African corridors for investment, food security and climate action

Summary

This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities of connecting four key policy areas in relation to African food systems and an approach to addressing these to encourage investment on and around transboundary corridors. The paper is a joint product of the African Union Development Agency-NEPAD (AUDA-NEPAD) and the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) and is produced in support of AUDA-NEPAD’s continental mandate and policy anchoring to ensure alignment with the AU’s Agenda 2063.

The policy problem can be broadly captured as follows:

Food insecurity in Africa is very high and agricultural productivity is low on average, contributing to a cycle of low yields and scarce investments

Intra-African trade, necessary to overcome limited market sizes for both inputs and outputs, faces high transaction costs for trade within and between countries, thus limiting the commercial interest in productivity-enhancing investments

Infrastructure, which underpins this trade and market integration, whether along transport corridors or at borders, is needed to help lower the time and cost barriers to food-related trade within and between countries

Climate change affects all of this, by inducing shifts in food production zones and population concentrations and worsening food insecurity, though potentially offering oppor tunities for “green” technological solutions and climate adaptation and mitigation co-benefits

Promoting policies and investments around transboundary corridors offers a means to address the coordination failures that perpetuate these challenges. By focusing public and private attention on connecting food systems, climate, trade and infrastructure policies and investments and linking input, services and output markets along specific routes within and between countries, this public and private cooperation can contribute to improving food security and agro-industrial outcomes, both necessary in the context of increasing climate change effects.

But to do so effectively requires better understanding the interests and incentives of key actors operating in and around those corridors and in the policy areas of food system, trade, infrastructure and climate. This paper offers a political economy analysis toolbox to better identify openings where different public and private investments can help achieve these better outcomes, in a way that is not only desirable but also politically feasible.