Résumé
With the successive rounds of negotiations aiming at strengthening agricultural trade liberalization, the impact of increasing and stiffening competition from world market suppliers on small holders producers in least developed countries remains a major concern for policy makers and the object of a intense debate among policy analysts. Further more, agricultural trades reconfiguration induced by the liberalization and agricultural policies reforms in several major exporting countries could lead to a higher instability and uncertainty of commodity prices, that would affect the capacity of least develop country to further implement their agricultural development strategies. Acknowledging the particular nature of food and the role of agriculture in fighting poverty there is a rather broad consensus about the establishment of buffering mechanisms to that would mitigate the potential negative impact of sudden variation in trade flows putting at stake the existence of a given agriculture sub-sector in an importing countries. The FAO Import surge project (FAO, 2007) intends to further analyse the issue trough the selection of appropriate methodologies applied on case studies focusing on a range of food and agricultural commodities in selected countries. The project aims to provide further insight into the characterization of import surges, their causes and effects in order to improve the bases on which safeguard mechanisms currently discussed within the WTO can be enforced. The purpose of this report is to discuss to what extent the concept of import surge is applicable to the case of rice imports in selected Western African countries and if the proposed safeguard measures are an appropriate instrument for backing up the rice production development in the sub region. The issue will be analysed on the bases of the case of Ghana, Senegal and Nigeria that are with Cote d'Ivoire the fourth major rice importers in the sub-region. The report is the outcome of a fact finding missions carried out in April 2007 in Ghana and Senegal and in Nigeria in May 2007 where the issue has been discussed with officials from trade and agricultural departments and with key informants from the rice sub-sectors. These missions also allowed collecting reports, other unpublished documents and data. (Résumé d'auteur)