Julliet Wanjiku from ReSAKSS-ECA presented at the second workshop on Tracking intra-regional trade in agricultural inputs in ESA, September 2012, Nairobi, Kenya

1. Tracking intra-regional trade in
agricultural inputs in Eastern and
Southern Africa
Presented at the second workshop on
Tracking intra-regional trade in agricultural inputs in
ESA, September 2012, Nairobi, kenya
Julliet Wanjiku

2. Introduction
• Trade in agricultural input (fertilizers, seeds,
pesticides, animal feeds etc) is crucial for
agricultural productivity
• Trade in agricultural inputs is essential to improve
and sustain regional food security
• Thus the need for an indicator for tracking trade
in the inputs

3. Proposed sources of agricultural input
trade data to be adopted
• Formal:
– COMSTAT→ available imports and exports, source
and destination for all countries except Tanzania-TRA
• Informal:
– UBOS→Only agency monitoring informal trade of
agricultural inputs in the region
Other sources

4. Key agricultural inputs to track
• Fertilizers→ Nitrogen fertilizers, Phosphatic fertilizers, Potassic fertilizers and Urea.
– CAN, DAP etc can be converted back to main fertilizers according to indicated
percentage e.g. NPK:25:5:5 means 25% of N, 5% of P and 5% of K in bulk .
Ammonium sulphate 21% N fertilizer in bulk
• Seeds: Maize, Vegetable seeds (aggregated) only
• Farm Machinery→Combine harvesters, Ploughs, tractors, milking and dairy machinery
(very limited trade)
• Breeding stocks→Pure-bred breeding bovines, Pure-bred breeding swine
• Herbicides (aggregated)
• Fungicides (aggregated)
NB: Choice of inputs is informed by data availability
Detailed sources (see Table 1 and Table 2)

5. COMESA member countries to be included in
the indicator
• Which countries have sufficient data to be included in the
indicator? Data available is for 2008, 2009, 2010 (Worksheet 1)
• 14 countries → Burundi, Congo DR, Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda,
Sudan, Uganda, Zambia, Madagascar, Kenya, Libya, Mauritius,
Zimbabwe, Tanzania

6. Proposed methodology for tracking volume and
value of agricultural Inputs
• As proposed in 2011 workshop, we adopt the
methodology for tracking trade in food staples in the
region developed by ReSAKSS
• Formal trade + Informal trade = Total trade (value terms)
• Formal trade + Informal trade = Total trade (volume terms)
• Annual change in volume and values to be calculated,
baseline 2008
• Note: For machinery, only to include in the values matrix only,
volumes are in numbers

7. Challenges
• Incomplete data on agricultural inputs
– Most private sector data is not on public domain
e.g. seeds
– Missing data especially on livestock (e.g. AI semen,
Day-old chicks)
• Fertilizers reported in various different forms

8. Conclusion
• Tracking trade in agricultural input will inform
input related trade policies
• However, in the region there is incomplete trade
data in agricultural inputs
• There is need to work towards harmonising and
improving the agricultural input trade data
infrastructure

9. Need for consensus on:-
• Inputs to track
• Any other available data
• Methodology proposed
• Overcoming the challenges