Food Production and Rural Development in the Sahel

Lesson from Mali's Operation Riz-Segou

R. James Bingen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367020019
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429716720
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

In Mali and throughout the Sahel, governments increasingly rely on parastatal organizations to overcome the problems of lagging food production and rural poverty. This book examines the political and economic consequences of the efforts of one organization, Operation Riz-Segou in Mali, to increase smallholder food and cash crop production. Drawing extensively on fieldwork in Mali, the author finds that significant investments in irrigation facilities, financed by foreign aid, have not reduced the smallholder's vulnerability to the risks posed by weather and uncertain flood levels of the Niger River. The extension system discourages smallholder investment for long-term agricultural development because of its preoccupation with supervision and administrative control. Moreover, the Operation engages in many popular rural development activities—literacy programs, farmer training, women's artisanal centers—that give the facade of grassroots participation but in reality do not provide villagers a critically needed voice in local program administration. Comparing Operation Riz-Segou to similar parastatal agricultural development programs in the Sahel, Dr. Bingen discusses why only those policies deliberately designed and carefully implemented to share power with the majority of the people can lay the political and economic foundation required to overcome rural poverty and resolve the food crisis in the Sahel.

1
The Problem of Lagging Food Production and Rural Underdevelopment in Mali

The Socioeconomic Setting

Mali is the second largest country in Francophone West Africa. Its 1.2 million square kilometers stretch in a butterfly shape across five ecological zones between the 10th and 25th North parallels, equaling the combined areas of the states of California and Texas (Map 1). These ecological zones generally define the limits of Malian agricultural production. The Northern 40 percent of the country is divided into Saharan and Sub-Saharan climatic zones, across which the Taureg and Maure people have maintained an economy based on herding and salt trade for several centuries. The large middle zone is Sahelian. Here crop production is possible and several different ethnic groups, including the Peul (Fulani), the Sarakolle, the Sonray, and the Khassonke, cultivate millet and raise livestock. The Soudanian and Guinean zones in the south, where rainfall averages from 500 mm to over 1,300 mm annually, cover only 25 percent of the country's land area but contain over 50 percent of the population. The largest groups of agriculturalists in these zones are the Bambara, the Minianka, and the Dogon.

Mali is a poor agrarian country. About 90 percent of its 5 million people live in rural areas and derive their subsistence from crop production, livestock, and fishing. The annual GNP per capita was $120 in 197S, making it one of the ten poorest countries in the world. Agriculture contributed 55 percent to Mali's gross domestic product at the beginning of the First Plan in 1960, but declined to about 40 percent by 1983. When compared to other Sahelian countries, Mali has one of the largest cereal deficits, with cereals production growing only 2 percent per year from 1960 through 1984.

The source of Mali's "comparative advantage" in agriculture is the Niger River, which arches 1,700 kilometers from one end of the country to the other. During the era of the great Sudanic empires, the Niger facilitated trans-Saharan trade in several cereal crops and much later, in the early 18th Century, the Segou Bambara state relied on river trade to market millet and rice as far away as Timbuctoo (Levtzion, 1973; Roberts, 1980). Although the Niger Valley had become an economic backwater by the turn of the 19th Century, colonial France sought to use the irrigation possibilities of the vast Niger flood delta to establish a reliable supply of cotton for France (Cosnier, 1921; Magasa, 1978).

Figure 1.1 Mali Rainfall and Ecological Zones

While such plans were never realized, the possibilities for irrigated agriculture along the Niger River have continued to capture the imaginations and hopes of development planners. Economic geographers estimate that the yearly flood of the Niger and its main tributary, the Bani, would support the irrigated cultivation of approximately 200,000 hectares of rice plus SO,000 hectares of corn, sorghum, and wheat--as flood recession crops--in Mali's northern Sahelian Zone. Currently the vast interior delta, which extends from Mopti across a network of lakes almost to Timbuctoo, provides abundant pasture during the annual six-to eight-month dry season. Because herders as well as cultivators seek access to the flood plain that extends from the Middle Valley area through the Inland Delta, however, intensive land use has greatly limited increases in agricultural production. Yet most economists agree that along the Niger River and its tributaries Mali has the potential for irrigating almost 500,000 hectares, an endowment of potentially cultivable land greater than that of any other Sahelian country CCRED, 1976).

