The West Africa Initiative

A Model for Achieving Sustainable Community Based Food Security

By Winston Carroo

Management Training Participant Reuben Mathies (2nd from left) with family in Montserrado County Liberia harvesting rice. Photos courtesy of Agriculture Missions.

The current food price crisis is taking a toll on the poor the world over. This is especially true of countries that depend on food imports as some food exporting countries restrict exports to protect their own citizens in these times of global food scarcity. The problem is the result of policies and programs of most developing countries, often imposed by the international financial institutions, to forgo producing their own food and to depend on food imports to feed their populations. The notion that “free trade” can guarantee food security has been laid to rest by this crisis.

The truth be told, the food crisis is the direct result of the removal of the responsibility for food production from local communities and placing it in the hands of transnational commodity trading corporations. Over the past two decades, incentives and support for local farmers and food processors have been drastically reduced and grain stocks eliminated to make way for subsidized food imports from industrialized countries. The long term, sustainable solution to the crisis lies in restoring the capacity of local communities to produce the foods they consume. This is what the West Africa Initiative (WAI) is all about.

A farmer works to harvest his crop. Photos courtesy of Agriculture Missions.

The WAI is an initiative of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) that is designed to develop the capacity of the Councils of Churches in Sierra Leone and Liberia to become engaged in effective community-based rural development. This effort is supported by three offices of the PC(USA) – Self Development of People (SDOP), Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) and the Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP), with agricultural missions playing the leading role in the planning and implementation, in collaboration with the Councils in both countries. There are three elements in this program. The first is to improve the human resource capacity of the councils and their member churches through a comprehensive project management course. Secondly, the program will support and facilitate the training of farmers in various aspects of agricultural production, processing and marketing. The third aspect of the program is to provide small grants to farmers and community groups for the support of farming activities, primarily for the purchase of tools, seeds and other inputs. The second and third aspects of the program will be integrated into and serve as the practicum for the project management training.

Both Liberia and Sierra Leone have recently emerged from decades of civil wars that resulted in displaced rural populations, destroyed infrastructure and abandoned farms. These conflicts effectively destroyed communities’ and the countries’ capacities to produce and distribute their own food, resulting in dependency on food imports. Now, this food crisis, along with the high cost of (imported) petroleum is placing severe pressure on the governments to avert civil unrest and even a return to civil war. In Liberia and Sierra Leone, more than 60 percent of the populations live on less than two dollars per day and the recent increases in the prices for basic foods are creating extreme hardships on the majority, already living in poverty. The governments have responded by reducing the tariffs on food imports, subsidies and increased food aid from international agencies. But such efforts do not address the root causes of the problem nor provide solutions for the long term. The WAI program does.

Rice Farm of Borbor Town Farmers Group. Photos courtesy of Agriculture Missions.

The implementation of this Initiative is well underway. Already in April 2008, a two-week workshop in project management was held in Kenema, Sierra Leone, attended by 12 representatives from Liberia and 10 from Sierra Leone. Follow up workshops in each country were held in September and October. Community-based farmer training events are in progress and will continue in the coming months and the disbursement of small grants is enabling the production of basic foods such as rice, ground nuts and vegetables in some 20 communities.

While the impact of WAI on the overall problem at the national level may be relatively small, this program is very important in the communities in which it is being implemented and can serve as a model that points the way to achieving sustainable community food security.