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Hemmed In: Responses to Africa's Economic Decline
Thomas M. Callaghy and John Ravenhill, editors
New York
1993
9. The Politics of Sustained Agricultural Reform in Africa
J EFFREY H ERBST
Economic reform was at the top of the policy agenda for most African countries in the 1980s and, along with political reform, will remain the primary issue in the 1990s. On a continent where 70% of the labor force is involved in farming, it is only natural that reform of agriculture is one of the most important aspects of the effort to adjust economic institutions and policies to accelerate growth. Agricultural reform also exemplifies the complexity of the adjustment process in Africa. There is now widespread agreement that "getting prices right" is important if farmers are to have any incentive to produce. However, production will not increase markedly unless other aspects of the agrarian system function correctly: roads must be passable so that transport costs are kept low; inputs (e.g., seed and fertilizer) must be available if production is to be optimal; and extension agencies must function in order to keep farmers informed of research. Given the disintegration of African political systems and economies, the transportation, marketing, and extension infrastructure must all undergo significant renovation if increased prices are to be consequential. Thus, prices and several sets of economic institutions must be reformed if agriculture is going to undergo a resurgence.
For price and institutional reforms to be carried out in the agricultural sector, there must be a political system that rewards politicians for implementing changes beneficial to farmers. For instance, Delgado and Mellor elegantly call for "rural political processes to keep agricultural policy in the forefront of debate, to help mobilize and allocate national and local resources for agricultural development, and to provide legitimacy to decisions made." 1 Similarly, the World Bank, in its recent long-term study of Africa, cited the need for societal actors, including farmers, to hold "countervailing power" in order to affect the preferences of state officials. 2
However, the means by which viable agrarian constituencies are to be created and the conduits through which they are supposed to exercise their countervailing power have not been analyzed. As Paul Streeten noted,
| Compared with the large and growing literature on rent-seeking and directly unproductive profit-seeking activities, relatively little research has been done by political scientists into the question of how to build constituencies for reform, how to shape reformist coalitions or alliances between groups whose interests can be harnessed to the cause of reform. 3 |
Indeed, much of the structural adjustment literature implicitly assumes that if there is economic progress, new groups will coalesce and support the reform effort once they see that they are benefiting. However, as E. E. Schattschneider noted in his classic study of American tariff legislation, "spontaneous political response to economic interest is far less general than is commonly supposed." 4 There may be very high transaction costs (e.g., to peasants in the rural areas) that prevent certain constituencies from mobilizing to support a government that has embarked on significant reforms to help agriculture. Or, political systems may be structured in such a way as to prevent agrarian constituencies from being able to influence policy decisions.
The failure to describe political systems that might support agriculture is especially important because several different types of reform will have to be implemented if African agriculture is to flourish. Price reform is highly visible and can be done quickly and with relatively little administrative ability. However, raising producer prices for food crops can harm the interest of a very powerful constituency in most African countries: the urban population who are dependent on supplies of inexpensive food. Correspondingly, increasing the producer prices of export crops may put severe strains on government revenue, which may result in the curtailment of important government services. In contrast, reform of the infrastructure that supports agricultural production does not yield significant immediate benefits, requires a significant commitment over time, but does not automatically harm another constituency. Thus, the construction of a political system that will successfully support all aspects of agricultural reform in African countries poses especially difficult challenges.
After first briefly reviewing the nature of the agrarian crisis in Africa, I will survey the results of a decade of agrarian reform, after which I will analyze how the political systems in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Ghana generate support for agriculture. I will pay particular attention to the ability of African political systems to create incentives for leaders to post higher prices and improve the underlying infrastructure. Finally, I will examine how the World Bank may be able to enhance constituencies favoring long-term im-provements in the agrarian infrastructure.
The Agricultural Crisis in Africa
The extent of Africa's agrarian crisis is by now well-known. While food production in the 1960s roughly matched population growth, by the 1970s per capita agrarian production was decreasing. In addition, during the 1970s, Africa's share of the world market for many agrarian commodities decreased while food imports grew at three times the rate of population increase. 5
Agricultural production did increase between 1980 and 1989 at a faster rate than in the 1970s (2.1% versus -0.3%), but this gain was still below the rate of population increase, estimated by the World Bank to be 3.1% across the continent. 6 As a result, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that, by 1989, Africa's per capita food and agricultural production was actually 7% below the average for 1979 to 1981.
As table 9.1 suggests, a large number of countries actually experienced a significant decrease in per capita agricultural production during the 1980s. Just as important is the paucity of countries that have experienced significant production growth. In comparison, during the same period, across the entire developing world, food and agriculture production in per capita terms increased by 9%. 7
The crisis in agricultural production has many ramifications for African countries. At the most basic level, the stagnation and decline in the major sector of employment for most African countries obviously has an enormous effect on the life chances of the majority of people on the continent. For instance, daily calorie supply per capita, the most basic measure of consumption, actually declined in Africa by 3% between 1980 and 1987 and is now 12% below the average level for all low-income countries. By the late 1980s, caloric consumption in Africa was roughly equivalent to what it was in 1965; in comparison, Third World countries generally have increased their average consumption by 20% during the last 25 years. 8 Insecurity about food is most evident in the Sahel, Ethiopia, and Mozambique where long-term declines in the agrarian system have combined with natural or human-made disaster (especially war) to cause famine. More generally, this insecurity causes malnutrition and engenders tremendous efforts whereby all other goals are sacrificed simply to get enough to eat. The World Bank estimates that to remedy the situation African agriculture will have to grow at 4% a year, a goal that only a handful of countries met during the 1980s. 9
Second, declines in the production of export crops (e.g., cotton, tea, cocoa, coffee) aggravate shortages of foreign exchange because many African countries rely heavily on one or two export crops for most of their foreign exchange. When production of these crops decreases, there often is no other source of foreign exchange to replace them and the already weak economy declines further. Shortages of hard currency have an especially pernicious impact on African countries by making it much more difficult to secure imported inputs for manufacturing or to replace capital equipment. Perhaps the most spectacular example of agriculture-led decline was cocoa in Ghana during the 1970s. Because of poor prices and a deteriorating economic climate, the country's share of the world cocoa market decreased from 33% in 1970 to 17% in 1980,1 10 a massive decline that propelled the economy into a steep depression. While other countries did not show so precipitous a decline, the travails of the first independent country in modern Africa are emblematic of what happened across the continent.
