Trade Liberalization and Issues of Food-Security, Sustainable Livelihood and Environmental Concerns. 

Speech presented by Winnie Madonsela[1]

Introduction

In the presentation today I will look at some cases we have found in our research that strengthen the whole theory of trade liberalization and gender impact. I will specifically consider the effects on the African region. As you will see most of the cases we have been able to collect are negative. That does not mean that there are no positive cases to be found. However, the whole problem of import liberalization has clouded the positive impacts of export promotion – so the way in which the African population has been affected by international trade could be looked at from different aspects. One could look at issues of food-security, issues of sustainable livelihood and the environmental concern.

African people have been affected by the agreements of the WTO in a very different way than people in other regions. African States are not just suffering because of the advent of WTO and the recent process of liberalization. The whole process started with the advent of Structural Adjustment Programs and other home grown programs of economic reforms, which tended to emphasize growth of the private sector compared to the public sector. So it may not be easy to actually disentangle the effects of the WTO policies from economic reforms, which were already instituted by these countries. And one may even argue, that this is not necessary because all of them are just the same thing setting up the stage for liberalization of import and promotion of export. The whole principle of comparative advantage has reinforced the African economies’ dependencies on primary commodity production through the emphasize of export-led growth. Adverse impacts include poverty as a result of the removal of subsidies on food stables and widespread retrenchment of workers. Therefore some communities are no longer able to engage in production.

One issue to consider before we come to the specific cases is that some of the things that happen within those countries tend to worsen the problems that are externally imposed. The fact that African states are among those states which have a fast growing population tend to increase the pressure on the existing infrastructure and on the economically active population. And then we have the problem of land – particularly women not having control and access to land. Then there is the whole problem of access to credit as well. So all of these things compound to the disadvantage of  women and actually of the whole African household.

In Sub-Saharan countries the number of people living in poverty increased from184 million people in 1985 to 216 million people in 1990, and it is projected that this figure is going to reach the high level of 400 million people by the end of 2001. So one may begin to comprehend the magnitude of the problem.

Trade Liberalization and Food-Security
When we look at the issue of food security there are a few cases that could be quoted. Countries like Mozambique have faced a lot of problems in terms of food-security – not only from the international arena but also from natural disasters. We all know that Mozambique experienced heavy flooding in 1999 and 2000 that threatened the food-security and even trade. Such countries cannot really be expected to rely on the market for availability of food. People need to be able to grow their own food, but we also need to be aware of the fact that they are faced by the problems they experience due to natural disasters.

Another case of food-security that we could look at is the case of Zimbabwe. In Zimbabwe studies has been undertaken to try to evaluate how much trade liberalization has affected that nation – and there is two districts which have been quoted as being heavily affected by these policies. The districts of Chiwi and Motaza. These districts have revealed negative impact of liberalization and how this negative impact tends to outweigh the positive impact of liberalization. These districts have been heavily dependent on export of maize. The export of maize was rising in the 1980s, but at the end of the 1990s these districts had become net-importers. Trade liberalization policies at first tended to favor these districts in the sense that they were able to export their produce and earn the necessary foreign exchange. But as a result of drought and other disasters within the country it came to a point where they started to become net-importers of maize. By the end of 1999, Zimbabwe’s maize import amounted to more than 390 000 tons – as opposed to 299 000 tons exported on the same year. So the value of the food import bill in these countries has tended to rise as a result of liberalization policies.

It may not be easy to say exactly at this moment whether trade liberalization is benefiting or has negative impact on some of the countries. What has to be done is to appropriate how much in terms of markets these countries are able to secure in other countries as a result of liberalization, and then juxtapose that with how much in terms of import, and how much the import bill has increased as a result of liberalization policies. In Zimbabwe the finding shows that market forces has not successfully addressed the problems of domestic food production. The net-effect of liberalization has been negative in that sense, and there has been a threat on food-security. 

