Livestock pricing policy in sub-Saharan Africa: Objectives, instruments and impact in five countries

This paper evaluates in a comparative cross-country context, the objectives and instruments of livestock pricing policy in five sub-Saharan African Countries: Cote d'Ivoire, Mali, Nigeria, Sudan and Zimbabwe during the period 1970-86. It assesses the extent to which pricing policy objectives have been attained, and also estimates the effect of price interventions on output, consumption, trade and government revenues in order to draw out lessons for the future. The results indicate that in comparison with real boarder prices, a certain degree of success was achieved in stabilising real domestic producer prices in the study countries and also shows that since the early 1980s, there has been a gradual shift away from taxation of producers. The analysis reveals the importance of domestic inflation and exchange rates as key variables for livestock pricing policies and highlights the need to address the macroeconomic imbalances that cause exchange rate distortions and high domestic inflation at the same time that direct price distortions are being tackled.