Finally, on a more general level, the vast majority of Africa's population remains in low-productivity agriculture so that there is essentially no chance of economic development. Indeed, the FAO estimates that 68.2% of Africa's total population is in agriculture compared to 56.5% for all developing countries, and that by the year 2000 this percentage will only have dropped to 62.6% (compared to 50.6% for all developing countries). 11 Sir W. Arthur Lewis noted the impact of such a large percentage of the labor force in low productivity agriculture several decades ago: "Industrialisation for a home market can make little progress unless agriculture is progressing vigorously at the same time, to provide both the market for industry, and industry's labour supply. If agriculture is stagnant, industry cannot grow." 12
Lewis therefore recommended that Third World countries, while industrializing, keep increasing agricultural productivity. Unfortunately, most African countries neglected agriculture while attempting to industrialize and are therefore now faced with the problem of rebuilding agrarian systems before increases in industry can take place. Indeed, in good part, the current emphasis on agrarian reform in many countries is an effort to restore the agricultural sector to where it was at independence in order to begin the growth through agriculture that should have occurred during the early 1960s.
The Politics of Dysfunctional Agricultural Policies
During the early 1980s, a powerful critique developed of existing agricultural policies in Africa. The initial salvo was fired by the World Bank in its important 1981 report, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa. The report argued that "agricultural output is the single most important determinant of overall economic growth" and "the principal factor underlying the poor economic performance of the countries of this region." 13 Where the report broke new ground was on focusing specifically on the issues of low prices paid to farmers as an especially important constraint to future agricultural production.
However, the focus on prices was criticized heavily during the 1980s, as many scholars cited the deficiencies of African markets and their inability, at times, to transmit price signals. 14 For instance, bottlenecks in transportation systems and poor delivery systems for basic inputs such as seed and fertilizer often present daunting obstacles to agrarian production even when prices are "right." In fact, African countries experience large regional variations in the prices of foodgrains because poor infrastructure prevents the integration of markets. Asian countries, with better infrastructure, do not experience nearly as significant intracountry price differentials. 15 Other factors, including the degree of monetarization in the economy, the relative self-sufficiency of households, and limited markets for such factors as land also restrict the power of prices alone to influence production. 16 Finally, limited supplies of consumer goods may also have a profound effect on farmer responses to an increase in producer prices. 17 Thus, correct prices are a necessary, but not sufficient condition, for promoting economic activity.
In the scholarly literature, Robert Bates' 1981 book Markets and States in Tropical Africa provided a theoretical grounding for much of the Bank's criticism of agrarian price policy. Bates was particularly interested in why most governments in Africa choose to tax producers of food and export crops. He focused his explanations on the need of African governments to placate the politically important urban population by keeping the price of food low and the revenue imperatives of government which caused them to take a substantial cut of the earnings of exporters.
What was particularly interesting about Bates' book was his explanation of the political weaknesses of agrarian producers. Bates assigned much of the blame for small farmers' political weakness to their atomistic nature, given that they are spread across large amounts of land with little communication. However, he also noted that African governments had consistently repressed any attempts to organize the rural majority. Finally, he suggested that governments had used various "sidepayments" including subsidized inputs, large agricultural projects, and other forms of government largesse to placate those who might lead farmer protests. 18 In fact, in accord with Bates' analysis, the proportion of the world price paid to farmers for export crops did decrease in the 1970s. 19
Bates devoted far less attention to my primary question here: how to change political systems so that there are incentives to promote high producer prices and investment of significant resources in the agricultural infrastructure. Bates implied that simply increasing consumer prices would be too difficult for many African nations because of the fear of urban riots. Instead, he suggested that it would be necessary to alter domestic coalitions within African countries if farmers were going to garner enough political power to influence agricultural policy. For instance, he argued that if farmers could combine with a major urban extractive industry, they might have enough political clout to demand better government policies for agriculture. Similarly, he suggested that if non-food agrarian producers were brought into the dominant political coalition, government policy would be more favorable to exporters. 20
However, he did not suggest why African governments, which he had portrayed as being opposed to any attempts by rural producers to organize and thereby increase their power, would suddenly allow farmers to form a powerful coalition with another set of important actors in Africa. The only other suggestion he made was that agrarian policies might change if leaders realized just how much the practices they pursued were causing long-term damage to their countries. 21 Clearly, given the dynamics that Bates outlined favoring low producer prices for farmers, a change in leadership preferences alone would constitute only weak support for agriculture.
