West African rice development: Beyond protectionism versus liberalization?

The 2008 rice-price surge provided ammunition to the opponents of rice trade liberalization in West Africa. However, a comparative analysis of the rice development history and policy changes since the 1980s across selected West African countries shows that neither protectionism nor liberalization had a sustainable impact on West Africa׳s rice import dependency. Both policy options wrongly assume that rice markets are efficient and able to forward price incentives to producers, while they are actually deeply segmented between local and imported rice. Without putting a higher priority on the development of an efficient local rice marketing system, rice development will likely have a limited impact on import dependency level, whatever trade policy options are chosen (protectionism or liberalization).