| | This is an extremely valuable book. It started life as a report on one important but little explored theme: the effect of the European Community on the agricultural situation in Africa. This theme covered both the EC's own aid programmes and its 'Common Agricultural Policy' , crucial given that the EC countries separately and as a bloc constitute Africas main trading partner and 'aid' donor. He shows how the very protectionist policies that the IMF and World Bank insist that Africa shun have been the basis for the growth since the 1960s of large agricultural surpluses in Europe as well as North America. There is certainly some element of 'dumping' of food surpluses by the West in Africa, and these imports, especially of non-indigenous foods like wheat and of dairy products, at cheap prices or even as aid may well have discouraged local producers and also lead to changes of taste of consumers. But Raikes does not feel that these are even the major debilitating effects of the EC let alone the root cause of food crisis and famine in Africa. As far as the EC itself is concerned, he argues its own CAP has done greater harm than any aid or trade of food surpluses - directly, by the reduced prices or exclusion of products from Africa, like sugar, also produced in Europe - although the facts of any losses are often not clear cut. But it is more the nature of agricultural production in EC, its high level of adaptation of a technology, defined as 'modern' , efficient and thus desirable, a technology that is far from appropriate to the vastly different environment and socioeconomic conditions of Africa. |
