Promoting a maize-to-livestock feed value chain in the Indian Ocean Islands

Published on June 2016, this briefing note examines the potential for developing a maize-to-livestock feed value chain in the Indian Ocean Islands (IOI) region of Eastern and Southern Africa (defined here as comprising the countries of Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles and the French territory of Réunion) in order to promote agricultural transformation and food security in the region.

As stated in the note “in Africa, where agriculture remains the backbone of many economies, and a source of employment for around half the population, there has recently been a “strong resurgence of interest” in promoting value chains in order to add value, lower transaction costs, diversify rural economies and contribute to higher rural incomes”. 

The document recalls the importance of the role of regional trade and value chain development in promoting agricultural transformation and food security presenting the findings of a desk and field research carried out between January and June 2016  in Mauritius (January 2016) and Madagascar (April 2016). This research first of all reveals that trade in maize for human consumption is limited in IOI, but the region’s livestock feed processors are key sources of demand and have shown an interest in investing in Madagascar in order to help establish the country as a regional procurement base for maize. Secondly, such investment could stimulate increased maize production in Madagascar, including for local consumption, but low productivity, a weakly organized local value chain, deficient infrastructure, a ‘risky’ investment climate, and complex export procedures discourage investment and limit possibilities for growing regional maize trade. Consequently, appropriate regulatory reform coupled with coordinated public and private investment is needed to address these obstacles, and could be supported by the establishment of a public-private platform to facilitate dialogue between stakeholders on priority interventions needed to boost maize trade in the region.