As ACT Alliance EU office, we have provided the seed funding to epamonitoring.net and are happy to see the website is updated on a regular basis. The initiative allows complete editorial autonomy to the site manager in identifying the issues in EU-ACP agricultural trade which are reviewed and explored. The feedback we have so far received suggests that the site is appreciated by those actively engaged in dealing with the EU on agricultural trade policy issues. As the ACT Alliance EU office we would welcome and appreciate any support which can be extended to the continued work of the site.
Currently, there is no other site devoted to monitoring and evaluating the impact of EU trade and agricultural policies on ACP-EU agro-food sector relations. There is a need for ongoing sector and country specific information on the impact of evolving EU agricultural and trade policies on food security in ACP countries. The epamonitoring.net website provides on an illustrative (not comprehensive) basis timely and accessible monitoring of trends and their possible implications for ACP agro-food sector development.
Importantly, the website may play a role in providing early alerts in areas where policy responses are required to prevent or reverse adverse consequences for ACP agro-food sector development (most comprehensively to date, the impact of Brexit on ACP countries). The focus is very much on supporting the structural development of ACP agro-food sectors so that jobs and livelihood opportunities in ACP countries can be enhanced in the important agro-food sector.
Size matters. Size matters because livelihoods matter. This is an important point repeatedly highlighted throughout the website when it comes to agro-food sector trade. We know smallholders depend on their local markets and are highly exposed – and unprotected – to global and EU trade flows.
In the past (APRODEV press release on the 2013 CAP reform) we deplored the omission of any references to the EU’s international responsibility to take seriously the external effects of its domestic agricultural policies – in line with its legally binding commitment to ensuring policy coherence for development. This is ever more pressing. The EU continues to be the world’s leading net agro-food exporter. Major components of sub-Saharan Africa food markets are becoming a growing focus of EU export and investment interest. These patterns of trade and investment are not always aligned with the agro-food sector development aspirations of African governments and the employment and livelihood needs of African people.
As ACP countries sign up to Economic Partnership Agreements there is a real danger their policy space to protect and nurture local agro-food sector development, through building local production capacities, will be constrained and undermined.
Investing in monitoring is a basic requirement to increase accountability. Monitoring can contribute to developing future EU-ACP agro-food sector relations that put the rights of the poor to livelihoods, food, land, water and seeds at the forefront of all aspects of trade and development cooperation. We cannot have trade and investment relations solely for the benefit of those with capital looking for new high value investment opportunities or those with surpluses looking for new markets.
This latest compilation includes articles looking at the surge in Dutch onion exports to Mauritania, and restructuring challenges facing the Guyanese sugar sector due to highly unfavourable EU market trends and poultry sector developments.
The scandal of how massive volumes of EU exports of residual poultry parts are undermining poultry sectors across Africa is well known. ACT Alliance has previously campaigned on the effects in Cameroon, where it was estimated that 5 local jobs were being lost for every tonne of frozen EU poultry parts imported. While new policies were set in place to restrict imports and give the Cameroonian poultry sector a chance to develop, we now find that Africa’s largest poultry sector, in South Africa, is facing serious job losses as a result of the massive expansion of EU exports of poultry parts since 2009. The experience demonstrates the ineffectiveness of safeguard provisions included in the trade agreement with the EU.
The articles posted also show the EU commitments to flexibility expressed in its ‘Trade for All’ policy statement are largely meaningless. In day to day trade policy dealings, Commission officials insist on narrowly interpreting safeguard and anti-dumping provisions in ways which prevent African governments’ from taking the necessary action to deal with massive import surges which can destroy local supply chains.
New ways need to be found to interpret and apply trade rules in ways which don’t close of opportunities for African countries to structurally develop their agro-food sectors, so that more jobs and more livelihood opportunities are created locally in meeting Africa’s rising demand for food products, which is driven by the twin processes of rapid population growth and expanding urban markets.
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Karin Ulmer Karin is a German national and holds a M.A. in comparative social science from the University of North London and a B.A. in applied social and religious sciences from EFH Academy Freiburg, Germany. She currently works as the Senior Policy Officer at ACT Alliance EU (previously APRODEV), a Brussels-based association of church related development and humanitarian aid organisations. Her main focus of work is advocacy and lobbying of the EU on food security issues and EU trade and investment policies. |