In recent years, Malian farmers have progressed rapidly from the use of hoes to oxen-drawn plows, and currently animal traction is probably more widespread in Mali than in any other Sahelian country. In 1976, it was estimated that Malian peasants owned 106,000 plows--more than one plow for every 20 cultivated hectares. Utilization of animal draft power, though varying by region, could significantly improve Mali's prospects for agricultural development.

Political Background

For over 25 years, Mali's political leaders have charted their own political course, unlettered by conventional political doctrines or rigid ideological stances. Modibo Keita clearly chose a socialist road while Moussa Traore has preferred a more capitalist path, but both leaders similarly set the tone of Malian politics by calling for different measures of State control of the Malian economy.

When Keita and the Union Soudanese (affiliated with the RassemblementDémocratique African-USRDA) ascended to power in the 1960s, the colonial Federation of West African States (AOF) defined Malian (French Soudanese) politics and guaranteed its economic viability. With the promise of independence, Keita sought to assure this viability through the creation of a new, inter-territorial Federation of Mali with Senegal in order to maintain mutual economic ties. Keita argued that such a federation, instead of territorial independence, was economically necessary and advantageous: it protected Malian traders from restrictive trade barriers and helped to assure Mali's economic viability by creating a favorable investment climate for foreign enterprise (Zolberg, 1967). However, Keita's efforts to gain support for his statist economic theories among opposition parties in Senegal resulted in the sudden, unceremonious and embarrassing deportation of the Malian representatives. This signaled the end of the Federation and the cessation of all economic exchange between the two countries within two months of their ill-fated union (see Foltz, 1965; Hodgkin and Morgenthau, 1964).

With Mali's major modern economic lifeline abruptly cut, Keita quickly established an alternative southern trade route through the Ivory Coast and launched several State enterprises as means to replace expected shortfalls in foreign corporate investment. These policies strengthened the hand of the USRDA left-wing at the expense of traders and more liberal elements within the ruling party. Gradually the party became more strident in its advocacy of Malian socialism, pushing the regime to withdraw from the Franc Zone and to diversify the sources of foreign aid to include socialist countries as a measure of protection against neocolonialism and continued dependence on France. During this period, nevertheless, Mali continued to receive a flow of economic and technical assistance from France and other capitalist, industrialized countries (see 3ones, 1969; Snyder, 1969).

Inflationary pressures and other economic problems engendered by an independent currency eventually led Keita to seek re-entry into the Franc Zone in order to re-establish effective State control over Mali's economy. This decision regained the confidence of Malian traders and other commercial interests. But in his attempt to prove that he had not sold out to neocolonial forces, Keita increased the authority of the Party's left-wing and militant People's Militia (Milice Populaire) to assure that the principles of Malian socialism remained in the forefront of daily life. The party leadership quickly lost control of the Milice, and when these Malian "red guards" began to threaten the army, already suffering from budget cutbacks and having been given degrading agricultural tasks in the Office du Niger, a small group of officers, led by Moussa Traore, asked Keita to step aside (see Wolpin, 1975). Traore justified his coup d'état on the grounds that the policies of the Keita regime no longer represented the views of most Malians. He created a new National Liberation Committee (CMLN), intending not to "houseclean" but rather to rebuild majority rule in Mali. Consequently, Traore continued to follow many of the USRDA economic and foreign policies: the new regime maintained the State grain marketing board, as well as a restrictive foreign investment code to protect State enterprises (Bebler, 1973; Grundy, 1966); it also strengthened foreign aid ties with the western world, yet did not sacrifice important economic ties with several socialist countries.