The Results of a Decade of Reform
Given the magnitude of the agrarian crisis and the political weight of the World Bank, it was only natural that most countries said that they placed agricultural reform at the top of their agenda in the 1980s. In fact, 90% of all African countries now make agriculture the highest priority in their development plans. 22 However, these statements of priorities mean very little. Indeed, the World Bank noted that during the 1970s, African governments had devoted resources to agriculture at an unprecedented rate but there was still agrarian decline. 23
It is therefore important to examine in a more concrete manner the extent of agricultural reform in African countries and the political reasons why these reforms did or did not take place. Given the importance of price signals in African countries, this section will first examine how successful governments were in improving incentives for farmers in the 1980s. It will then analyze efforts to improve other aspects of the agricultural system which will also have to be reformed if improved price signals are to be strong enough to affect farmers' decisions.
Price Reform
Evidence for price reform is unfortunately difficult to collect given the weaknesses of African statistical systems, especially in the rural areas. However, data collected by the World Bank on agricultural producer prices tentatively indicates that there has been some increase in the percentage of the world price paid to farmers for export crops. In 19 of the 25 countries for which data are available, the farmgate price as a percentage of the world price has increased. 24 Once again, it is worth noting that the data are so imprecise that they cannot support anything but rough analysis. However, the overall trend of the data suggests that governments have been able to increase the share of the world price that farmers receive. Other studies also report that there have been some improvements in the pricing practices of African countries. For instance, Jaeger and Humphreys estimate that while real prices for export crops fell 25% between 1977 and 1980, there was a recovery between 1983 and 1986, although a decline in prices in 1987. 25 Prices for food crops probably have also increased but empirical indicators are lacking to evaluate how governments have treated nonexport crops.
Prices were able to increase for several reasons. First, in part because of analysis like Bates' 1981 book and the World Bank's own 1981 report, the Bank, the IMF, and bilateral donors became major actors in the domestic struggle over agricultural producer prices. The conditionalities on aid that the Bank and bilateral donors constructed, especially demanding that governments raise producer prices, changed the political equations in agriculture. For instance, agricultural producer pricing has been a major component in more than 80% of all Structural Adjustment Loans for Africa that affected agriculture. 26 Also, the pressure that the Bank and the Fund placed on African governments to devalue aided exporters of agricultural products.
African farmers in many countries during the 1980s were therefore able to count on powerful international actors to present their case. These actors could offer consequential rewards to governments that changed agricultural pricing policies to favor farmers, and their sanctions to recalcitrant regimes were also quite persuasive. Indeed, when African governments set producer prices they are especially susceptible to pressure from multilateral and bilateral donors. Governments usually formally announce what price they are going to pay farmers, and it is relatively easy to calculate how farmers are doing since the world price of the good (at least for export crops) is readily available. Even for food crops, simple models that estimate farmers' costs can be constructed quickly to see if real prices are increasing.
The political barriers to price reform that the World Bank and other donors were demanding also now appear much less substantial because many governments in Africa and elsewhere in the world were able to raise prices substantially without causing urban riots. In a broad survey of "IMF riots" Henry Bienen and Mark Gersovitz found that many governments had actually overestimated the political difficulty of raising prices. 27 One reason urban unrest appears to have been less significant than predicted is that many consumers are forced to pay higher prices on the black market because of the deleterious effects of price controls. Thus, the urban population may be paying shadow prices long before a government announces the end of price controls on food. In such a case, only those who might have had privileged access to food at controlled prices will be hurt by an increase in the official price. Ironically, the greater a country's decline, the easier it may be to raise official prices because it is more likely that most of the urban population are paying prices which may even be above the market-clearing level. 28
Also, several countries have changed their institutional structures so that it became much harder for the urban population to bring pressure to bear on pricing decisions. The most radical reform of this kind was Nigeria's, which in 1986, abolished six of its marketing boards. Similarly, the Central African Republic, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, and Uganda have decontrolled pricing for some or all staple food crops. 29 By devolving pricing decisions to the market, these reforms emasculated the urban population because they could no longer use their old tactics, especially riots directed at the government, to influence the price of food.
While the urban population could demand that government recontrol the price of food, such a reversal of reforms would be difficult for a government to do given the pressure from the donors. At the very least, the urban population will have to bring significantly more pressure on a government to recontrol food prices (a drastic institutional reform) than in the past when it was trying to influence the prices that were already being set by the government. There have been no instances yet where a government has recontrolled prices after devolving pricing decisions to the market.
Therefore, there is reason to believe that governments are able to increase prices and some evidence to suggest that many farmers in Africa did, in fact, benefit from higher prices in the 1980s. While Bates had presented a very good analysis of why prices for many farmers had decreased in the 1960s and 1970s, his model did not anticipate the international pressures that developed in the 1980s to raise producer prices and probably overestimated the political problems governments face when they increase the cost of food. This is not to suggest that all countries in Africa have improved prices for all their farmers; clearly many have not. Rather, there is very good reason to believe that, especially since 1981, multilateral organizations have provided incentives for governments to post high prices and that it is easier than was originally thought for governments to increase consumer prices.
Reform of the Agrarian Infrastructure
However, as noted above, the reform of prices is only the first step in the effort to reform overall agriculture systems. A host of other institutions and systems must be overhauled to allow prices to have a powerful effect. Roads have to be built and (especially difficult in Africa) maintained. Systems to deliver fertilizer, seed, and extension services have to be established. Credit systems in rural areas must be expanded. Marketing systems should be extended to the rural areas so farmers can actually sell their produce. These types of reforms are very different from increasing prices for producers. Rather than a few well-publicized announcements, constructing, reconstructing, and maintaining agricultural infrastructure takes a large amount of administrative effort over a long period of time.
