This briefing note examines the potential for developing a maize-to-livestock feed value chain in the Indian Ocean Islands (IOI) region of Eastern and Southern Africa (defined here as comprising the countries of Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles and the French territory of Réunion) in order to promote agricultural transformation and food security in the region. In doing so, the note identifies a number of obstacles to the development of such a value chain in IOI, including the challenges faced by businesses seeking to invest in and access the relevant regional markets. It also highlights existing initiatives upon which efforts to address these challenges and promote a regional maize-to-livestock feed value chain could build. Finally, the note provides some recommendations for facilitating effective dialogue among key stakeholders in this value chain in order to better connect private operators to regional markets.

Key messages

• Developing regional agro-food value chains is increasingly being recognised as a means to promote agricultural transformation and food security in the Indian Ocean Islands (IOI) region of Eastern and Southern Africa, and maize has been earmarked as a key commodity to promote within this context.
• Trade in maize for human consumption is limited in IOI, but the region’s livestock feed processors are key sources of demand and have shown an interest in investing in Madagascar in order to help establish the country as a regional procurement base for maize.
• Such investment could stimulate increased maize production in Madagascar, including for local consumption, but low productivity, a weakly organized local value chain, deficient infrastructure, a ‘risky’ investment climate, and complex export procedures discourage investment and limit possibilities for growing regional maize trade.
• Appropriate regulatory reform coupled with coordinated public and private investment is needed to address these obstacles, and could be supported by the establishment of a public-private platform to facilitate dialogue between stakeholders in the region on priority interventions needed to boost maize trade in the region.

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Image: Maize. Courtesy by: Lenz via Flickr.

In addition to structural support by ECDPM’s institutional partners Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland; this research and publication also benefits from funding from the Department for International Development (DFID), United Kingdom.

Authors

Sean Woolfrey Policy Officer Economic and Agricultural Transformation Programme

Hanne Knaepen Policy Officer Sustainable Food Systems | Economic and Agricultural Transformation Programme