There are also cases that have been recorded in Western Africa – the Sierra Leone case. Sierra Leone has rice as its stable food and was self-sufficient in the production of the crop in the early 1960s. By the end of the 1980s, there tended to be a lot of competition from cheaper rice-imports. And as one would expect, if people have low incomes and they are seeing that there is food items  brought into the country that is cheaper than what is locally produced – they will tend to buy the cheaper imports. So that really killed the rice-industry in Sierra Leone.

And of course there is always someone who is going to come up and say – what if you diversify the production so that you can be able to gain safety from other crops. You can produce other crops than just rice. So Sierra Leone was advised to go into tobacco production. When it came to the production of tobacco there was a shift in the ownership of the businesses. Now it became the business of big foreign companies, and even some of the small farmers converted some of their land that was predominantly used for rice farming to tobacco farming. The problem that now began to arise was that this reduced food production even further in favor of a cash crop. A cash crop, which is not even a food-crop for that matter.

The arguments by proponents of liberalization policies would be that the foreign exchange, which is earned from the sale of tobacco, should be able to give the Sierra Leonians enough money to be able to purchase food from the market. But when we talk about food-security that is not exactly what we are talking about. We are not talking about people having the ability purchase food from foreign firms. We are talking about people having the ability to grow their own food, and not to be faced with unfair competition from cheaper products, which have been produced in more, mechanized processes. And in some cases we find that this food is chemically based. So the bill that these people could have incurred in terms of safe high cost production for their food-crops is now transferred to be a bill in the health sector. People are getting sick as a result of buying food that are more chemically based, because of substituting organic farming to these kind of more mechanized methods of farming.

Then of course one just has to mention at this point that with African countries you don’t just look at it as external policies having a direct impact on these countries. Most of you will know that Sierra Leone has been in the news for a long time because of the civil strife, which has left many people homeless and poor. So when we look at the impact of trade liberalization on these economies we have to take into mind that some of these countries are already immensely troubled. And if anything they would need programs that would promote development and sustainable livelihood for their people.

Liberalization and Sustainable Livelihood
We shall now move on to the issue of sustainable livelihood – to what extent has this been affected by trade liberalization policies? Maybe it would be proper at this stage to start with a definition of how we understand sustainable livelihood. Like I said when it come to the issue of food security there is so much debate on what exactly we mean with food security. Somebody, maybe from the U.S., would say that they don’t understand Africans – what they are complaining about – they are secure as far as food is concerned, because we are able to ship loads and loads of maize products to Africa. But that’s not the kind of thing we are talking about. When it comes to sustainable livelihood we are concerned about people’s capacity to generate and maintain means of living and hence well being for themselves and that of future generations. To the extent that it is sustainable it should be able to cater for future generations.

In most African countries men and women are engaged in various activities, which contribute to their well-being. Activities that range from agriculture and petty trading to waged labour. The concept of sustainable livelihood is generally outside of international commitments and obligations   and that is also why it is becoming a concern for us. International commitments and obligations recognize only livelihoods, which are based on capital accumulation and the production of such accumulation of capital.  But African economies are characterized by a serious lack of capital and as a result they are not in control of issues, which directly concern their livelihood.

Where one could give a few case studies when it comes to sustainable livelihood -we have a documented case of the Mtwara media-center in Tanzania, which used a participatory video with traditional fishing. They just decided to record the whole process of traditional fishing methods, and they did not know that this was going to be very helpful in the future. At some point the government ministry responsible for fishing had decided just to ban traditional methods of fishing in favor of modern fishing methods. As a result of the ban there was a decline in fish that were now available to traditional fishers due to the large-scale dynamite fishing for commercial sale and for export. The video became very handy because the local community decided to use it to actually sensitize their leaders in how traditional fishing methods protected coral, fish eggs and young fish in their environment as compared to dynamite fishing. The policy makers – that particular minister – were so impressed by the video that he decided to lift the ban on traditional fishing methods.

So we have one example here where we can have a lesson on how sustainable livelihood have not yet featured in economic planning in Africa. These people were able to protect their means of livelihood by actually recording the ways in which traditional fishing methods protected the environment as opposed to the new methods, which were more mechanical, and ways of large-scale dynamite fishing. So what we are saying is that it is in high time that African economies begin to value their tradition of communal livelihoods. They need to begin working together creating national and international laws that acknowledge African values and allow diverse livelihoods to fully flourish.

