Government expenditures on imported inputs and the goals of food self-sufficiency and food security in the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference

Food security and food self-sufficiency are important regional goals for the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC). In the long run, success in these areas would reduce the incidence of drought-related mass starvation and the epidemic of malnutrition and undernutrition that exists among some tribal groups. For food production to improve, the governments must commit themselves to increasing the access of peasant farmers to critical agricultural inputs. If they do not take proper action in this area of development planning, domestic food production is likely to stagnate or decline. This study is a broad examination of the relationship between government expenditures on imported inputs and the performance of the domestic food subsector. Because much data on government spending and agricultural production in Africa are unavailable, and those in published form are of suspect validity, the study is undertaken largely as a conceptual overview. The empirical analyses are conducted, therefore, largely to provide a staging ground for the conceptual arguments.