Bank President reiterates support for agriculture at African Union summit

8 February 2008

Robert Zoellick told Africa's leaders the World Bank wanted to expand its "efforts to help countries produce their own food, instead of relying on imports.” This would represent a complete reversal of Bank policy which has focused thus far on encouraging Africa to devote more land and resources to growing commodities, and to rely on international markets to purchase the food they were no longer growing.

During his first visit to Africa since becoming World Bank President, Robert Zoellick attended the African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, marking the first time a World Bank head has addressed the pan-African body. Reuters reports that a main focus of his remarks was funding for agriculture. Following up on pledges made in October, at the time of the release of “Agriculture for Development,” the 2008 edition of the World Bank’s flagship World Development Report (WDR), Zoellick signaled to the AU his institution’s desire to significantly increase its commitment to the sector in Africa.

Drawing on studies completed after the release of the WDR, Zoellick focused on increased global food prices as an argument for increased spending on agriculture. Reuters notes that “in the past two years, global prices of maize have risen 75 percent, while wheat and rice prices have nearly doubled, pressuring African nations that import most of their food and citizens who spend half their disposable income on it.” Zoellick is reported to have said he wanted to “expand the Bank’s efforts to help countries produce their own food, instead of relying on imports.”

This would represent a reversal of course for the World Bank, which has spent much of the last 25 years encouraging countries in Africa and elsewhere to devote more of their land and resources to growing commodities like cotton, coffee, tea, cocoa, and flowers for export, and to rely on international markets to purchase the food they were no longer growing. Indeed, this shift from self-sufficiency to dependence on international trade is the foundation of the contemporary model of globalization that has been so heavily, and effectively, promoted around the world.

The Reuters report says that “Africa’s agriculture has long been neglected by international agencies like the World Bank.” In fact, agricultural reforms were among the Bank’s main foci throughout the 1980s and 1990s in Africa, with great efforts made to liberalize markets, reduce and eliminate subsidies, and restructure or do away with state marketing boards. As a report by the Bank’s internal watchdog, the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), released just before the WDR in September 2007 makes clear, the World Bank’s agriculture policy impositions had a dubious track record at best in Africa.

Meanwhile, the Mozambique Information Agency (AIM) reported in advance of Zoellick's visit to the country that the Bank launched a new study entitled "Beating the Odds: Sustaining Inclusion in Mozambique's Growing Economy," which praised the country’s reduction in rural poverty as “one of the greatest success stories anywhere in the world.” The AIM article remarks, however, that Mozambique was able to sustain growth in spite of the World Bank's interventions. In the 1990's, it notes, the Bank "promoted the deliberate destruction of Mozambique's best known labour intensive export industry - the cashew processing industry." In insisting on local processing of cashews instead of exporting them raw, the government "offended the World Bank's free trade dogma of the time," and was warned to liberalize the cashew trade "or the country would lose 400 million dollars of World Bank loans."

At the AU, Zoellick also spoke of the controversial “Green Revolution” for Africa -- the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) -- supported most visibly by an initiative of the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations, which aims to replicate programs in Asia and Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s that increased crop yields. Those earlier programs’ successes were offset, however, by environmental damage and crowding out of small farmers who could not afford the expensive inputs (pesticides, fertilizers, water) demanded by the high-tech Green Revolution methods. AGRA has sparked an outcry from African civil society organizations who fear it will damage small farmers’ livelihoods and serve as a vehicle for introducing genetically-engineered seeds on the continent. Reuters reports that Zoellick said an African Green Revolution “would need to be different from that of Asia,” but provides few other details.

In other remarks at the AU meeting, Zoellick said, “Higher commodity prices have created opportunities to expand global efforts to encourage more transparency in oil and mining sectors in developing countries.” He pledged the Bank’s assistance in negotiating better contracts and setting up better public expenditure management systems. It was not clear from the reports if Zoellick specified why it would be easier to encourage transparency as revenue flows increased.

Zoellick also commented on the crisis in Kenya, saying that World Bank programs in the country, worth about $1 billion, may have to be curtailed. He was at pains, however, to say that any such move would be on the grounds of safety and effectiveness of the programs, not as a political measure. The Associated Press quoted him as saying, “We don't want to, in a sense, leverage the livelihood and health of the people of Kenya to try to press their leaders. We're trying to press their leaders by pointing out the fact, as others have, that destruction and death doesn't help a country advance.”

Zoellick spent a day in Mauritania on the first leg of his trip, before moving on to Liberia where he discussed stepping up Bank support for post-conflict countries. After addressing African leaders in Addis Ababa, Zoellick visited Mozambique where he expressed concern about the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Resources

• World Bank's Zoellick turns to African agriculture by Lesley Wroughton, February 1, 2008 (Reuters website)
• Internal watchdog slams World Bank agriculture programs in Africa since 1991, Bank Information Center, October 19, 2007 (BIC website)
• Mozambique: World Bank praise for national success story, Mozambique Information Agency, January 24, 2008 (AllAfrica website)
• Expand Oil, Mining Sector Transparency-Zoellick, February 1, 2008 (World Bank website)
• World Bank president says violence in Kenya could force it to pull programs, Associated Press, February 1, 2008 (IHT website)
• Zoellick pledges support for post-conflict countries during Liberia visit, Bank Information Center, February 1, 2008 (BIC website)