One potential measure of how countries are reforming their agrarian sectors is to examine the trajectory of crop yields. High yields, as Lele argues for Kenya, are, at least in part, a reflection of small farmers' relatively good access to research, extension, credit inputs, and markets. 30 Overall improvements in yield are particularly important to study because, while high prices may have the effect of increasing production of one crop, aggregate supply responses will continue to be sluggish unless there are improvements in the infrastructure. 31 Finally, now that the land frontier in most African countries has closed, higher yields will be the only way in which to increase total production. 32
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Table 9.2 presents basic yield data for 28 countries. The table shows the percentage of the main crops whose yield increased by at least 37% between the beginning of the decade and 1988. The 37% level is an important cutoff point: that is how much yields would have increased by if they had risen by 4% a year (the World Bank's growth target for African agriculture) for the first eight years of the 1980s. Of course, yield data are often of poor quality in Africa and data for many crops are unavailable. However, most of the countries listed in table 9.1 as having high overall production growth rates also appear to have high yield growth rates across their agrarian sectors. The table does indicate that very few countries have experienced significant growth rates in yields across a wide variety of crops. Almost all of the countries had one or two crops with very high increases in yields because of higher prices for that crop or specific efforts to boast production in one area. However, there have not been broad increases in yields, which suggests that there was very little improvement in the basic infrastructure that supports African agriculture in the 1980s. Why did improvements in the agrarian infrastructure lag behind increases in agricultural producer prices in the 1980s? Obviously, infrastructural improvements are more difficult administrative tasks that will take years to complete while prices can be raised almost instantly. Thus, agrarian reform programs may lose momentum as poorly staffed African governments simply lack the institutional ability to accomplish complex tasks over a long period of time. Also, the political conflicts over the agrarian infrastructure may be much more difficult to resolve in favor of farmers. During the process of reform, interest groups that compete for resources with farmers may wage long political battles that cannot be decided in favor of agriculture with the precision and definitiveness that price increases bring. Thus, even a government committed to improving the agrarian infrastructure may be worn down by the competing demands of many other groups that also desperately need resources. |
Unfortunately for the agricultural sector, the ability of the multilateral institutions to intervene is considerably less in the area of infrastructural development than in pricing policy. The multilaterals are best at imposing conditionality on a few government policies, especially prices, which they can easily monitor given their limited number of staff in most African countries. They are much less adept at monitoring long-term government policies because they have neither the personnel on the ground or the institutional memory to follow issues that are not as easily observable as prices. The IMF itself, in a review of structural adjustment policies, admitted that prices are much easier to change than other structural policies. 33 Thus, even if a government is encouraged by the multilateral organizations to post high agricultural prices, the same regime may face less effective political pressure to increase long-term investment in the agricultural sector.
Since the multilateral organizations cannot be particularly powerful proponents of long-term changes in agricultural systems, a fundamental question arises: what type of political system would guarantee continued political support for investment in agriculture? The question is important as it is conceivable that African countries could post relatively high prices to appease international donors but not proceed with the extremely difficult work of constructing agricultural support systems.
Three Examples of Political Support for Agriculture
Several African countries have been able to mobilize political support for agriculture. This section will examine Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Ghana to explore the different ways their political systems help to sustain the changes the different regimes implemented. These three cases do not represent all possible ways in which political systems have supported the agricultural sector but they are probably among the most important. They are interesting because there is a significant amount of variance among the three examples in terms of how important elections are, the relative significance of national political organizations, and the extent to which government structures have to become more open in order to promote agriculture.
Kenya represents perhaps the best known example in Africa of how a political system has been able to incorporate agrarian interests. In Kenya, much of the top leadership has strong personal ties in agriculture and these interests make politicians attentive to the fate of agriculture. 34 However, many African countries have ignored the overall agriculture sector even though the leaders own farms. Other aspects of the political systems are also be important in institutionalizing the interests of the agricultural sector. For instance, because Kenya holds elections frequently, parliamentarians have developed substantial patron-client ties with significant segments of the rural farmer population. 35 Indeed, because the elections are held within a one-party state, grand ideological issues are off the agenda. Rather, politicians are judged on how much they are able to do in terms of delivering goods to the local area they represent. 36 The harambee system of local self-help projects further emphasizes the importance of politicians contributing to visible projects in their constituency. Politicians are, in fact, often judged on the basis of who has done the most for self-help projects. 37 This is not to suggest that every peasant has benefited from Kenya's political system, just that the political ties between the state and a significant portion of the rural community are much stronger than in other countries. 38 As a result, Kenya has been a noticeable exception to the agrarian decline that has affected Africa for the last 15 years. 39 Indeed, not only have there been a plethora of individual projects sponsored by the government, but also the overall level of spending on agriculture and transport as compared to other sectors is more impressive than in some other African countries. 40 As a result, Kenyan farmers have much better access to infrastructure and byproducts of research. For instance, Lele found that more than 60% of Kenya's farmers grow hybrid or improved maize, compared to less than 10% in the other countries she studies. 41
Two crucial lessons emanate from the Kenyan experience. First, elections per se are not the issue. Unless the elections force politicians by threat of losing office to deliver goods to their region, they will not matter. As Barkan notes, "Elections which are tightly constrained and/or orchestrated from the center as in Tanzania. . .may be worse than no elections at all if the ultimate goal is to make the state more accountable to the peasantry." 42 Indeed, civilian regimes based on elections in other countries, notably Ghana and Nigeria, failed to enhance the influence of the entire farming community. 43 Elections in these countries did not increase the power of the agricultural sector because the civilian regimes did not last long enough for a tradition of accountability through elections to develop. Second, the Kenyan experience demonstrates that institutional structures have to be developed if small farmers are to have strong ties with the ruling political coalition. Small farmers cannot simply be brought into the ruling group. Rather, there must be real institutional conduits that connect the state and the vast majority in the countryside. In the case of Kenya, these conduits consisted largely of frequent local elections whereby agricultural interests were, to some extent, institutionalized.
