Mylène Kherallah et al. Reforming Agricultural Markets in Africa. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Published for the International Food Policy Research Institute, xvi + 201 pp. Figures. Tables. Bibliography. Index. $40.00. Cloth. $22.95. Paper.

ECONOMICS AND DEVELOPMENT Mylene Kherallah et al. Reforming Agricultural Markets in Africa. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Published for the International Food Policy Research Institute, xvi + 201 pp. Figures. Tables. Bibliography. Index. $40.00. Cloth. $22.95. Paper. I admit to being prejudiced. I assume that a book from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), published by Johns Hopkins University Press, is almost certain to be good. Reforming Agricultural Markets in Africa more than lives up to my high expectations. Since Africa is the only continent in which per capita food production and consumption have declined over the past decades, it is understandable that the book begins with the projection that "sub-Saharan Africa is the only region of the world where hunger and poverty will get worse in the next two decades if present trends continue" (xiii). In fact, IFPRI predicts that the "number of malnourished children ... will increase from 32 million in 1997 to 39 million in 2020" (xiii). In my judgment this is a conservative estimate, given the continuing AIDs crisis in addition to all the other natural and man-made tragedies that have fallen upon Africa. There is a clear mandate, then, for policy reform, though it is not at all clear that policy reform alone, without substantial external assistance, can overcome the many obstacles facing the continent. The issue is not only reform but also what types of reforms are needed, since, as the book clearly indicates, a reform process in African agriculture has been under way since the early 1980s. In too many African countries there had been a policy bias that, in effect, discriminated against agriculture. Food prices were kept low to benefit the urban consumer; low prices gave African farmers neither the incentive nor the ability to invest in increasing productivity and output. The reforms of the 1980s attempted to align domestic agricultural prices with those prevailing internationally, with the expectation (or possibly the hope) that these policies would give African farmers the opportunity to become more efficient and more productive. A major task of this volume is to bring together the various studies on the impact of these reforms, assess their findings, and use them as the basis for a policy agenda in an effort to prevent the dire prophesies from being realized. The problem in reviewing Reforming Agricultural Markets in Africa is that the book is written so tightly and systematically that it would take an article and not a review to do it justice. In a few pages it lays out the sharp contrast between agriculture in Africa and in Asia over the past decades. With a policy bias toward agriculture and a concomitant support structure, Asia started at a lower level but has steadily expanded per capita agricultural output, while per capita production has been falling in Africa. Africa's share of international trade has been declining steadily, and agricultural exports have been a key component in that decline. One of the strengths of this work is also one of its weaknesses: The authors admit clearly that the data are simply too weak and inadequate to compel the type of strong conclusions that could drive further policy reforms. They also recognize that critical issues are still not resolved precisely because there is no data evaluating the efficacy of past reforms. It has long been my belief that too often the debate has been conducted about broad policy reforms rather than the correct pathway for achieving them, so I was delighted to find a clear recognition that the "debate over the appropriate sequence and timing of market reforms remains unresolved" (7). …