Executive Summary
This assessment considers the cereals shortfalls expected within the southern Africa region over the coming year as a consequence of the impact of the current El Niño effect. The consequent need for imports by the countries most affected, and the impact of these additional imports on the regional supply chain is examined and some of the issues that may need to be addressed are identified.
It is now apparent that a massive import programme will be necessary to meet the shortfalls. Approximately 10 mn mt of cereal imports is now expected for the region, including more than 7 mn mt for South Africa and its inter-connected markets of Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland and parts of Mozambique. An estimated 1.6 mn mt is also needed by Zimbabwe and up to 0.5 mn mt for Malawi. Because of the poor harvest throughout the region, it is unlikely that substantial imports will come from Tanzania and Zambia, which have exported some of their surpluses to other SADC countries in the past. While the requirements for RSA and much of its larger market are expected to be met through commercial imports, the split between commercial, government purchases and international assistance for Malawi and Zimbabwe is still unclear.
The assessment considers the various port and corridor options from a cost, timeliness, reliability and capacity perspective and indicates which options might be most appropriate. Particular attention has been given to Malawi and Zimbabwe as they are expected to require the most imports after RSA and, being landlocked, must compete for corridor capacities with others. Corridors in Mozambique, in particular, will be required to take on much of the added burden, though there remain concerns with effective capacities.
Owing to the large import programme planned by South Africa itself, considerable pressure will be placed on that country’s corridors, with much of its considerable capacity consumed.
While handling the additional imports is a formidable task, the combined regional capacities are believed sufficient to meet the needs, providing a coherent approach with strong coordination is put in place. To this end, a prominent role is expected of SADC, though others will be expected to contribute to the effort.
1. Objective and scope
This assessment considers the likely cereals shortfalls expected within the southern Africa region over the coming year as a consequence of decreased domestic production aggravated by the 2015/2016 El Niño effect. From the estimated deficits, together with the explicit or tacit intentions of the several regional states to address the shortfalls, a better understanding of the likely supply chain challenges can be obtained and some of the issues identified that may need to be addressed. This may help inform importing entities, those responsible for delivering logistics services and allocating capacities, and organisations considering providing material and financial support to the effort even at this still early stage in the mitigating response.
The scope comprises the entire southern Africa region and looks explicitly at the 2016/17 consumption season – the 12 months from April/May 2016. Owing to the focus on the regional supply chain, specific attention is accorded to those countries where the import needs are greatest and where supply challenges are most acute. Although the assessment is oriented to the entire supply chain, the focus is on the downstream segment, from the point that imports arrive within the region until they reach the destination country, thus domestic distribution within the recipient state has not been addressed. As little information was available at the time of this writing regarding the upstream part of the supply chain, this has also not been covered in any detail.
As this report is intended as a stand-alone document, brief overviews of crop forecasts, shortfalls and government response initiatives are provided for each country. These are extracted from multiple sources, including the WFP report “El Niño: Undermining Resilience - Implications of El Niño in Southern Africa from a Food and Nutrition Security Perspective” released in late February 2016. In fact, this assessment is intended as a supplement to that earlier document.
While benefiting from some field visits and discussion with many public and private sector participants engaged in the drought response, this high level assessment has relied heavily on previous examinations of supply chain components, including WFP’s initial examination of late 2015.
Finally, although this assessment has been commissioned by WFP, it has been done in consideration of the needs of a wider group of stakeholders involved in the regional preparedness and response effort. Thus information on imports through commercial means, government direct purchases, as well as possible international assistance have all been factored in.