By Macharia Kamau

Africa’s perennial food shortage, poor agricultural policies and over reliance on rain-fed agriculture will top the agenda of the third African Grain Trade Summit, to be held later this week.

The regional meeting comes in the backdrop of an ongoing drought in the region that has left more than 23 million people in seven East African countries in dire need of food aid.

"We want to provide a forum for African and global grain community to discuss and recommend solutions to policy, regulatory, agriculture and Finance bottleneck’s that impede trade in grain products," Ms Constantine Kandie, the executive director of the Eastern Africa Grain Council (EAGC), said at a pre-summit press briefing in Nairobi.

More than 150 delegates from Africa are expected at the meeting in Dar-es-Salaam, between November 5 and 6.

The delegates will push for the formalisation of structured trading in agricultural commodities across the continent, as a way of fighting recurrent food shortages in Africa.

The two-day meeting comes almost one month after the region started receiving the annual short rains, which meteorological departments say will be heavier than normal.

Kandie said the meeting would expose African grain practitioners and suppliers to new technologies and ideas for better efficiency and quality.

Most African countries are still grappling with severe food shortages, which have had a negative effect on the local economies.

The high inflation rate in Kenya, for instance, has been blamed on high cost of food that has gone up by more than 180 per cent in the last two years.

EAGC and its partners, that include the USaid funded Competitiveness and trade expansion program , said food shortages and other problems associated with regional grain trade could be averted, and in most cases reduced, if countries would restructure the business.

The organisations hope that the summit will provide the region with a foundation towards introducing a ‘trade without barriers’ concept.

"Harmonisation of national and regional trade policies is critical for Africa development," Steve Walls, the Chief of Party at the Compete initiative, said in an interview.