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US targeting higher-quality West African beef markets

09 December 2012

In mid August 2012, the US Meat Export Federation (USMEF) launched a special exposure evening for Senegalese chefs to highlight the qualities of US beef cuts. As reported on meat industry news websites, ‘USMEF is focusing increased attention on the West Africa region, which is experiencing growth in key metropolitan areas fueled by the booming oil and natural resource industries.’ The event was part of wider efforts to promote the use of US beef with a view to establishing more commercially viable export volumes. West Africa is seen as having ‘strong potential for new business’ for US meat exporters. However, ‘cold chain management issues’ across the region are a factor to be considered, according to one source. 

In October 2012, the English Beef and Lamb Export Board (EBLEX) highlighted its ongoing efforts to support small and medium-sized processors in developing the export market for fifth quarter cuts ‘which could generate up to £100 per head’ in additional revenues (for details of what constitutes fifth quarter cuts see Agritrade article ‘ Beef sector trends in the EU and globally’, 9 September 2012). An EBLEX regional manager maintained that ‘most of the bigger processors are already taking advantage of fifth quarter exports.’ In July 2012, EBLEX highlighted that ‘exports of frozen beef products from the UK to Ghana from 2010 to 2011 more than tripled’. Since 2010, activities under the EBLEX programme to support exports have ‘led to the opening up of more than 50 new non-EU markets’. It is maintained that ‘the UK is well placed to supply fifth quarter products to Africa due to historical links and logistics’ (for more details of the fifth quarter trade see Agritrade article ‘ Beef sector trends in the EU and globally’, 9 September 2012). 

Editorial comment

With population growth, growing urbanisation and rising incomes, West African demand for beef is not only increasing, but the quality demands of West African consumers are also evolving. Increasingly, high-quality, safely processed and stored meat products are being demanded by high-income urban consumers. While efforts continue in West Africa to facilitate intra-regional trade in cattle and beef from inland production areas to coastal markets, the prevalence of livestock diseases, the absence of agreed, enforceable regional SPS measures, transport infrastructure shortcomings and the major cold chain management issue all place serious constraints on the competitiveness of intra-regional beef suppliers, relative to US and EU suppliers, in serving the emerging urban markets. The challenges faced by intra-regional beef suppliers are further compounded by the many non-tariff barriers to trade that hinder the free movement of goods across the West African region.

Despite these constraints, livestock products remain by far the most important products for agricultural intra-regional trade within ECOWAS: Niger and Burkina Faso mainly serve markets in Nigeria, and Mali mainly serves markets in Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal. The livestock sector in ECOWAS contributes some 44% of agricultural GDP, while 98% of regional beef consumption is met from domestic production. However, demand is growing at twice the rate of supply (4%, compared to 2% per annum), with this creating considerable scope for expansion of commercial beef production in West Africa (for more details see AgritradeExecutive Brief Update: Beef sector’, 2011).

However, the targeting of the West African market by USMEF is indicative of the extent to which evolving consumer demand in urban coastal areas of West Africa could well become disconnected from the production profile of meat produced in the regional hinterland. Expanding EU exports of fifth quarter cuts could also serve to intensify competition on lower-income components of coastal urban beef markets (e.g. for manufacturing beef to produce burgers and other prepared meat products).

Unless infrastructure, animal disease control and cold chain issues can be addressed along supply routes from the interior to the coast, the scope for beef-producing areas in the region to benefit from the oil and natural resource-fuelled boom in urban demand for meat will remain unrealised.

Across many sectors other than beef, similar problems are faced in relation to the disconnection between agricultural production and urban consumers. Coastal urban centres, for example, are often better integrated with global supply chains than their own agricultural hinterlands. This poses major policy challenges for West African governments in both a national and regional context.

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