Sierra Leone, a nation of approximately 7 million people with more than 5.4 million hectares of land suitable for growing rice, continues to rely on imported rice to feed its people, and since President Julius Maada Bio took over the leadership of the country, the price of local and imported rice more than doubled.
A Request to Access Information submitted by Awoko newspaper on November 10, to the Ministry of Trade and Industry and subsequent inquiries requesting information on rice imports, price and subsidies remained unanswered, in violation of the Right to Access Information Act of 2013. Awoko filed a complaint with the Right to Access Information Commission on December 21.
For the past two decades multiple governments promised and failed to improve the local agriculture production despite its great potential. Data from the World Food Programme (WFP) shows that the price of local rice suffered the highest increase under President Bio’s leadership, something not seen since the civil war ended.
Ya Almamy Kamara, who is well over her 50s, experiences this struggle every day when clients ask why her food is so expensive. Under her torn umbrella, she carefully measures each plate to ensure each client gets the same amount of rice for the 4,000 Leones.
“We cannot buy at a higher price and sell at a cheaper price,” she said and explained that making a profit has become challenging when the rice is extremely unaffordable for businesses and consumers as well.
According to the WFP, the price of imported rice in Freetown, Sierra Leone, doubled from 4,000 Leones a kilogram (Kg) in March 2018, to 8,000 Leones/Kg in August 2020. In much of the rest of the country imported rice stands at 8,000 Leones/Kg but in Bonthe it reached 10,000 in July.
Local rice is even more expensive. For example, in March 2018 when President Bio won the presidency, locally produced rice cost 5,950 Leones/Kg in Freetown, and it doubled to 12,000 Leones/Kg in July 2020, a record increase not seen since the civil war.
Food insecurity increased in Western Area Urban -Freetown- from 4.6% in February 2019, to 30.5%, according to the WFP’s January 2020 Food Security Monitoring, “a concerning trend that likely reflects the impact of an extended challenging macroeconomic situation characterized by stagnating wage labor opportunities, unemployment, and high inflation.”
Sierra Leone’s total food insecure population increased from 34% in February 2019, to 47.7% in January 2020, according to the WFP. Among the districts, Falaba recorded the highest proportion of food insecure households (61.9%), followed by Karene (61.2%), Kenema, (59.8%), Bonthe (58.1%) and Koinadugu districts (57.0%).
The reasons include erratic rainfalls in 2019, challenging macroeconomic situation and a trend of recurrent economic and environmental shocks. This assessment did not include the negative impact of the coronavirus outbreak, or the nationwide lockdowns and curfews that happened at the time when rice farmers were preparing for a new harvest.
The Global Hunger Index 2020 ranked Sierra Leone as the seventh hungriest country in the world. The answer why, is staring everyone in the face.
Just 10% of the country’s arable land is used for cultivation. Moreover, the government loses money by allowing duty-free rice imports, yet it collects taxes on imported agricultural machineries that could support local farmers to increase local rice production. Government’s annual cost of rice imports, including seeds and grains, stands at about 250 million U.S. dollars, according to a 2019 report by the Africa Development Bank (AfDB) Agribusiness and Rice Value Chain Support.
Alhaji Alpha Tanu Jalloh, Vice President of Sierra Leone Importers Association and current President of the Indigenous Business Association, estimates that the government’s expense on rice imports far exceeds 250 million U.S. dollars.
“The government is only aware of the 250 million dollars because the bigger businesses request forex [foreign currency] from the Central Bank when they want to import rice, but there are smaller businesses that would not use the same channel to import rice,” he explained, meaning that the real quantity of imported rice is higher.
Rice Consumption in Sierra Leone
The average annual consumption of rice in Sierra Leone is 131 kg per capita, one of the highest in the world, according to the AfDB.
That number could still be higher, based on published data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF), which states that Sierra Leone’s total rice demand in 2018 was 1,600,000 metric tons (MT). However, only about 551,000 MT of rice were produced in the country in 2018, and about 407,000 MT were imported according to government data.
But Alhaji Jalloh says that in reality, the five large scale importers bring around 548,000 MT of rice a year, but there are numerous smaller rice importers that are not recorded in any database.
Self-sufficiency was once a reality
n the 1950s Sierra Leone was self-sufficient in rice production and exported to the Mano River Union countries in the 1970s. However, the outbreak of the civil war in the 1980s delivered a serious blow to the agriculture sector, which never recovered.
Statistics from the same AfDB show that nearly 85% of all farmers in Sierra Leone grow rice, and rice farming is dominated by smallholder farmers with average landholdings per farmer of 0.5-2.0 hectares.
According to Brima Babo, National Coordinator and Policy Analyst for National Farmer’s Federation in Sierra Leone, there are over two million smallholder farmers, but subsidies from the government to help support local rice production are barely addressing the need.
Babo suggests that a better option to boost local rice production is to have a policy shift to encourage private sector investments.
Lack of political will
Babo’s proposed solution is echoed in the AfDB’s report, which attributes the slow agricultural performance to a combination of weak public policy and institutions, limited infrastructure, and failures in both the input and output market.
And the people pay the price
According to Sierra Leone’s National Development Plan 2019-2023 (NDP), “the country does not have any control over the price of its major imported goods, such as rice and fuel, which account for over 50% of total import value.”
Lower levels of exports reduce the supply of foreign exchange and trigger inflation, which in turn increase the cost of goods and services and reduce real household income. The Bio government inflicted some damage to the economy in 2019, when it halted the exports of some of the most significant mineral resources, resulting in loss of revenue and jobs.
“The depreciation of the exchange rate led to an increase in the prices of essential imported goods such as rice and fuel, with huge economic, political, and social implications,” the NDP stated.
Photo reproduced with author’s permission.
Jalloh explained that one way in which the government keeps the price of imported rice down, is by waiving the tax for all rice imports. Until a few years ago, rice importers had to pay a tax of 400 Leones per metric ton of imported rice. However, the government has waved that tax.
And while rice imports are tax-free, the government requires taxes on most imported agricultural materials that are necessary for production purposes, which places local farm production in an unfair competition.
Speaking on behalf of farmers, Brima Babo said that if the government supported private sector investments in farming, and removed taxes on all imported agricultural materials, the increase in rice production would become a reality.
The government has begun prioritizing local commercial rice production in a bid to become self-sufficient but with it, Brima said, the mindsets of farmers need to also be transformed from seeing rice as something to just eat to where they see it as an economic opportunity.
“There should be civic education for farmers because the elites that read Agriculture are shying away from farming because it’s not a monthly job,” he pointed out.
According to data collected in the 2015 Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Assessment, the most common constraints cited by farmers was the unavailability of improved seeds. The report estimated that only 5% of farmers have access to improved seed varieties.
Rice is paramount to national security
Rice is a strategic commodity for food security in West Africa. Sierra Leone’s government established three key targets to achieve by 2023, including 90% food self-sufficiency, increase youth and women’s participation in integrated agricultural value chains by at least 30% and to develop the value chains for at least two agricultural products. A report by Sierra Leone Investment and Export Promotion Agency (SLIEPA) says that the country’s 8 trillion Leones National Agriculture Transformation Policy (NAT) aims at putting agriculture at the center of Sierra Leone’s economic development. However, the policies to support such actions are slow to emerge
