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TAGS: KE
SUBJECT: SUMMARY REPORT ON CONSULTATIVE WORKSHOP ON THE 
GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY RESPONSE NAIROBI, KENYA 
NOVEMBER 11-14, 2008. 
 
REF: 
 
The following is a summary report, following the 
consultative workshop on the Global Food Security 
Response. 
 
¶1.  Key regional partners participated in a workshop 
November 11-14 in Nairobi, Kenya, to discuss priorities 
for the implementation of the Global Food Security 
Response in Eastern and Southern Africa. This is part 
of a broader, multi-donor response to the global food 
crisis in support of the Africa-led Comprehensive 
African Agricultural Development Program (CAADP). The 
U.S. Government, led by USAID, has organized this 
initiative in the sub-region to ?make markets work for 
African farmers,? particularly smallholders. The 
overall objective is to address food security by 
strengthening orderly marketing and structured trading 
systems for staple foods, increase farm incomes, and 
increase regional food supplies as building blocks of 
regional economic growth. Building on existing 
activities, the Global Food Security Response will 
coordinate emergency response with long-term 
development programs. A key objective is facilitating 
the development of systems for the local and regional 
procurement of food aid, which will strengthen, rather 
than by-pass, sustainable market institutions. 
 
¶2.  The workshop was organized jointly by USAID/East 
Africa?s offices of Regional Economic Growth and 
Integration and Food for Peace, and the Eastern Africa 
Grain Council (EAGC). The EAGC is a private sector 
association of producers, traders, millers and other 
processors, and services providers working at all 
stages of  value chains for grains in the region. 
 
¶3.  From USAID, the following offices and Missions were 
represented: the Africa Bureau (AFR/SD), the 
Humanitarian Assistance Bureau (DCHA/PPM); the Office 
of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), the East Africa 
regional mission, and the bilateral Missions in Kenya, 
Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Malawi, and Zambia. 
The EAGC was represented by several members of its 
Board of Directors as well as its senior staff. The 
Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) 
presented the newly launched Alliance for Commodity 
Trade in Eastern and Southern Africa (ACTESA). Senior 
staff of the World Food Program (WFP) from Rome and 
Nairobi presented and discussed their new Purchase for 
Progress (P4P) program. 
 
¶4.  Staple food marketing experts from the EAGC, the 
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), 
Catholic Relief Services (CRS), KENAGRI, ACDI/VOCA, and 
CLUSA presented lessons from programs designed to 
integrate smallholders into commercial markets. Other 
private firms and NGOs active in the sector 
participated actively in discussions. Representatives 
of other donors included the Swedish International 
Development Agency (SIDA), the Bill & Melinda Gates 
Foundation, the World Bank, Australian Aid (AusAID), 
and Japanese International Cooperation (JICA). 
 
¶5.  The workshop produced concrete outputs on two 
levels. First, there were internal meetings among the 
five USAID Missions in eastern Africa that are being 
provided with supplemental funds for the Global Food 
Security Response ? Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, 
and East Africa regional. Sudan, Malawi, and Zambia are 
involved in the newly launched Market Linkages 
Initiative, a separate program supported by the Famine 
Prevention Fund, and are likely to receive funding for 
the Food Security Response in future years. 
USAID/Mozambique and the regional office for southern 
Africa were unable to attend, but will also be 
involved. 
 
¶6.  The Mission representatives discussed how to 
coordinate their plans and programs with each other and 
with USAID/Washington. The five missions in eastern 
Africa that are receiving supplemental funds this year 
will submit final implementation plans in December. 
These will lay out expanded development assistance 
activities in support of food marketing and trading 
systems, with a focus on local and regional 
procurement, which will be coordinated with 
humanitarian assistance delivered through Food for 
Peace and OFDA. Each Mission will show how their 
activities are helping to reduce the longer-term need 
for food aid and other forms of emergency assistance. A 
mechanism for coordination among agencies and missions 
has been set up in the USAID/East Africa Mission. 
 
