World market or regional integration and food security in West Africa

textabstractThe problem of food security in West Africa was put on the international agenda in 1974 at the international food conference in Rome following the Great Sahelian Drought of 1968-1973. In those years preoccupation with food security was limited mainly to the Sahel countries and concentrated on estimating the availability and use of resources for grain production. Nowadays, studies in the field of food security focus not only on production, but also on the functioning of the food market, and on consumption and nutrition. This paper concentrates on the debate whether sustainable food security in West Africa will be achieved by protection measures for national food production, by a liberalization of the food trade that facih'tates cheap imports of food from the world market, or by stimulating regional food trade through regional co-operation