Who’s Fooling Whom? The real drivers in Africa’s food crisis

In Belgium, PANGEA (Partners for Euro-African Green Energy) launched an update to its report “Who’s Fooling Whom? The Real Drivers Behind the 2010/11 Food Crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa”.

The report demonstrates an important conclusion: the degree of price transmission from international to local markets has been quite limited. The research found there is little room to relate African food security concerns to the demand and supply of biofuels.Price increases in the countries examined were on average lower than the relative rises in global food prices. That lack of price transmission is key to understanding the real dynamics in the food and fuel competition debate so that the true drivers in food prices can be analysed and addressed.

“Europe’s biofuel industry has an “Africa problem.” The lack of available data regarding the impacts of biofuels policies in the EU and US on food security in developing countries-especially in Africa-has made biofuels vulnerable to assumptions and accusations by the anti-biofuel lobby,” said Meghan Sapp, PANGEA’s Secretary General and Biofuels Digest senior editor. “This report seeks to put facts back on the table to show the disconnect between biofuel demand and African food security, which allows us to put the focus on the real drivers behind food insecurity so we may tackle them.

The full report can be downloaded here.