Eastern and Southern Africa- Production (000 t)
The economic and political impor- 4.0
tance attached to maize in eastern
and southern Africa is reflected in
extensive government involvement
in marketing and pricing. Follow- 3.0
ing independence, governments in
nearly all of the major maize-
producing countries fixed prices
from farm gate to final consumer,
required that farmers sell maize
only to authorized state grain
marketing agencies, monopolized 1.0
maize imports and exports, and
strictly regulated the private grain
trade. These actions were under-
taken for a combination of reasons: 0 -
to insure an adequate supply of
maize to meet national consump- 2.0
tion requirements, to reduce
variability in supplies and prices, to
ensure -remunerative prices for 1.6
producers and affordable prices for
consumers, and to minimize unnec-
essary marketing costs attributable 1.2
to inefficient private sector inter-
mediaries.
 0.8-
Although the empirical record is far
from complete, it is evident that
these ambitious-and sometimes 0.4
contradictory-policy goals have
not always been achieved. Produc-
tion instability continues to plague 0
many maize-producing countries of 3.0
eastern and southern Africa
(Figure 10), because most maize
farmers must depend on unreliable 2.5
and highly variable rainfall. With-
out improved production technolo-
gies to ensure that maize yields
remain fairly stable even when
rainfall varies from year to year, 1.5
marketing and price policy alone
have proved an ineffective means of
breaking the link between rainfall 1.0
and production. Consequently, most
countries in eastern and southern 0.5
Africa experience alternating
periods of over- and undersupply.
 1961 1964 1967 '19'70 1973 1976 19 19 1982 1985 1988
 Source: Calculated from FAO data.

 Figure 10. Variability of maize production in selected countries of eastern
 and southern Africa, 1961-88.