Such an open door aid policy with the West has brought demands from many aid agencies to liberalize the Malian economy by means of State enterprise reforms, agricultural price incentives, and expanded private trade and marketing of cereal crops. The regime successfully forestalled these suggestions for several years but in 1981 Traore finally agreed to adopt several IMF and World Bank fiscal and economic policies in return for much needed budget support. In December 1982, an International Donors' Conference for Malian Economic Recovery and Development confirmed the availability of such support and announced the agreement to finance 60 development projects.

Private commercial trading of food grains is a key feature of the 1981-1985 Third Economic Plan. After almost 20 years of strained relations between the State and private traders, Traore's invitation to traders to help strengthen the economy represents a significant political and economic step. It may even give the regime the political support it needs to endure its economic difficulties linked to recurrent drought and inflation. If the traders collaborate, the regime will not only have removed a long-standing source of political dopposition, but it will also have created a new mercantilist formula for capturing a larger share of the country's agricultural surplus.

During the Third Economic Plan, the regime has been seeking to strike a new form of cooperation in the countryside by creating Tons Villageois, or village Collective Aid Groups.¹ Reminiscent of Keita's appeal to a "new man in the countryside," these voluntary Tons are intended to be the bases of collective action for rebuilding rural Mali. To date, the Tons have been only vaguely defined, but Malian political leaders state that these groups will have direct responsibility for development programs in the villages and hence will generate more village support for the State's rural investments.²

If the regime can successfully collaborate with Mali's producers and traders, an historically significant step in Malian development will have occurred. Such collaboration would provide a dual base of domestic political support and encourage continued international political confidence in the regime, thereby assuring a flow of foreign aid. But the critical questions in Malian development will be: To what extent will the regime transfer a full measure of responsibility for agricultural development to the countryside? And will the regime be willing to accept the added uncertainties which arise as private economic interests play a greater role than State agencies in the development process?

The Traore regime attempts to guide the transfer of responsibilities through the UDPM (Union Démocratique du Peuple Malien), created in 1977 as Mali's one official political party. As did Keita's USRDA, Traore's party seeks to mobilize the villages and to assure their maximum contribution in realizing the goals of the Third Plan. Since 1979, Traore has also used the UDPM as a means to achieve political legitimacy, both domestically and in the international arena, by promising a new era of political freedom and openness in Malian politics. A National Assembly has been created, former USRDA adherents can now join the UDPM, a type of Hatch Act prohibits political activity by government workers, and the ruling military committee, the CMLN, has been dissolved. The regime's continued use of coercive and authoritarian policies against political opposition, however, tempers such moves toward political liberalism.

Since 1969, Traore has successfully suppressed periodic challenges to his leadership from within the CMLN. Most recently, he averted a coup by a Malian "gang of four" and subsequently purged both the army and police force of those opposed to the UDPM and the Third Economic Plan. Although outwardly moving toward constitutional government, the regime became increasingly repressive in its response to violent student riots in 1977, 1979, and 1980, which were directed against the regime's restrictive policies on scholarships and future employment possibilities for university-level graduates. Allegations of killings, torture, and more arrests of students were widespread. Student rioters were granted clemency in 1981, but student political activity remains strictly controlled; the Malian Student and Pupil's Union (UNEEM) has been banned and replaced by the official National Youth Union (UNJM) (see Bennett, 1975; Legum, 1981; Wolpin, 1980).

Given the limited, self-interested nature of the student's demands, the release of the student prisoners, and the resumption of school activities, students can neither initiate a ground swell opposed to the regime nor maneuver uncontrolled as did Keita's Milice. Moreover, as long as Traore moves toward a constitutional government, the international assistance community will continue the flow of foreign aid. Consequently, if the regime can negotiate institutional boundaries for political expression while co-opting the private sector, Traore, his power assured, may well continue to chart Mali's political and economic future in the years ahead.

