Oil and gas exploration in Africa appears to have shifted from the West to the East. The region’s geopolitical profile is rising. The region is now a beehive of oil and gas activities. The trouble is, the rush could lead to the neglect of the agricultural sector.

Regional governments should not kill the goose that has been laying the golden eggs all these years. Even with oil money, dependence on food imports increases vulnerability, given the volatile nature of food prices in the international markets. Therefore, agriculture must remain at the top of the development agenda.

The East African region has at least 3.5 billion barrels of oil and 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. A lot more is underground.

This makes the region the next frontier of the oil and gas boom. The oil basin spans the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Lake Albert. Kenya, the regional hegemonic power, has inland, onshore and offshore oil and gas sedimentary basins.

Rwanda’s planned production of methane gas is expected to spur electricity generation in the region. Tanzania has huge reserves of natural gas in Songo Songo, Minazi Bay areas and oil in Lake Tanganyika.

South Sudan has raised the prospects of development funded by oil now that it is at relative peace. Somalia on its part is widely believed to have huge reserves of oil and gas awaiting political stability for exploration. Peace is now nearer than ever in Somalia.

In some African states with huge deposits of oil, citizens still wallow in poverty and food insecurity, leading to the argument that neither money nor natural  resources are the problem, but rather bad policy.

As in most of sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture was the mainstay of the Nigerian economy at Independence in 1960. Nigeria was famed for cash crops such as palm produce, cocoa and rubber.

Then came the discovery of oil. The agricultural sector took a back seat and summered from bad governance, neglect, underinvestment, inconsistently and poorly implemented government policies and an absence of basic infrastructure.

During the oil boom, the country couldn’t produce enough food to feed its growing population. Former Nigerian president Umaru Musa Yar’adua noted in 2009 that, “It is a paradox that despite Nigeria’s human and natural resources and the nation’s comparative advantage in the agricultural sector, the country is still a net importer of essential food items and industrial materials.”

He also observed that the unfortunate situation had been brought about by “the neglect of the agricultural sector in the past following the discovery of crude oil.” Therefore, the new oil economies should continue investing in agriculture, with special attention to smallholder farmers.

Like most regions in Africa, East Africa’s agricultural sector is sick, neglected and stolen from. It contributes a great deal to the gross domestic product but receives far less in the budgetary allocations.

The food self sufficiency policies of the 1970s are a distant memory, followed by the frustrating structural adjustments programmes of the 1980s and 1990s promoted by the World Bank.

Over the next few months, the food security situation is expected to improve in the wider East African region. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS-NET) food security outlook for October 2012 to March this year notes that the number of people facing food insecurity in the region has declined to 15 million compared with 16 million in the peak drought period of 2011.

This provides an opportunity for governments, international actors, citizens and the food security actors in the region to build and sustain the food security drive.

The oil money could help sustain this momentum over the next decades, and eventually wipe out food insecurity in the region.

In Kenya, petroleum and related products accounted for 22 per cent of the total import bill in 2010; local oil production will help reduce these high import bills.

The countries in the region are likely to trade with rich but oil thirsty countries like China, EU, India, USA and Japan.

Within the East African countries, citizens are more likely to move into the remote areas where oil has been discovered thus encouraging growth of infrastructure and overall economic developments.

It is therefore important for regional governments to carefully avert neglecting the agricultural sector. Instead, the agricultural sector should absorb the greater percentage of the proceeds from oil and gas sales.

Again, regional governments would then beat the 2003 Maputo Declaration committing 10 per cent of their GDPs to agriculture and rural development. This would facilitate national development as investments are prioritised for the sustainable smallholder agriculture and among neglected rural women farmers.

To succeed, the region should invest heavily in the policy regulatory frameworks to guide the oil industry, which should give attention to local communities’ voices and participation, provide for governments extracting maximum revenue, accountability, strong punitive measures against corrupt practices, land grabbing, environmental and human-rights violations as well as tax compliance by the multinationals mining the oil.

The policy frameworks should prevent local elites from monopolising contractual agreements with oil mining moguls. This will ensure that governments have enough money, for investment in food security and other sectors.

Cheruiyot Collins works in Nairobi for CAFOD as policy advocacy adviser on food security for the Horn and East Africa Region. The views expressed here are his own