Thus, the central question is whether structures similar to those in Kenya could develop in other countries. Certainly, the system is under stress even within Kenya. As Barkan notes, the system worked best when Jomo Kenyatta was ruling. Kenyatta, the acknowledged father of the country, was politically secure and could afford to let local elections take their own course. In contrast, Daniel arap Moi, Kenyatta's successor, is in a much less secure position and has begun to interfere with local elections. As a result, the ties between the electorate and the politicians are weakening. 44 The present difficulties in Kenya, where the government is attempting to increase sharply its control over elements of the polity, indicates that an insecure government is probably incompatible in the long term with the type of electoral system that prospered under Kenyatta.
Also, electoral systems of the Kenyan type take an extremely long time to establish. Traditions must develop whereby incumbents know that they can lose and whereby farmers are assured that politicians can actually deliver a significant amount of resources in exchange for votes. At least in Kenya, the system began to evolve right after independence so the elections could be institutionalized relatively quickly. In other countries, where there is a long tradition of authoritarian rule and militaries overturning elected civilian regimes, the idea that even small farmers can hold politicians accountable may take much longer to develop.
The type of representation of agricultural interests practiced in Kenya probably is the most durable system for promoting farmer interests. Correspondingly, it is also the most difficult one to construct. Given the political trauma that adoption of the Kenyan model implies, it is not a short-run alternative for most countries.
Another example of institutionalizing political support for agriculture is Zimbabwe, where parliamentarians are not particularly important to the political system, elections are held only once every five years, and there is no direct link between electoral success and delivering political goods to a constituency. 45 However, black farmers directly influence producer prices because they, along with white farmers, engage in a highly structured bargaining process over how much they will receive for their goods from government each year. The Mugabe government aided the establishment of a nationwide peasant organization after independence in part so that black farmers would also have a voice in the price negotiations. In the price-setting process, all farmers are invited to negotiate with the agriculture bureaucracy over what producers should receive for their goods. Farmers are allowed to make detailed presentations and their concerns are taken seriously. In addition, they are able to lobby the senior national leadership while the final decisions on prices are being made.
Black farmers do not have a similarly institutionalized voice in Zimbabwe's infrastructure decisions. Unlike prices, which are set once a year in a structured process where farmers can easily be invited to participate, there is not an open, easily discernible process whereby infrastructural decisions are made. However, the competence of the bureaucracy and the commitment of the nation's top leaders to agriculture, forged in part by the long guerrilla war, has meant that significant resources have been invested in supporting the entire agrarian system. As a result, black farmers have increased the amount of food they grow remarkably. In 1980, Zimbabwe's black farmers produced roughly 10% of the nation's maize sold to the national marketing authority and approximately 20% of its cotton. Now, in years with good rainfall, they produce more than 50% of the maize marketed and a significant portion of the cotton. 46 This reflects large increases in actual production by small farmers rather than whites simply moving to other crops. For instance, in 1979, black farmers produced approximately 420,000 tons of maize while in 1985 they produced 1.5 million tons. 47
Parts of Zimbabwe's experience clearly are not applicable to other African countries. In particular, the leadership's ability to help small farmer agriculture by expanding an already highly developed settler agricultural sector is clearly not an option open to most countries. However, there are other aspects of the Zimbabwe experience that may be relevant to African countries. In particular, the close consultation between the bureaucracy and major farmer groups (large-scale white commercial farmers and black farmers are represented by different organizations) over the setting of prices (and conceivably other aspects of the agricultural systems) could be replicated in many countries without the institutional trauma inherent in moving to systems where elections are central to the political system.
However, even the consultative aspect of Zimbabwe's system may not be able to be easily imported by other African countries. First, many other governments may not be willing to aid the establishment of a peasant organization as Zimbabwe did. Also, the Zimbabwe peasant organization, the National Farmers Association of Zimbabwe (NFAZ), is weak at both the bottom and top: it has only tenuous ties with many of its own constituents in the countryside and it has only the most limited ability to conduct competent economic analysis that might impress the government bureaucracy. The NFAZ therefore suffers from many of the same organizational problems that other farmer groups do across Africa. However, the Zimbabwe black farmer group has a tremendous advantage in that it is able to piggyback on the white farmer group organization, which is also invited to the consultations with the government. In particular, the NFAZ is able to use the sophisticated analysis developed by the white farmers' group to buttress their claims on the government. 48 Thus, the black farmer organization in Zimbabwe has the best of both worlds: it has the political legitimacy of representing millions of black farmers but the analytical resources of a rich and highly organized lobbying group.
