The recent covid-19 pandemic and the unfortunate event initiated by Russia against Ukraine which followed subsequently brought to the surface the thorny problem of the dependence of African countries on mass consumer products from major producing countries cereals in particular. The increase in prices over a long period motivated by a climate of insecurity which has and which affects the world has had serious consequences on the economies of all countries. Permanent supplies have been interrupted, production capacities have been reduced, food transport routes have been blocked, and sanctions as counter-offensives and self-protection continue to multiply.

The liberalization of economies as recommended by the "Washington Consensus" in 1989 gave rise to a dependence of developing or underdeveloped countries on large producers who, in addition to being able to ensure self-sufficiency on certain products and in this case cereals, reserve the surplus of their production for exports which have become a necessity for African countries which, despite their multiple potential, experience enormous difficulties in converting them into wealth because of multiple both internal and external causes which unfortunately promote and accentuate precariousness in a continent that is nevertheless very rich in natural resources.

The reasons for the delay of African countries in the growth of local economies

The gap that exists between the GDP per capita of developed and developing countries is an indicator which clearly shows that in terms of economic growth, the availability of natural resources is not enough. Above all, we must be able to equip ourselves with the necessary means to improve or even develop our industrial and agricultural sector while reducing as much as possible its negative impact on the environment thanks to the increasing exploitation of renewable energies. But if for certain African countries food self-sufficiency can be considered in terms of development prospects due to a promising economic potential, for others on the other hand, it is an unthinkable question given the contexts of political and geopolitical instability not only in local level, but also in global.

The misfortune of some making the happiness of others, several States continue to remain in poverty because of political instability which only benefits those who supply weapons to the belligerents while exploiting the resources of the country thus taking advantage of these moments of weakness to enrich themselves further while others continue to become poorer because of divergent interests arising from excessive ambitions which do not bode well for the future.

Even in these States where conflicts and wars do not completely prevent growth efforts at the local level to reduce their dependence on imports from the largest cereal producers on a global scale, they do not always have the means of their policy and are sometimes forced to make like countries at war, bad compromises for some, but necessary to the extent that potentialities does not automatically convert into wealth. For it to be so, cutting-edge funding and technological support is required. This is the reason why, in order to have more infrastructure in order to achieve its development objectives, the Democratic Republic of Congo has granted the exploitation of its cobalt ores to a State capable of providing it with what it needs at the infrastructural level. And this is the case in most developing countries; the lack of financial and technological resources forces States to make barter or rather contracts which may subsequently turn out sometimes to be scams despite the fact that they are still necessary risks to take in order not to further aggravate precariousness in which the populations live.

Feasibility study of self-sufficiency in rice and wheat in Cameroon and Africa

Globalization through international relations motivated essentially by interests continues to promote a climate of economic dependence which only benefits the richest.

Trade liberalization increases exports from rich countries to poor countries while increasing imports from rich countries to poor countries. Everything suggests that local productions will never be able to satisfy local demand. In fact, the numbers don’t say the opposite. The world's largest grain producers and consumers are the richest countries.

Seventy-five point eight percent (75.8%) of the world's rice production in 2021 was accounted for by six countries. China was the leading producer of rice in the world with 27% of global production, while being the leading consumer with 154.946 million metric tons between 2021 and 2022 (fr.statista.com). In second position was India with 24.8% of world production (source: olivierfrey.com), followed by Bangladesh (7.2%), Indonesia (6.9%), Vietnam (5.6%) and Thailand (4.3%).

Three countries held sixty-two point seven (62.7%) percent of exports in 2021. India accounted for 40% of global exports in 2021 followed by Thailand and Vietnam which represented 11.7% and 11% respectively. In 2021, the reserved areas to rice production varied between 47.000.000 million hectares and 1.000.000 hectares, i.e. 46.379.000 for the first, namely India, and 944,447 for the last producer in 2021, namely Sierra Leone.

When it comes to self-sufficiency, even the world's largest producer and consumer of rice is not self-sufficient. China imported 2.6 million rice from India in 2022. India is self-sufficient in rice and has had to interrupt some of its rice exports for an indefinite period in 2023 to try to lower internal prices.

In Africa, based on data published by atlasocio.com in 2022, the leading rice producer (i.e. 5 million tonnes between 2022 and 2023 according to the Ecofin agency) is the leading economy, namely Nigeria which is also the leading consumer. The export of rice by the country has been envisaged in 2022. Regarding imports, Nigeria imports nearly one point seven (1.7) million tonnes per year. These imports are justified by the fact that Nigeria's production does not meet local demand. In addition, the objective of achieving self-sufficiency by improving production which was to increase from 3.400.000 tons in 2007 to 12.800.000 in 2017 was not achieved.

Regarding wheat, the data published by atlasocio (a site which offers socio-statistical studies), based on sources from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the first six producing countries in the world are: China, India, Russia, the United States, France and Ukraine with respectively 136.946.000 tons, 109.546.000 tons, 76.057.258 tons, 44.790.360 tons, 36.559.450 tons, and 32.183.300 tons. The bottom six in 2021 are Eswatini, Cameroon, Venezuela, Guatemala, Qatar and Kuwait with 709 tons, 633 tons, 551 tons, 292 tons, 252 tons, and 37 tons respectively.

In Africa, the first six African producing countries are: Egypt, Morocco, Ethiopia, South Africa, Algeria and Tunisia which produced in 2021 respectively 9.000.000 tons, 7.543.848 tons, 5.214.000 tons, 2.257.205 tons, 2.168.386 tons, and 1.193.000 tons. The bottom six are: Chad, Botswana, Somalia, Mali, Eswatini and Cameroon with respectively: 1540 tons, 1280 tons, 1051 tons, 1000 tons, 709 tons, and 633 tons.

