Botswana has banned the imports of certain fresh produce including oranges and lemons. (Phill Magakoe/Getty Images)
South Africa’s exports and the economy in general will take a knock from neighbouring Botswana’s nearly three-month ban on imports of citrus fruits, which comes in the wake of an existing ban, until 2025, on a broader range of produce.
In a recent post on social media platform X, President Mokgweetsi Masisi said the ban on orange and lemon imports from South Africa, which was implemented from 17 June and will remain in place until the end of August, is meant to boost Botswana’s producers.
South Africa’s exports of the fruits to Botswana amounted to R6.4 million in April, according to data visualisation platform Observatory of Economic Complexity.
“Our ban on imported vegetables was a powerful move to boost our local farmers & economy. This initiative empowers Botswana by promoting self-sufficiency & improving livelihoods,” Masisi posted.
South African farmers will now have to redirect additional produce meant for exports into the local market, which will increase supply and benefit the consumer, but the economy will feel the loss of export earnings more severely, said Paul Makube, an agricultural economist at FNB.
“It’s quite concerning, because from an economic point of view, it impacts the revenues of farmers, which means that they might redirect the contribution to the local market, which will put pressure on prices on the local market,” Makube said.
“The farmer loses, in that sense, when prices are actually down, although the consumer benefits, but the farmer, at the end of the day, loses. That’s what makes the farmers unhappy about that situation where they close borders.”
The latest ban follows a 2021 to 2025 ban imposed by Namibia and Botswana on imports of other produce including tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, cabbage, lettuce, garlic, onions, ginger and fresh herbs from South Africa. The two countries said that move was also an attempt to encourage the local production of vegetables and reduce dependency on imports.
At the time, the department of trade, industry and competition lamented the negative effect these bans would have on South Africa, including a drop in export revenue and job losses.
The ban on products from South Africa goes against international rules of trade, Makube said, adding that there were various other methods for countries to boost their local economies without hurting other nations.
“If you want to support your domestic industry, there are various measures to do that. One of them is either financial support institutes to deploy certain technologies. But the measures where you intervene in the market is one of the things that is very anti-competitive and they go against the rules of international trade,” he said.
The import ban highlights the need for better cooperation and collaboration of trade policy between the neighbouring countries, said Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa.
“The neighbouring countries need to be aware of the problems that they present to South Africa with the current practices of the trade policies that they are having at this point,” he said.
“We can all agree that any barriers that the region … presents to South Africa are not ideal, which is why I think that we need here a long term solution of thinking around these things, rather than purely reacting on one aspect.”
The ban is about food sovereignty, noted Kulthoum Omari-Motsumi, a Botswana-based member of the African Group of Negotiators, a collective of climate change negotiators from Africa.
“We need to put in place measures to ensure that our small and medium scale farmers are supported in order to produce our own food,” Omari-Motsumi said.
“The reality is that we were struggling, particularly because we are in a semi-arid area, we are a semi-arid country which is very prone to drought and so on. So it is challenging for Botswana to produce food in the right quantity and quality.
“It is a painful move but it’s something that we have to do in order to support our farmers to be able to produce food and feed the nation. So we have to learn how to do it slowly … We are slowly learning how to be able to produce either extreme environment.”
Meanwhile, South African consumers may experience an increase in the price of orange juice; the country imports some of its juice from Brazil, where disease and a severe drought linked to climate change has hit the crop.
“A drought situation … has come up that has cut on production, so there is limited availability of oranges for the juice market,” Makube said.
But, he said, the short supply of imported juice does offer an opportunity for local citrus growers whose produce has been temporarily barred from Botswana to redirect it towards local juice production.
“Although the local market will still have fruit, we expect tight competition with the juicing market, price-wise,” Makube said.
“The impact on producers will be varied according to location, but overall better juice prices may somewhat compensate for lost export revenues. At consumer level, orange prices were already 23% higher in June 2024 relative to the same month in 2023, although having decreased by 8.4% month on month.”