How cheap food imports eat into Africa’s domestic agriculture

Monday, October 27, 2025 - Africa’s growing dependence on imported staple foods is crippling smallholder farmers and undermining domestic agriculture in countries such as Nigeria and Morocco, a leading agricultural economist has warned. Rachid Doukkali, Professor of Applied Economics at the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, University Mohammed VI Polytechnic (UM6P), said the continent’s swelling food import bills are eroding farm profitability and exposing millions of rural households to deeper poverty.

Responding to emailed questions from The Nation on Africa’s food situation, Doukkali noted that although the continent maintains a relatively balanced trade in agri-food products, its “Achilles’ heel” remains an ever-widening gap in cereal supply.

“Generally, when we talk about food deficit in Africa, we are only referring to the deficit in cereals and not to other agri-food products, which are generally in surplus. This cereal imbalance stems from a race between production and consumption.”

“Despite a high average annual growth rate in cereal production of 2.7 per cent between 2003 and 2023, this was insufficient to keep pace with a 2.9 per cent rise in consumption, driven by both a strong population surge and the effects of urbanization,” he said.

He explained that the consequences are most severe in net staple-importing nations such as Nigeria and Morocco, where governments feel pressured to keep food prices artificially low to avoid social unrest. “Because staple foods constitute a very high proportion of the expenditure for the majority of less well-off households, governments in these countries face immense pressure to keep domestic prices low,” he said.

According to Doukkali, the pressure has pushed policymakers toward large-scale importation — often at subsidised global prices — with devastating consequences for local producers. “Given that the large majority of small producers are specialised in the production of these staple foods, they are indirectly taxed (or indirectly disadvantaged) by these low prices,Ultimately, states in developing countries, particularly in Africa, make their small farmers pay indirectly for low price policies to urban consumers of these staple products,” he noted. “

The result, he warned, is declining profitability, weak competitiveness, and stagnating productivity among smallholder farms — the backbone of Africa’s food system.

Doukkali also issued a stark warning on climate change, calling it “an existential threat” to African agriculture. He said both rain-fed farms and capital-intensive irrigation systems now face significant risks. “Any lack of irrigation water can severely affect the profitability of investments,” he cautioned.

To secure the continent’s food future, the professor urged African governments and development agencies to rethink their technology and extension models. While improved seeds and precision techniques exist, he said their impact remains muted because they are introduced without considering the financial and social realities of smallholders. “The first thing to do is to try to understand farms as systems.What is technically efficient is not necessarily socially or economically efficient for the small producer,” he argued.

On the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), Doukkali said the agreement holds “the most powerful potential to reduce reliance on extra-continental food imports. Currently, intra-African food trade represents less than 20 per cent of total agri-food trade, but the AfCFTA promises significant change.” However, he warned that the road will be long, citing hurdles in logistics, standards, governance, and rules of origin.

The professor contrasted Morocco’s thriving export-oriented agribusiness sector with the struggles of its 1.4 million smallholder farmers, who suffer post-harvest losses of up to 30 per cent due to weak infrastructure. He praised Morocco’s investments in cooperatives and its Green Morocco Plan and Green Generation Strategy, which offer 100 per cent subsidies for collective equipment, aggregation projects, and small-producer export programmes.

He stressed that Africa — Morocco and Nigeria included — must ring-fence minimum cereal self-sufficiency to withstand future shocks. “A minimum of domestic production must be ensured to guarantee the country’s food security,” he insisted, pointing to recent global crises as a warning.