The leading wheat exporters in the world according to data published by fr.statista.com (A site which offers quantifiable data from thousands of official sources) between 2021 and 2023 It is Russia with 45 million tons, followed by the European Union 35 million tons, Ukraine was sixth with 14.5 million tons after Australia and the United States.

African countries are very dependent on wheat imports from major exporting countries. A report on the United Nations conference on trade dating from 2022 specifies that more than half of the countries on the continent are dependent on wheat from Russia and Ukraine, twenty-five in total.

In view of these statistics, self-sufficiency in Africa and Cameroon in terms of cereals and particularly wheat and rice seems unachievable. The degree of feasibility for the next fifty years is almost zero because the satisfaction of local demand will always be dependent on imports unless of course a consumer nationalism with a view to prioritizing local and African products is itself possible or conceivable in an economic context where developing countries are largely dependent on developed and emerging countries, particularly with regard to cereal products. Furthermore, for the moment, we cannot count on intra-African trade to reduce this dependence because no African country is self-sufficient in wheat and rice. The meagre productions are compensated by the gigantic imports.

Import substitution: an appreciable reactive measure although very largely insufficient

The Covid-19 pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian war which followed immediately after accentuated the signal of the need to finance local productions with a view to moving towards autonomy. Even if it is easier said than done, we must already do everything possible to be able to prevent certain periods of scarcity in an interconnected world where the most dependent bear the brunt of the blows and costs generated by a geopolitical context in perpetual tension.

In Cameroon, to no longer remain dependent, the public authorities have implemented an import substitution policy which includes the promotion of entrepreneurship through the availability of certain financing in order to allow certain young people to continue to provide a positive contribution to the development of the country.

This preventive and adaptation measure is good, although it will not resolve the entire problem unless perhaps the envelope allocated to this initiative is revised upwards constantly every year and in a very short time interval while increasing the construction of industries, increasing production areas to hundreds of millions of hectares because the current ones will not be enough to ensure food self-sufficiency, i.e. 155.000 hectares (minader 2011) for rice, with regard to wheat the figures are even more insignificant and even if experts note the availability of several additional cultivable areas available in the localities of Wakwa, mbang Mboum and Wassande in the Adamaoua Region which amount to 12.500 hectares of land (investiraucameroun.com), wheat production in Cameroon is still in a series of experimental phases which intends to extend over 50.000 hectares in the future with the aim of relaunching the sector (source agricultural research institute for development [Irad]).

But although the feasibility of self-sufficiency in wheat and rice is undermined by several unfavourable factors, the present needs are the encouragement of entrepreneurship which will certainly not solve the entire problem, but will always have its usefulness. African States need to industrialize further to develop and hope for self-sufficiency. If the Cameroonian agricultural sector was highly industrialized, some tomato producers would not have committed suicide during the covid-19 period due to over-indebtedness. Tons of tomatoes would not have rotted in the fields. The transformation of production would have made it possible to avoid or even reduce losses. Some of them even reportedly received financial support from the government.

In a context where entrepreneurship is strongly advised, entrepreneurs seem to have been abandoned because not only of a lack of forecasting policy but also of the lamentable degree of consideration that the public authorities seem to demonstrate towards producers who do everything same part of an economic circuit. One should not only seek self-sufficiency in cereals but in all other sectors which are essential and require support. A private producer or not must always have support from public authorities.

International recovery plans should come after local recovery plans. During the 1980s, many public companies that went bankrupt forced Cameroon to import massively. Even the structural adjustment plans recommended by international financial institutions have not been able to get them back on their feet. Indeed, between 1984 and 1991 several Cameroonian companies no longer had enough liquidity to pay their debts. Industry production had fallen by 14% in value, and 10% for operations, while those of SMEs had fallen by 22%.

Cameroon seems to be gradually recovering from this sad period in its economy which got bogged down with the devaluation of the FCFA in 1992; The Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have made the familiar question of food self-sufficiency an emergency. A development plan for the wheat sector between 2024 and 2028 was validated in 2023. It aims to reduce imports by 35% or 350.000 tons of wheat by 2035 thanks to joint financing from Cameroon and its international partners companies to the tune of 417 billion CFA Francs.

A tomato processing unit in Maroua is still on hold. Regarding the rice sector, according to the national statistics institute, Cameroon would have imported from January to October 2022, 65.565 tons of rice for 162.5 billion CFA francs. An acquisition which would represent 4.6% of Cameroon's overall imports over the same period. Cameroon intends to make up for this delay by banking on local production to produce 750.000 tons by 2030 (source datacameroun.com).

If ambitious projects are envisaged while encouraging private entrepreneurship of small and large producers alike, the reality of international data regarding cereal production on a global scale teaches us that all these large producers are highly industrialized countries. In addition, there is the problem of corruption which must above all be eradicated because in many ways, Africans and Cameroonians in particular are the main culprits for their economic delays. In 2022, a very large company specializing in large-scale trade and commerce in the fields of hydrocarbons and mining admitted to having corrupted Cameroonian officials for years to enjoy several privileges in the country. The republic needs means to further optimize its economic development on a local scale, but members of this same republic prefer to enrich themselves illicitly at the expense of public affairs. The country's economic growth cannot be achieved without increasing support measures aimed at preventing any act of corruption and embezzlement in all areas of activity.

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