¶7.  The second set of meetings with the broader 
stakeholder group discussed lessons from ongoing 
activities in staple food markets and trade, and agreed 
on the following broad recommendations: 
? In the areas of national and regional public 
policy, the new ACTESA program will catalyze an 
effective voice for smallholders to advocate for 
more transparent and consistent policies in 
support of open borders. ACTESA will push for the 
full implementation of harmonized, simplified 
regional rules and protocols to encourage cross- 
border trade that have been agreed by regional 
policy forums of COMESA and the East African 
Community (EAC). The EAGC and bodies including the 
COMESA business forum will advocate for an open 
and predictable policy environment for private 
sector investments in staple food marketing and 
value chains.  A coordinated voice is needed to 
muster evidence against short-sighted policies and 
interventions in markets by policy-makers. 
Prominent examples are bans on food exports and 
ad-hoc interventions in domestic crop and food 
prices imposed without warning in the name of 
national food security, which often penalize both 
farmers and traders without achieving expected 
benefits for consumers. 
? The integration of smallholders into commercial 
markets will be encouraged by linking increased 
productivity with viable mechanisms to consolidate 
harvests at accessible bulking/storage centers. 
The expansion and scaling up of warehouse receipt 
systems, and eventually of commodity exchanges, 
are potentially important components of structured 
trading systems. While there is a broad consensus 
in favor of collective marketing by associations 
of smallholders, there are many examples where 
poor governance and top-down dependency on 
cooperatives or NGO-led projects have led to 
collapse and disappointed hopes. A number of 
alternative models are being promoted, such as the 
bottom-up development of groups that mobilize 
their own savings, and which are given 
opportunities to acquire business skills from 
private sector partners. At the regional level, 
transport corridors link potential surplus 
production zones, storage facilities, and markets. 
They provide a framework for identifying targets 
of opportunity for increasing regional trade in 
staples, thereby expanding market opportunities. 
? The private and public sectors should work 
together to provide expanded market services and 
institutions for structured trade. To negotiate 
the transition from low-input, low-output 
subsistence-oriented production to commercial 
production for the market, farmers need to improve 
their decision-making capacity and business and 
analytical skills. Reliable market information 
systems should be upgraded and made more broadly 
accessible with private investments by cell phone 
companies and other partners. Key investments in 
infrastructure must be promoted. Public 
investments in feeder roads and other basic 
services are critically important, and will 
require sustained advocacy. Private investors 
should be encouraged to build stores and drying 
facilities, upgrade aggregation points, broaden 
opportunities for processing, etc. Finance, 
credit, and loan guarantees are needed to upgrade 
marketing systems at many points along value 
chains. 
? Systems for local and regional purchase of food 
aid should be leveraged to support the development 
of structured trade. The World Food Program should 
put mechanisms in place to use sustainable market 
and trading systems to purchase food crops 
produced by smallholders. These should include 
agreements to buy from aggregation points, 
warehouse receipt systems, nascent commodity 
exchanges, etc. All agencies involved in local and 
regional purchase should use sustainable 
commercial, rather than ad hoc parallel marketing 
channels, and experiment with vouchers and other 
innovative mechanisms that will benefit poorer 
farmers. Care should be taken to ensure that local 
purchase programs do not have negative impact on 
prices. 
? As a mechanism for opening up market access for 
livestock producers in marginal areas, local and 
regional purchase should include animal products 
among nutritious foods for distribution.  The 
Kenyan national food reserve system is considering 
canned corned beef and UHT milk in rations. 
Analysis of possible meat and milk processing and 
market chains should be done immediately to 
establish feasibility. The Global Food Security 
Response should be linked with ongoing programs to 
broaden market opportunities for small and 
pastoralist livestock producers, with a focus in 
arid and semi-arid areas. 
? A regional learning platform will be set up to 
assist farmers? organizations, private companies, 
NGOs, and publicly supported development and 
emergency assistance programs to make markets work 
for farmers. The platform should collect and 
disseminate information on best practices and 
lessons learned in the area of market service and 
institutions. It could use web-based and e-mail 
systems, regular publications, and meetings. 
ACTESA was suggested as a possible facilitator for 
this platform. 
 
¶8.  Several donor representatives met briefly on the 
last day with the group from USAID, as well as with 
representatives of the World Food Program (WFP) and the 
Eastern Africa Grains Council (EAGC). It is clear that 
the global food price crisis of the past year has led 
to increased attention to market access for small 
farmers, as a key component of agricultural 
development. 
Many separate actions are being taken, and everyone 
agreed that there is an urgent need to improve 
coordination. 
 
¶9.  CAADP provides a framework, but more needs to be 
done to link activities at the regional and national 
levels, both with governments and with other partners. 
Focused research and advocacy are needed to prevent 
policies that are reacting to short-term political 
pressures from undermining the longer term development 
of regional markets. The EAGC needs to scale up its 
capacity for advocacy, to present the consequences of 
policy alternatives at both national and regional 
forums. As it begins to implement its Purchase for 
Progress (P4P) program the WFP is consulting widely, 
and is supporting innovate market mechanisms. The 
donors are planning closer coordination in their 
support to COMESA and other regional organizations, 
including expanded programs to speed up trade along 
transit corridors, and their transformation into 
economic corridors. COMESA?s ACTESA will coordinate 
activities to expand regional markets for staple 
commodities, with improved access for smallholder 
farmers, which is a widely shared common objective. 
 
¶10.  On Saturday, November 15, the EAGC organized a 
field trip to visit the warehouse receipts system at 
the facility of Lesiolo Grain Handlers Limited near 
Nakuru, Kenya. This program has been supported by the 
Kenya Maize Development Program and the Equity Bank, as 
well as by the EAGC. 
 
¶11. Presentations available on the EAGC Website: 
http://www.eagc.org/reports.asp 
 
Promoting orderly grain marketing ? Constantine Kandie 
and Bridget Okumu (Eastern Africa Grain Council) 
ACTESA: Strategy for Advocacy and Competitiveness ? 
Cris Muyunda (COMESA) 
Local and Region Purchase for Structured Grain Trade? 
David Rinck, (USAID/FFP/East Africa) 
Complementarity of Local/Regional Procurement 
Operations and Agricultural Development Efforts ? Jeff 
Hill, (USAID/Africa Bureau) 
Purchase for Progress (P4P): Empowering small farmers - 
- Joao Manja, (World Food Program) 
Services and Institutions: Linking smallholders to BDS 
providers, the Zambian experience  -- Mark Wood, 
(CLUSA) 
Smallholder commercialization: the foundation for 
structured trade --  Sophie Walker (KenAgri), Sebastian 
Wanjala Oggema (ACDI/VOCA), Megan McGlinchy (CRS) 
Barriers to Trade in Food Staples -- Stephen Njukia 
(AGRA) 
Commodity Risk Management: EAGC Warehouse Receipt 
System -- Stephen Njukia (AGRA) 
 
RANNEBERGER