Nature of the Problem

Much of Mali's current economic crisis can be linked to a long period of decline in Malian agriculture. Since achieving political independence in 1960, the country has been faced with unstable, lagging food production and rural poverty, despite a rich natural resource base. Economic growth has been irregular for over 20 years. The average annual rate of growth of agriculture was only 2 percent from 1960 to 1978 and this increase was due primarily to improved cotton production in response to high market prices and an effective international marketing mechanism under French corporate control. Once the only West African exporter of cereal grains, Mali has had a cereals deficit for over 15 years, with acute cereal shortages, especially during the 1972 to 1974 drought years and most recently from 1981 to 1983.³ In response to recurrent food shortages, the government has adopted the slogan of food self-sufficiency and has sought to "droughtproof" agricultural production as a panacea against future food scarcities. The Second Plan for Economic and Social Development (1974-1978) earmarked almost one-third of the country's public investments for the agricultural sector, with 60 percent allocated for crop production programs desired to increase food production, especially production of irrigated rice.⁴

From 1974 to 1978, however, the Traore regime invested only 10 percent or less of the Plan's proposed development expenditures in agriculture. In fact, the government continues to extract more from the agricultural sector than it seeks to invest. The rate of taxation on agriculture is very high; after allowing for subsidies, the tax rate ranges from 24 to 61 percent for cotton, 48 to 65 percent for groundnuts, and 23 to 63 percent on millet and sorghum (Lele, 1981). A report by the National Planning Committee for the Rural Economy estimated that in 1972 the rural sector received 3.6 billion MF in public expenditures, including the cost of extension services and various subsidies, yet returned 5 billion MF to the government in direct and indirect taxes. Considering the 9 billion MF which the government collected primarily through export taxes from derivative industries, the Committee concluded that the rural sector contributed 47 percent of government receipts but received only 14 percent of government expenditures (Mali, CNPER, 1975a). Moreover, agriculture's terms of trade have fallen by 50 percent in the last 5 years.⁵ In 1977-1978 alone, agricultural input prices increased by 131 percent and producer prices by only 20 percent. Under such conditions, it is understandable that the official cereals market has stagnated and that the marketed production of groundnuts, a major export and domestic food crop, has fallen. From 1971 to 1980, it is estimated that the government marketing channels handled only 5 to 10 percent of agricultural production.

Faced with declining revenues from agricultural taxes (and other sources) since the mid-1970s, Mali has aggressively courted and successfully captured increasing amounts of foreign aid. From 1976 to 1979, total assistance more than doubled, from $87.5 million to over $200 million per year. Foreign public grants and loans financed almost 90 percent of the Second Plan's proposed agricultural investments. By the end of 1977, the Government had successfully secured commitments for over 30 percent of the rural economy program (Horenstein, 1979); on the eve of the Third Plan in 1981, over 80 percent of the program had been financed. Most of this financing is earmarked to support Operations de Développement, or State technical agencies within the Ministry of Rural Development which are designed as special administrative units to implement agricultural and rural development programs within specified geographical areas. The intensified development efforts of the Operations are said to account in part for the significant increases in food and export crop production that occurred from 1975 through 1977. Consequently, the Government of Mali regards the Operations as a significant means by which to resolve the country's food crisis. Since 1974, the Ministry of Rural Development has increased the number of separate Operations to 23, all of which depend heavily on foreign fina...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• About the Book and Author
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 THE PROBLEM OF LAGGING FOOD PRODUCTION AND RURAL UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN MALI
• 2 APPROACHES TO RURAL DEVELOPMENT: 1960-1980
• 3 THE INDEPENDENT STATE AND RICE PRODUCTION
• 4 STATE MANAGEMENT OF LAND AND WATER
• 5 THE ORS PROGRAM FOR RICE PRODUCTION
• 6 THE STATE AND HUMAN CAPITAL FORMATION
• 7 CONCLUSIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS FOR POLICYMAKERS IN SAHELIAN WEST AFRICA
• APPENDIXES
• List of Abbreviations
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index