Southern Africa Regional Supply and Market Outlook

Download the report

Preface

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) monitors trends in staple food supply and price trends in countries at risk of food insecurity. The Regional Supply and Market Outlook report provides a summary of regional staple food availability, surpluses and deficits during the current marketing year, projected price behavior, implications for local and regional commodity procurement and essential market monitoring indicators. FEWS NET gratefully acknowledges partner organizations, national ministries of agriculture, national market information systems, regional organizations, and others for their assistance in providing the harvest estimates, commodity balance sheets, as well as trade and price data used in this report.

Key Messages

Regional maize supplies in southern Africa are expected to be below average over the remainder of the 2015/16 marketing year. Every country in the region is expected to have a deficit, except South Africa, Zambia, and Tanzania, which will have below-average exportable surpluses. As regional maize production is not adequate to meet requirements, large and atypical supply gaps are likely.
Prices are expected to increase atypically as the lean season approaches and be more variable than usual, due to atypically thin markets region-wide. Maize prices are expected to remain above average through the 2015/16 marketing year.
South Africa, the main regional maize exporter, will have well below-average surpluses. Tanzania is expected to export its maize surpluses to neighboring countries in East Africa. Together, these factors will limit the ability of deficit countries to fill import gaps through regional supplies.
Regional market monitoring should focus on international import volumes, government interventions (in Malawi and Zambia in particular), and food assistance programming and maize prices in Malawi and Zimbabwe. Export parity prices and export volumes from South Africa and Zambia should also be monitored closely.
Opportunities for local and regional procurement of maize for in-kind assistance programs are limited. The design of cash and voucher programs should take into consideration the very thin markets and resulting high and variable prices anticipated over the remainder of the 2015/16 marketing year.