The third example of how agriculture could be promoted by a political system is Ghana,whose government, as part of the most comprehensive program of structural adjustment on the continent, has reinvigorated agriculture. The government has chosen to emphasize agriculture because of great pressure from donors and because government officials appear to have become convinced that previous regimes' neglect of food crops and cocoa was a prime cause of the country's decline. Between 1984 and 1988, the nominal price of cocoa increased fivefold. While cocoa farmers were still receiving less than 30% of the international price in the mid-1980s, the Structural Adjustment Credit with the World Bank called upon the government to provide cocoa farmers with 55% of the international price by 1988-1989. 49 Cocoa production, which bottomed out at 168,000 tons in 1983, is projected to increase to 300,000 tons in the early 1990s. For the period 1900-1995, the government has begun implementing the Medium Term Agricultural Development Program in order to increase food crop output and to have a more balanced agricultural sector. Overall, agriculture is projected to grow at a rate of 4.7% a year. 50
However, agriculture has been promoted in Ghana without farmers gaining any institutional entree into the policy-making process. The PNDC, which took power in a coup in 1981, did not allow any elections to be held until 1988 and those were for District Assemblies with no immediate policy responsibilities. Nor has the government taken other measures that might institutionalize the voices of farmers. For instance, it has not aided the establishment of a nationwide farmer organization that would provide smallholders with a visible political presence in the capital through which they could influence policy. The PNDC's deliberations are also not open to this kind of participation from societal groups. Indeed, the government does not feel that it is necessary for farmers to have a formal voice in the policy-making process. As one Ministry of Agriculture official told me,
| Farmers have no comparative advantage in formulating policies. They have a comparative advantage in production. There is not a one-to-one relationship between farmer participation and their improved productivity. Improved extension and ensuring adequate supply of inputs at the doorstep is more important for productivity. 51 |
Instead, farmers benefit because governments believe that agriculture should be reinvigorated and because the multilateral and the bilateral donors continually press for improvements in agriculture.
The Ghanaian method for improving agriculture is obviously the one most attractive to African governments. It does not require the dramatic changes needed to move to an electoral system or the significant alterations in the bureaucracy that institutionalized consultation would entail. However, a much greater danger in this type of system is that agriculture will be slighted during the long period of infrastructural reform because the only real impetus for resources being directed to agriculture is the leaders' own beliefs and pressure from the donors. For instance, although the Economic Recovery Programme (ERP) began in 1983, it was not until the PNDC reviewed the country's progress in the run-up to the second phase of the ERP in 1986 that a focus on food agriculture emerged. The country was fortunate that in 1984 there had been good rains so there had been an increase in agricultural production; but it was obvious that the ad hoc measures taken up to that point could not guarantee an adequate food supply.
A not particularly surprising tradeoff exists between the degree of political transformation required and the long-term political strength that farmers acquire. Elections in the form that Kenya had until recently undoubtedly would require vast changes in the operations of most African countries. Consultations, as in Zimbabwe, require far fewer changes in the governmental system but give less political power to farmers. Finally, the promotion of agriculture by preference of the leadership and pressure from donors, as in Ghana, is easy to do but does not guarantee that the political terms of trade will favor farmers.
Thus, the available evidence suggests that, while African political systems may indeed be able to raise prices for many of their farmers, they may be incapable of generating the commitment necessary for the difficult task of improving the underlying agarian infrastructure. As a result, production of individual crops may increase, but there probably will not be dramatic improvements in overall yield levels. Unfortunately, such an outcome will do little to redress the long-term problems afflicting most African countries. Indeed, price reforms without institutional and infrastructural improvements will guarantee that most African countries will not significantly alter the trajectory of either their agricultural sector or the economy in general.
The Multilaterals and the Empowerment of Farmers
Given these rather pessimistic conclusions concerning the ability of African countries to sustain agrarian reform, the World Bank's efforts to promote agriculture will be particularly important. As noted above, the presence of the World Bank and the IMF, while probably increasing the political power of those pressuring for short-term higher agricultural producer prices does not create an organized constituency with political clout favoring long-term investments in agriculture. However, since it is unlikely that the political structures most likely to evolve in African countries will result in an unambiguous increase in the political power of farmers, the multilaterals may eventually have to become more involved in empowering farmers.
The fundamental reason why the World Bank and the IMF cannot provide more assistance to farmers now is that they are still configured, at least politically, as if they were assisting in European reconstruction after World War II. In countries that had skilled labor and long industrial traditions, it made sense for the Bank in particular to have a small presence on the ground and then use visiting teams of experts to observe infrastructure projects that were being funded. However, the Bank is clearly involved now in very different types of lending in Africa. Today, a large percentage of the money that the Bank loans is related to policy changes rather than the funding of electrical power stations or infrastructure. The Bank's habit of using a large number of short-term consultants is particularly inappropriate for this type of lending because the organization does not gain the local knowledge or analytical ability to implement conditionality policy in a rational manner and promote the development of the agrarian infrastructure. Until the Bank realizes that it cannot be politically astute as a policy lender until it has a much bigger staff on the ground and acts in a more politically self-conscious manner, it will be unable to offer more support to farmers.