Liberalization and Environmental Concerns
I will just quickly touch on the issue of liberalization and the environment. Here we have the case of trading in oil and its environmental impact on the Nigerian economy. Many of you have seen in the news how the Shell industry has gone into Nigeria and are operating big multinational companies. There have been reports of widespread environmental damages that are caused to the region – to the people that live around these areas. First of all, people have been displaced from their land. And we are talking about really huge areas, were people used the land as a means of production in whatever way they could to sustain their livelihoods.

Besides just the fence being there – there has been records of oil spills. Nigeria has been quoted as one of the countries where there has been a lot more oil-spills in the Shell industry than in any other country in the world. And yet the ownership of this firm is just foreign and it’s been recorded that the oil-industry employs only 5% of the Nigerian labor-force. And there is no gender specific statistics to that. Since it is a mechanized process one can just think that it is mostly men that are employed there, and yet it is women who are feeling the negative impacts of the oil-spills. We have documented reports that indicate that it is not uncommon for Nigerian oil-companies to dispose wastes from the oil drilling directly into fresh-water bodies.

So people in Nigeria are not only affected by being displaced from their land – but also the resources that they have are contaminated by pollution in all sorts of areas – air pollution, land pollution, water pollution.

And another thing to mention here is that it is not just the international community as such, but our own governments who have met this people with antagonism. When they are trying to express their concerns they are met with confrontation by their government. And then you begin to wonder, where are those people supposed to appeal for purposes of gaining back their livelihood, and - to borrow Hellen Wangusa’s expression – gaining back their dignity? Because now they are stripped-off of everything they had. And their own government, which have taken over a global kind of view, are no longer protecting their own people. But they are protecting the interests of multilateral organizations. And now you begin to wonder what the role of the national governments is in the area of new liberalism.

So these affected people – the Ogoni-people of Nigeria – as one of their leaders Ken Saro-Wiwa said - are affected negatively not only by the oil-spills but just by the mere putting up of the oil-plant in their region. And the local authorities are not even making sure that the proceeds of the oil-production goes to these communities to build up their schools and to build up health facilities. Who is actually benefiting from that is the oil tycoon and then it is the mother body of the corporation.

Affected communities also complain that they are not being consulted regarding the leasing of their land – so there is not even enough compensation for the land that have been taken over.

Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights
Finally we have a case that have to do with Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) impacting on African States. And here we have a case that have been ongoing between South Africa and the European Union – the Grapa or the “Uzo” case whereby South Africa was actually forced to denounce the use of Grapa because Italy claimed that they were the original custodians of that product. But because South Africa had the feeling that it was more to gain than just keeping the Grapa denomination they decided to go into the free trade area and give up some of their rights.

The case of Grapa ended up not just being a case of losing the Grapa denomination in trade, it also became a case of loosing markets which South Africa had when it was able to use the Grapa denomination, and new markets which could have been available to the South African industry in Brazil and Argentina. And now you get back and look at the positive impact of the bilateral agreement and you begin to wonder to what extent do the positive impacts outweigh the negative.

Winnie Madonsela is research coordinator for The Gender & Trade Network in Africa (GENTA), a regional organization that is part of the International Gender & Trade Network. She is a also lecturer in economics at the Department of Economics, University of Swaziland. Born in Swaziland, she has worked extensively as a consultant in Development Projects. Currently she is working on a preliminary inquiry on the impact of the EU/ACP Cotonou Agreement on African States, preparing literacy material aimed at sensitizing  Swazi farmers on the multilateral trade system, and on qualitative analysis on the benefits of  Swaziland’s participation in the COMESA FTA. Winnie Madonsela can be contacted at: wmadonsela@wxcite.com 

 [1] The speech is based on Winnie Madonsela’s report ”Trade Liberalization: Impacts on the African Women. The report can be downloaded at:www.genderandtradenetwork.net/Africa%20Network.htm

Go to the next page

Go to FfD-index

Compiled and edited by Ingeborg P. Eliasen