# **b. Government policy**

Colonial governments especially in the early stages pursued a relatively non-interventionist policy to agricultural development in Sierra Leone, apart from support to agricultural research and limited training. Later interventions in irrigation and drainage schemes, rice seed multiplication and distribution, mechanization and rice milling, and marketing schemes largely failed because of poor staffing, poor management, inadequate funding and lack of knowledge of local socio-economic conditions (National Rice Development Strategy, Sierra Leone, 2009).

In the immediate post-independence period, agricultural policy shifted to direct intervention in agricultural production by the State. The Rice Cooperation established in 1961 operated its own rice farms and provided cultivation services to farmers. The Corporation offered prices that were below world market prices. Its rice mills were idle for significant periods and the Corporation concentrated its efforts on the more profitable importation of rice, which was a disincentive to local production. However, by 1967, the Rice Cooperation could not raise operating capital to pay farmers cash for produce and resorted to IOUs and the government was forced to close the Corporation in 1978. When the Rice Cooperation was closed, the mandate for the implementation of the rice policy fell to the Sierra Leone Produce Marketing Board (SLPMB). Over the next 10 years the SLPMB also implemented a policy that was very unfavorable to domestic rice producers (Spencer, et al, 1996). Its monopoly was removed in 1986 and the private sector assumed responsibility for the marketing of both locally produced and imported rice.

The government’s rice policy is expressed in its National Rice Development Strategy (NRDS, 2009). The goal of the National Rice Development Strategy (NRDS) is to establish a framework for significant increases in rice production to contribute to the improvement of food security and economic development in Sierra Leone. The specific objectives are to: (i) Ensure an increase in the sustainable productivity and production of rice in Sierra Leone; (ii) Promote appropriate post-harvest handling, processing and marketing of rice; (iii) Develop appropriate infrastructure for rice production and marketing; and (iv) Improve the capacity of stakeholders and institutions involved in rice sector.

The strategy for increasing rice production is two-pronged: (a) increase in area cultivated, mainly in the lowlands where there is much underutilized capacity, and (b) increases in productivity per unit area in all ecosystems. Area expansion will mainly be in the IVS due to its existence in all parts of the country coupled with its potential for sustainable production. The government’s goal is to achieve rice self-sufficiency. This strategy targets a land area of 830,000 hectares and an increase in the average rice yield/ha to 2 mt/ha to realize the government’s self-sufficiency goal.

# **V. Results**

The primary purpose of the rice sector model is to simulate the effects of policy interventions, most notably the impact of the removal of the ECOWAS tariff waiver. It is therefore important to ensure that the model captures the salient features of the Sierra Leone rice sector and that the base year results are validated against the actual data generated from surveys and other sources for the selected base year. Since 2016 is the most recent year for which there are yield and production data across the five ecologies, it is adopted as the base year. Also, since it is possible that rice farmers may not behave optimally in their choice of production pattern and the use of inputs (see Kutcher and Scandizzo, 1981) and the fact that rice price has substantially increased between 2016 and 2018, the model is also run for 2018 in a more normative vein to simulate the effect of using more lands in the riverain and mangrove ecologies, given 19