Maclean et al. - 2002 - Rice almanac source book for the most important e

Table 1. Production, consumption, and imports of rice in West Africa, by country, 1999, and average annual
growth rates, 1995-99.
Country
Production a Consumption b Imports b
1999 (t) Growth 1999 (t) Growth 1999 (t) Growth
1995-99 1995-99 1995-99
(%) (%) (%)
Benin 37,198 21.2 110,996 –2.9 129,200 –7.2
Burkina Faso 94,209 2.9 208,103 18.6 142,116 22.9
Cameroon 67,470 17.6 100,945 –7.0 60,003 –16.6
Chad 138,282 15.0 81,029 6.5 2,285 –21.0
Côte d’Ivoire 938,481 -2.7 1,165,806 7.4 429,000 1.5
Gambia, The 31,700 13.7 113,676 9.0 94,265 8.4
Ghana 209,750 1.0 166,107 –11.2 69,131 –9.8
Guinea 750,000 4.4 498,354 –3.7 125,000 –19.0
Guinea Bissau 80,300 –11.9 102,379 –4.3 62,230 1.4
Liberia 196,300 36.7 148,696 24.8 40,700 7.7
Mali 719,600 11.7 537,442 14.4 55,000 4.7
Mauritania 51,878 –0.4 161,243 12.4 122,300 15.0
Niger 60,921 4.5 60,608 –4.1 58,463 10.0
Nigeria 3,277,000 2.9 2,585,224 6.7 687,925 23.1
Senegal 364,000 23.8 653,651 5.8 625,160 9.1
Sierra Leone 247,235 –8.7 423,801 2.0 243,200 0.0
Togo 81,061 24.9 217,911 60.6 238,000 111.1
West Africa 7,345,385 3.8 7,335,971 5.8 3,183,978 6.5
a
Unmilled paddy rice. b Milled rice.
Source: FAO online database.
more than $800 million in scarce foreign exchange.
Imports of this magnitude represent a
major brake on broader development efforts.
Rice economy liberalization and
privatization
The acceleration in per capita rice consumption
since the mid-1990s is due to the liberalization of
rice imports combined with a downward trend of
the price on the world market. Rice trade liberalization
has also opened the door to the importation
of low-quality rice that can be purchased by
the poorest groups.
On the supply side, liberalization has led to a
greater difference in crop yields. While
production efficiency is improving in irrigated
areas where local farmers’ organizations have
taken over previously public institutions, the
disruption of input supply and the unfinished
reform of the rural financial systems have resulted
in a stagnation of yield in other areas. Most of
the increase in irrigated rice production will rely
on improved resource-use efficiency and rehabilitation
of existing irrigation schemes. In the short
term, the largest share of production will be in
rainfed rice-based systems, which require laborsaving
technologies. For the mid term, intensification
in rainfed lowlands through the adoption of
appropriate water management technologies
offers a large and sustainable potential to increase
rice production.
The privatization of the governmentmanaged
rice commodity chain has also allowed
the emergence and fast growth of small-scale
processing units in place of parastatal industrial
mills. This has resulted in decreasing rice
processing costs, thus improving the overall competitiveness
of the local rice vis-à-vis imported
rice. But this change has also led to a degradation
of average local rice quality, which is becoming
quite variable. Consumers now favor lowerquality
imported rice, which does not have the
same organoleptic attributes as local rice, but
which is cleaner and more homogeneous in
appearance, thus requiring less time for
preparation. The future of the West African rice
economy depends highly on the improvement of
supply-to-demand linkages.
Rice as a women’s crop
In many areas of West Africa, rice is produced
primarily by women farmers, thus producing an
important share of their income. Women’s income
tends to benefit children and other vulnerable
groups more than does the income of men.
Despite this fact, past efforts to develop and
transfer new rice technologies have most often
bypassed women farmers. Thus, although rice
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