Food Aid to Africa Has Fallen Short of U.S. Goals

Congressional investigators have concluded that food aid to Africa has fallen short of U.S. goals to help recipient countries develop economically and to build commercial markets for American farm exports.

Although many African nations plagued by hunger and famine have received American Food for Peace assistance for a decade or more, “U.S. officials could not cite any examples in which food aid played a major role in enabling African countries to progress from food aid recipients to commercial customers,” the investigators said in a new report.

But investigators for the General Accounting Office, an arm of Congress, said the program is being improved and can be tightened even more to make food aid more effective.

The GAO report focused on food aid to Madagascar, Kenya, Ghana and Senegal.

South Korean, Taiwan Cited

Some agricultural experts argue that Food for Peace has helped some countries become commercial customers of American farm products. South Korea and Taiwan are often cited as success stories. But there appear to be no success stories in Africa.

In fact, the GAO said that Kenya, after receiving American wheat aid, sacrificed consumer preference for lower prices by buying from the European Economic Community and Australia.

The United States lost market share in the Ivory Coast to Asian suppliers selling lower quality rice at lower prices.

On the other hand, a U.S. program that subsidizes commercial exports has had some success in Africa.

The GAO review was conducted at the request of Rep. Kika de la Garza, D-Texas, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, out of concern that aid was not promoting long-term African development and commercial sales of American farm products.

Lawmakers believe economic development can be used to improve Africans’ capacity to cope with recurrent famines.

Food aid is most widely known for meeting emergency hunger needs, but more is directed at the long-term goal of promoting development. However, that goal is sometimes in conflict with the Food for Peace law’s other objectives of marketing American farm products and promoting U.S. foreign policy.

For example, Senegal’s program was delayed a year when AID’s proposal to provide it with vegetable oil was opposed by the Agriculture Department because of a belief the aid would adversely affect U.S. vegetable oil exports.

Foreign policy goals supplanted development aims when Ghana’s 1986 allocation was reduced by $2 million after a series of government-sponsored anti-U.S. demonstrations.

Kenya has perceived the program as serving U.S. interests and has not fully implemented self-help measures. But failure to do so did not cause the United States to cut off aid because Kenya is strategically important to the United States.

Last fiscal year, food aid to African countries totaled $297.7 million, or 38% of U.S. economic aid to Africa. Those nations get about 20% of total U.S. food aid.

The Agency for International Development, the State Department agency that oversees foreign aid programs, fails to give food aid as much attention as its share of aid would seem to warrant.

The GAO said that only 40 or about 1% of AID’s staff of 4,416 people are Food for Peace officers. There are only 11 Food for Peace officers in Africa.

For AID missions abroad, monitoring food aid programs “appeared to depend largely on individual judgment and time available,” the GAO said.

The GAO found that much more can be done to design and monitor self-help programs.

Many development agreements with foreign countries did not describe specific actions to be taken, included no benchmarks for assessing progress and did not specify how countries were to handle local currency generated by sale of the food.

Low-Interest Credits

However, AID is working on new guidelines that will require U.S. AID missions to develop explicit food aid management plans. A model plan is to be tested in three countries this year.

Much of the aid is in the form of low-interest, long-term credits for countries to buy agricultural commodities, which are sold within the country. The proceeds are to be used for development, such as expanding food production or improving food storage or distribution.