In The Gambia today, there should be no higher priority for the government than achieving food security. It is not just a matter of good policy but a moral imperative because food is a basic human necessity. Moreover, it is an urgent situation because food insecurity in the country is currently at an intolerably high level. While there seems to be enough rice and food items in the market, the affordability is low due to persistent inflation and stagnant incomes, as well as the overall poor state of the economy. Many Gambian households are barely able to have three full meals a day. Even when three full meals are served in a compound, the nutrition quality is often quite poor in many regions of the country.
Given such an unacceptable situation, the government of the day should make the attainment of food security its foremost objective. After all, no one can think about tomorrow when they are experiencing acute hunger. And it needs to be emphasized that the attainment of food security is not just about ensuring the supply of rice and other food items in the country. It also means the availability of nutritious food at affordable price for the average Gambian.
It is important to have a national discussion on achieving food security because the existing approach by the Adama Barrow government is self-evidently wrongheaded. Even after years in power, the food security situation in the country keeps getting worse. For example, the price of a bag of rice has increased by more than 50%. Over this period, the country is importing a greater quantity of the rice consumed. The prices of other food items are similarly increasing and our dependence on imported food items is getting even greater.
To better understand the current misguided the policy of the Adama Barrow regime, consider its approach to rice. Currently, the government is operating under the belief that they are addressing food security by doubling down on the importation of rice. In following this strategy, the Adama Barrow regime has even started the practice of guaranteeing loans to private companies to enable them to import even greater quantities of rice, with no serious effort on increasing local production.
Increasing rice supply in the country is a positive thing but the nature of the approach matters. Specifically, any approach to addressing food security in The Gambia that is spearheaded by increasing rice supply through importation will only make the problem worse. This is because one of the main reasons why the country is currently experiencing high food inflation is due to our widening trade deficit. In other words, our imports are significantly higher than our exports. For example, the value of our exports in 2023 was about $130 million while our imports that year was over $800 million. Another way of looking at this is that when Adama Barrow came to power in 2017, our trade deficit was about $300 million. It is currently over $700 million.
As our national imports grow and exports stagnate, there is an ever-increasing pressure on our currency to depreciate. The persistent depreciation of the dalasi means that the local costs of our imported consumer goods continue to increase even as their international prices stay the same. This means that even if a high volume of rice is imported, it will become increasingly unaffordable. So what is point of having greater quantity of rice in the country when the price is out of the reach of the average Gambian?
The general rise in prices is not limited to only rice. Every single consumer good is affected. It is precisely why inflation has been going out of control in The Gambia. Every consumer good in the country is undergoing significant price increases as the country is being entrenched as an import-based economy.
Another problem that is being created with this wrong-headed policy focused on rice importation is that the government is adding to our debt problem. Our current debt level is high and unsustainable, and a major portion of our annual budget goes into debt service. The provision of guarantees to private companies so that they can import rice creates a contingent liability, which is effectively more debt. To make matters worse, this credit guarantees are being made with international banks where the loans are denominated in foreign currency – the burden of which rises as the dalasi depreciates.
What is more, these guarantees are completely unnecessary for rice importation. The imports of items such as rice and sugar have been on-going for decades without any government guarantees. Private companies have been able to undertake these imports on their own through the use of trade finance instruments such as letters of credit issued by local banks. There is simply no need for the government’s intervention.
The reality is that addressing food security in The Gambia is not complicated. First and foremost, we must facilitate the local production of food items. And rice meets all the right requirements to be abundantly produced locally. We are fortunate enough to have the necessary agro-ecological climate to not only produce rice but to do so at high yields.
By undertaking local production of rice, this will allow the country to reduce its ballooning trade deficit. After all, not only do we import 90% of the rice we consume but it is also the largest food import item for the country. By reducing our massive trade deficit, the depreciation pressure on our currency would lessen, which would help increase the affordability of other consumer goods. This would further enhance food security because it reduces our exposure to global food shocks.
The government definitely has a role in creating incentives for private companies with regards to food security. But in our Gambian context, that effort need to be concentrated on generating local food production. First and foremost, local rice production should be tackled with seriousness. All it requires is concerted efforts in addressing major obstacles such as implementing land reforms, improving irrigation infrastructure, ensuring adequate access to inputs and promoting local processing. A competent Gambian government should be able to achieve food security goal within 3 years. Beyond rice, local industries in food processing should be encouraged by tackling energy supply, which is currently too expensive and unreliable.
And there are consequences for this failure to address food security. With each passing day, we see protests against rising cost of living in several countries. Such protests do not arise in a vacuum. They are the inevitable results of a country having a sleeping leadership that has lost touch with the people.
