Oxfam workers in Johannesburg pour sugar onto a map of Africa, to symbolise the way that subsidised European sugar is being dumped on the continent's markets. Picture: TREVOR CRIGHTON, Witsnews
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Dumping sugar on Africa August 29, 2002 By Hayley Mathie OXFAM'S 'Make Trade Fair' campaign says heavy subsidies for European sugar farmers result in huge surpluses which are dumped on the market, depressing world prices and blocking southern African sugar producers' access to export markets. Sugar producers in Europe are paid 632 Euros per tonne, while the world market price is 184 Euros per tonne. Mozambique, which is one of the world's lowest cost producers of sugar, cannot compete with subsidised prices, with the result that it is often cheaper for African consumers to buy imported sugar from Europe. Oxfam has slammed "the hypocrisy of international trade", which led to Mozambique losing the chance earn an estimated 108 million Euros in sales by 2004 - almost three quarters of the EU's annual development aid budget to that country (150 million Euros). At the same time, Mozambique has come under considerable pressure from the World Bank and IMF to lift its sugar import tariffs. Witsnews is a joint project of the Wits University Graduate Journalism Programme, Rhodes School of Journalism, and Institute for the Advancement of Journalism.