farms in Africa’s 53 countries simply will not go far enough to make African agriculture competitive at a time when the US government has sunk almost $300 Billion in assistance into its own farms.

In addition to chiding and scolding of African leaders for their vices, President Obama also supplied African governments with powerful ammunition for their crusade for fairness in agricultural trade. It is now up to African leaders to stand on President Obama’s own words and press their case to end market distorting farm subsidies in the United States. In bilateral talks, the World Trade Organization and in Op-ed pieces and interviews in the global media, Africa’s leaders must continue to articulate the ethical and economic imperative to remove subsidies that obstruct African producers from competing abroad as well as in their own markets.

President Obama’s visit was a moment celebrating the many points where American and African interests converge. We must also be clear-eyed enough to see when they do not. Africa’s number one priority must be to develop and implement an effective growth strategy. Given the continent’s equatorial sun, millions of hectares of arable land and prodigious water resources, agriculture ought to feature centrally within that strategy. Firmly in line with lessons of history, Obama’s message on to African agriculture is simple: assert yourselves - advance your own interests with conviction.