Regional protectionism and support such as through the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) continues to be a hurdle to overcome in free trade. Although WTO negotiations suspended in July 2006 were recently resumed, the risk of protectionism remains. However, mushrooming free trade agreements and preferential treatment agreements will hopefully be a starting point for integration, initially at regional and then at international levels.

Accordingly, proactive engagement of developing countries in multilateral negotiations will be important for securing their trade interests. If the issues of tariff peaks, tariff escalation and subsidies are objectively addressed, countries of the region will take advantage of emerging market opportunities in agriculture, including export of high-value, processed products. AKST will then be instrumental in developing the required capacity to make the region competitive, especially in agricultural processing (Johnson, 2005; Juma and Yee-Cheong, 2005). Future growth in trade-to-GDP ratio will depend to a great extent on both negotiation outcome and management ability of national governments. Integration of science and technology with national economic development will help solve such problems. Knitting agricultural research institutions into a coherent national agricultural research system (NARS) and integrating national agricultural research plans with the development agenda will be realized in the region with time (Kemmis, 2001; Adato and Meinzen-Dick, 2002; Thirtle et al., 2003; Ryan, 2004).

Agriculture and food markets in the CWANA region will hopefully be reorganized so as to provide access to both domestic and international markets. It will take some time for countries to solve such problems as poor market infrastructure and means of communication, lack of a cold chain and adequate storage facilities, inadequate transportation infrastructure, and not enough vertical linking of producers, industry and consumers (USAID, 2004). As a result, countries will continue to produce primary commodities and incur high postharvest losses, which will have deleterious consequences on trying to deal with food security, poverty alleviation and amelioration of hunger.

According to the current trend in investment in farm sectors and infrastructure, it will not be possible for CWANA countries to penetrate markets across borders in the near future. Integration of local markets with regional or inter national markets will be delayed. Limitations such as high tariffs will hamper the realization of the potential benefits of globalization, but these limitations may be overcome to a great extent by developing AKST (Foster and Welch, 2002).

Rehabilitation of sea, air and dry port infrastructure— basic for transporting goods and services—will continue to be a weak link in most CWANA countries in the near future. Legislation related to markets, especially for border control like quarantine facilities and the movement of goods and services within the country and across borders, will follow the same trend.

Collective regional efforts and multilateral initiatives will be helpful in evolving the required market system in CWANA. Success stories of the region in terms of market structure, like the one in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a

regional trade hub, will be replicated elsewhere, given political will and investment opportunities. Growth in trade will help countries attain development goals, alleviate poverty, and ameliorate hunger in the CWANA region.
In some countries of the region, nontransparent market practices hinder the development of competitive marketing systems, because of hoarding practices, and strong lobby groups with political support and monopoly. Effective policy regulations related to competition will help fight such monopolies.

Linking farmers with industry and consumers through contract farming will help evolve a better marketing system and cope with problems related to value-chain management, including post-harvest losses. Cooperative settings can also evolve by mobilizing and organizing farming communities. This will help overcome problems associated with the cyclical nature of agricultural markets, such as in poultry and horticulture. Another challenge will be the potential risk of exotic and transboundary diseases like avian flu and mad cow disease, which are likely to emerge movement of goods and services increases under globalization.

Some of these problems will be managed by applying standard management practices, especially those related to sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) issues, and by adopting good agricultural practices. These practices will build confidence and certainty in the global marketplace that will help sell regional produce. AKST will play an important role in SPS management, in terms of both standardization and quality infrastructure development. Countries of the region therefore need to participate proactively in the international standardization process, through international standardsetting bodies like the International Plant Protection Council (IPPC), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Codex Alimentarius Commission.

3.3.1.2 Food demand and consumption patterns
In the past two decades, average per capita incomes have increased around the world, more than doubling in many countries. In addition, the world population is expected to grow by more than one billion people in the next decade, most of whom will reside in low- and middle-income countries. This growth, combined with rising income levels in developing countries, is expected to increase and change the composition of global food demand over the next couple of decades (World Food Conference, 1974; UVIN, 1995).

Direct per capita food consumption of maize and coarse grains will decline as consumers shift from wheat and rice to foods such as meat, fruit, vegetables and dairy products, as their incomes increase. Growth in income in developing countries will drive strong growth in per capita and total meat consumption, which in turn will induce strong growth in consumption of cereals for feed, particularly maize (Pretty and Hine, 2001, 2003). These commodities will be procured from supermarket chains and fast food establishments, controlled by multinational and transnational corporations (MNCs, TNCs) (Jordan, 2000). These trends will lead to an extraordinary increase in the importance of developing countries in global food markets (Rosegrant et al., 2001).

Many developing countries are currently undergoing a rapid nutrition transition. Falling real prices for food enable a growing number of consumers to move swiftly toward