A World Bank that offered more support to agriculture would need, first, to have a significantly larger presence in many African countries. This expanded staff would be necessary if it were actually able to support improvements in agriculture beyond the raising of producer prices. Only a larger staff would be able to develop the ties with society, review mechanisms, and institutional memory so that the Bank could observe long-term improvements in the agrarian support system as well as follow prices. Indeed, it seems strange that the World Bank, which often provides loans many times the amount of money donated by the U.S. government, usually has a staff that is only a small fraction of the Agency for International Development's mission and the political section of the American Embassy. A larger, more politically conscious Bank mission would also be able to coordinate better with USAID and local nongovernmental organizations that have expert political knowledge.
Further, by having a larger physical presence on the ground, the World Bank would actually be able to reach out to the people it says should develop "countervailing power." At the very least, the Bank would be able to supply farmer groups with the same kind of analysis supporting reforms that it provides to governments. This would not be a radically new position for the Bank. After all, it already helps governments attract foreign investment and promotes policies that allow foreign investors to feel more comfortable with African governments. It is even possible that the Bank might at some future date provide some aid to farmers' organizations so that they become more of a political presence. Thus, provided governments are receptive to input from farmers, the Bank might be helpful to farmer groups trying to move from support for leadership commitment, as in Ghana, to something approaching the level of consultation, in Zimbabwe. If these changes were made, the Bank would be able to become as politically important an actor in the long-term policy debates over the agrarian infrastructure as it is during discussions over producer prices. These structural reforms would allow the World Bank to come to terms with its demands that institutions and "governance" be improved in Africa. If these reforms are not adopted, the Bank faces serious risks because it will not be able to participate in the very type of institutional reforms that it is increasingly suggesting are necessary if African countries are to grow again.
Of course, the Bank's bylaws explicitly prohibit it from becoming involved in politics. However, this is a fiction that is seldom adhered to even in theory. Given that the Bank has become heavily involved in programs that cause significant shifts of income, it is perceived by almost all actors in the developing and the developed world as a profoundly political organization. Adjusting to its political role and specifically supporting those it wants structural adjustment to benefit would only be logical. Indeed, it is ironic that the Bank's current position of not fundamentally recognizing its own political nature simply prevents it from helping those it is naturally allied with in the campaign to increase the long-term resources going to agriculture.
Conclusion
This is a crucial time for African agriculture. The economic crisis that almost all African countries are mired in demands that action be taken quickly. In addition, African states are also now under pressure from both their citizens and foreign governments to change basic political structures in order to promote agriculture, which has given farmer communities in Africa a window of opportunity in which to insert themselves into the policy-making process. It would be a shame if the new political structures that at least some African countries may experiment with in the years to come do not empower the largest single group in African countries. Indeed, it behooves foreigners, especially the multilateral organizations, now to think creatively how they can help African farmer communities.
Note 1: Christopher L. Delgado and John W. Mellor, "A Structural View of Policy Issues in African Agricultural Development: A Reply," American Journal of Agricultural Economics 69 (May 1987): 391; also see the Widner chapter in this volume. I am grateful to Tom Callaghy, John Ravenhill, and John Waterbury for helpful comments. Back.
Note 2: World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1989), pp. 60-61. Back.
Note 3: Paul Streeten, What Price Food?: Agricultural Price Policies in Developing Countries (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 80. Back.
Note 4: E. E. Schattschneider, Politics, Pressures and the Tariff (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1935), p. 286. Back.
Note 5: World Bank, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1981), p. 45. Back.
Note 6: World Bank, 1989, p. 222 and World Bank, World Development Report 1992 (Washington, D.C.: 1992), p. 221. Back.
Note 7: FAO, Quarterly Bulletin of Statistics 2, 4 (1989): 7-8. Back.
Note 8: World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa, p. 276. Back.
Note 10: World Bank, Ghana: Policies and Program for Adjustment (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1984), p. 10. Back.
Note 11: FAO, FAO Quarterly Bulletin of Statistics 2, 3 (1989): 21-25. Back.
Note 12: W. A. Lewis, Report on Industrialisation and the Gold Coast (Accra: Government Printer, 1953), p. 2. Back.
Note 13: World Bank, Accelerated Development , p. 45. Back.
Note 14: The debate between "pricists" and "structuralists" is now well known. Representative views include: Christopher L. Delgado and John W. Mellor, "A Structural View of Policy Issues in African Agricultural Development," American Journal of Agricultural Economics 66 (1984): 665-670; Michael Lipton, Development Policy Review 5, 2 (June 1987): 197-215; Robert Bates, "The Reality of Structural Adjustment: A Sceptical Appraisal," in Simon Commander, ed., Structural Adjustment and Agriculture: Theory and Practice in Africa and Latin America (London: Overseas Development Institute, 1989), pp. 221-227; World Bank, World Development Report 1986 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1986), chs 4-5. Back.
Note 15: Raisuddin Ahmed and Narendra Rustagi, "Marketing and Price Incentives in African and Asian Countries: A Comparison," in Dieter Elz, ed., Agricultural Marketing Strategy and Pricing Policy (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1987), p. 109. Back.
Note 16: Dharam Ghai and Lawrence D. Smith, Agricultural Prices, Policy, and Equity in Sub-Saharan Africa (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1987), p. 60. Back.
Note 17: See the fascinating study by David Bevan et. al., East African Lessons on Economic Liberalization Thames Essay no. 48 (London: Gower, 1987), ch. 3. Back.
Note 18: Robert H. Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), pp. 106-119. Back.
Note 19: Paul Hesp, Producer Prices in Tropical Africa, Research Report no. 23 (Leiden: African Studies Center, 1985), p. 20. Back.
