Strong call for border reform to facilitate food aid demands

JAMES HALL
LOCAL AND cross border trade regulations must be reformed, and national customs services must be upgraded in order to facilitate the road transportation of emergency food relief, recommends a report commissioned by the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).
American academics from the University of Michigan studied southern Africa’s
2002-2003 drought for lessons that could be applied for future food emergencies, which they predict will strike the region at least twice a decade.
In a step that would also gladden all sectors of regional transport, export manufacturing and businesses, the streamlining of border customs operations and a general upgrade of custom agents’ professionalism would speed delivery of food and other supplies to those in need, the report urged.
National customs operations might benefit from the type of regional coordination that made drought relief efforts largely successful two years ago. Famine was averted because of early warning efforts by national Vulnerability Assessment Committees (VACs), coordinated by the Regional VAC of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), to produce a system that represented an “exceptional degree of collaboration among governments in the region, the emergency response committee, and donor agencies,” the report found.
The NEPAD study also found that market liberalisation and a capable road transport system were required to facilitate food production. The report criticised Zambia, where food prices spiked unreasonably because of a ban on imports, and lauded Mozambique, where an easing of food import restrictions kept prices stable in the densely populated southern Maputo Province. However, Mozambique’s road infrastructure needs significant improvement to permit food shipments southward from northern provinces, which usually record food production surpluses.