Abstract

Close to 80 per cent of Africa’s population is rural and thus directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Sustained growth in agriculture is therefore crucial to reducing hunger and poverty in the region. Indeed, recent increases in overall GDP growth rates in Africa track similar increases in agricultural GDP growth rates.

In most parts of the world, rates of hunger and malnutrition have fallen significantly in recent years, but those in Africa have shown little improvement. Africa has the highest proportion (one third) of people suffering from chronic hunger. Hunger in sub-Saharan Africa is as persistent as it is widespread. According to CAADP(Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme), between 1990-92 and 2001-03, the number of undernourished people increased from 169 million to 206 million, only 15 of the 39 countries for which data are reported reduced the number of undernourished.

Efforts to reduce hunger in the region have been hampered by a range of natural and human induced disasters, including conflicts and the spread of HIV/AIDS. Widespread hunger and malnutrition in Africa determine and reflect deep poverty in the region. 298 million Africans (31 percent of the continent’s population) currently live on less than $1 per day. In 1990, this figure stood at 241 million, 19 percent of the world’s total. Recent and current efforts to address these problems include government institutions led initiatives and many that are being coordinated by regional economic communities (RECs) like COMESA, SADC and EAC. Their broad objectives include:

. Attaining of food security

.improving agricultural productivity to attain a 6 percent annual growth rate;

. Developing dynamic regional and sub-regional economic agricultural markets;

.Integrating farmers into a market economy; and

.Achieving more equitable distribution of wealth

New thinking however shows that government initiatives alone will not deliver on the African dream of prosperity for all especially considering that development will still be agriculture driven. That is why public private partnership (PPPS) efforts to leverage on new technologies for the benefit of whole value chains are what inform the establishment and strengthening of private sector led market information channels like the RATIN (Regional Agriculture Trade Intelligence Network).

RATIN was set up to fulfill the core function of the Eastern African Grain Council, that is to improve the policy and trading environment in the regional grain trade, strengthen market linkages and reduce the constraints along the grain value chain . The major task of RATIN is to supply traders with improved early warning marketing and trade information that would lead to more efficient and competitive transactions in food trade between surplus and deficit regions in East Africa and improve on structured trade for grains.

Small and medium scale cross-border traders account for over 80 percent of regional trade in maize, beans and rice and other commodities hitherto considered ‘orphan’ like sorghum and millets in Eastern Africa. Consequently, they are the main target group of the RATIN information. At the core of this service are the following objectives:

• Stimulate production by indicating market opportunities
• Enhance competition among suppliers and among traders
• Reduction of seasonal and erratic price variations and their associated marketing risks
• Provision of data as a precondition for the planning and control of agricultural market policy intervention

To easily distribute RATIN information to hundreds of small and medium cross border traders of cereals and pulses in East Africa, the traders have been organized into 30 loose associations each of which receives RATIN monthly bulletins for onward dissemination to their members. RATIN also collects and disseminates trade related information like daily commodity prices and in the major markets and cross border trade volumes in the region through the website, TV and radio, telephone and short Messaging Services(SMS).

The Eastern Africa Grain Council (EAGC) which runs this RATIN service is a membership – based organization registered in Kenya as a company Limited by Guarantee and without share capital was registered in 2006 at the request, and through the efforts of, key stakeholders in all three sections of the grain value chain; producers, traders and processors. Service providers are Associate members. It operates as non-profit, on-political, non-denominational organization, which prepares, disseminates, and promotes the exchange of information on matters affecting the regional grain industry.

The council developed the Regional Agricultural Trade Intelligence Network (RATIN) to help reduce regional food insecurity by strengthening the ability of markets to provide access to affordable food to poor households and improve food availability through providing adequate incentives to producers. It came out of the realization that although there are households and improve food availability through providing adequate incentives to producers. It came out of the realization that although there are households among the food insecure that are structurally poor and are heavily dependent on food donations, there are also market-dependent households who are able to purchase food if it is available at the right time, price and quantity in the local markets through enhanced effective competition.

To enhance this market access RATIN seeks to provide information that is current and actionable to help in decision making for market players. More importantly we continuously seek to make this information relevant, meaningful, reliable, promptly available and easily accessible.