Note 20: Bates, Markets and States, pp. 130-131. Back.
Note 22: See, The Secretary-General, Mid-Term Review of the Implementation of the United Nations Programme of African Economic Recovery and Development 1986-1990, U.N. General Assembly Document A/43/500, 10 August 1988, p.17. Back.
Note 23: World Bank, Accelerated Development , p. 47. Back.
Note 24: Calculated from World Bank, African Economic and Financial Data (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1989), pp. 146-150. Back.
Note 25: William Jaeger and Charles Humphreys, "The Effect of Policy Reforms on Agricultural Incentives in Sub-Saharan Africa," American Journal of Agricultural Economics 70, 5 (December 1988): 1040. See also, Lionel Demery and Tony Addison, "Food Insecurity and Adjustment Policies in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Review of the Evidence," Development Policy Review 5, 2 (June 1987): 181. Back.
Note 26: Simon Commander, "Prices, Markets and Rigidities," in Commander ed., Structural Adjustment and Agriculture, p. 229. Back.
Note 27: Henry S. Bienen and Mark Gersovitz, "Consumer Subsidy Cuts, Violence, and Political Stability," Comparative Politics 19, 1 (1986). Back.
Note 28: The black market price may be above the market-clearing price because of rents that black marketeers can extract. I investigate this issue in Jeffrey Herbst, "Labor and City-Dwellers in Ghana under Structural Adjustment: The Politics of Acquiescence," in Donald Rothchild ed., Ghana: The Political Economy of Reform (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991). Back.
Note 29: Country Economics Division, Adjustment Lending: An Evaluation of Ten Years of Experience, Policy Research Series no. 1 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1988), p. 52. Back.
Note 30: Uma Lele, "Agricultural Growth, Domestic Policies, the External Environment and Assistance to Africa: Lessons of a Quarter Century," in Colleen Roberts ed., Trade, Aid and Policy Reform: Proceedings of the Eighth Agriculture Sector Symposium (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1988), p. 174. Back.
Note 31: J. G. Beynon, "Pricism v. Structuralism in African Agriculture," Journal of Agricultural Economics, 40, 3 (September 1989): 326. Back.
Note 32: David K. Leonard, "Putting the Farmer in Control: Building Agricultural Institutions," in Robert J. Berg and Jennifer Seymour Whitaker eds., Strategies for African Development (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 184. Back.
Note 33: IMF, "Structural Reform in Fund-Supported Programs," in Development Committee, Problems and Issues in Structural Adjustment (Washington, D.C.: Development Committee, 1991), p. 6. Back.
Note 34: On Kenya, see Michael Lofchie, The Policy Factor: Agricultural Performance in Kenya and Tanzania (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1989), ch. 7; also see the Lofchie chapter in this volume. Back.
Note 35: The elections mattered even though the contestants were usually members of the ruling party. Joel D. Barkan, "The Electoral Process and Peasant-State Relations in Kenya," in Fred M. Hayward ed., Elections in Independent Africa (Boulder: Westview, 1987), p. 213. Back.
Note 36: Robert H. Bates, Beyond the Miracle of the Market: The Political Economy of Agrarian Development in Kenya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 92. See Lofchie chapter on recent changes in Kenya. Back.
Note 37: See the very good review by Frank Holmquist, "Class Structure, Peasant Participation, and Rural Self-Help," in Joel D. Barkan ed., Politics and Public Policy in Kenya and Tanzania, revised edition (New York: Praeger, 1984), p. 185. Back.
Note 38: On the biases in the Kenyan system see, Stephen Peterson, "Neglecting the Poor: State Policy toward the Smallholder in Kenya," in Stephen K. Commins, Michael F. Lofchie, and Rhys Payne eds., Africa's Agrarian Crisis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1986), pp. 59-83. Back.
Note 39: World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa, p. 222. Back.
Note 40: Uma Lele, Agricultural Growth, Domestic Policies, the External Environment and Assistance to Africa: Lessons of a Quarter Century, MADIA Discussion Paper no. 1 (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 1989), p. 31. Back.
Note 41: Uma Lele, "Empowering Africa's Rural Poor: Problems and Prospects in Agricultural Development," in John P. Lewis ed., Strengthening the Poor: What Have We Learned? (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1988), p. 81. Back.
Note 42: Barkan, p. 234. Back.
Note 43: See, for instance, Naomi Chazan, "Ghana: Problems of "Governance and the Emergence of Civil Society," in Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset eds., Democracy in Developing Countries: Africa (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1988), p. 120. Back.
Note 44: Barkan, "Electoral Process," p. 235. Back.
Note 45: I have described the workings of Parliament and of the ruling party in State Politics in Zimbabwe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Back.
Note 46: Agricultural Marketing Authority, Economic Review of the Agricultural Industry of Zimbabwe (Harare: The Authority, 1984 and 1987). Back.
Note 47: Central Statistical Office, Statistical Yearbook 1987 (Harare: Central Statistical Office, 1987), p. 146. Back.
Note 48: See Herbst, State Politics 1988. Back.
Note 49: Simon Commander, John Howell and Wayone Seini, "Ghana: 1983-1987," in Commander ed., Structural Adjustment and Agriculture, p. 112. Back.
Note 50: Ministry of Agriculture, Medium Term Agricultural Development Program (Accra: Government Printers, 1990), p. 80. Back.
Note 51: Interview, Accra, August 10, 1989. See Martin and Callaghy chapters for recent changes in Ghana. Back.
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