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Food problem in
Africa
is the worst problem facing Africans, and the most important problem to be
highlighted. we think that hunger is the cause of all
other problems by direct or indirect ways and from the point of it's importance
we must discuss the reasons causing it. |
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Drought and other natural
disasters in many parts of
Africa
have intensified hunger, but poverty is the real cause of famine. Only the
chronically impoverished die from the effects of drought, and
Africa's
impoverishment has been several hundred years in the making. As European
countries colonized
Africa,
they disrupted farming and herding systems that for centuries Africans had
adapted to changing environmental conditions. Ecologically balanced food systems
were undermined: the best agricultural lands were taken for growing coffee,
sugar cane, cocoa, and other export crops that were viewed as the means to
economic development according to the neoclassical theory of comparative
advantage. Private and government funds were invested to develop these cash
crops, while food production for the poor majority was neglected.
Colonial cash cropping
ravaged the soil, reducing large areas to desert and semi desert. Millions of
acres of brush and trees were cleared, robbing the
soil of organic replenishment. Export crops such as cotton, peanuts, and tobacco
absorbed large amounts of nutrients from the soil. After each year's harvest,
the soil was left bare and unprotected leading to accelerated erosion. As more
land was put in cash crops, small farmers have been pushed further and further
onto marginal land with scarce rainfall, decreasing their ability to produce
food. It is this unfortunate, yet avoidable situation that has contributed to
drought- induced famine.
Using the best land for export
agriculture degraded the environment and impoverished the rural agricultural
population, forcing many to work on plantations or crowd into cities seeking
employment.
Plantation
owners and other commercial interests developed a large labor force that could
be paid low wages, thus ensuring high profits.
Poor
rainfall and other environmental hazards are indeed troublesome for farmers
throughout the world. They push people into famine, however, where farmers and
pastoralists have been made vulnerable by economic and political structures that
impoverish the many while enriching the few.
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Contrary to popular opinion,
hunger is not caused by extreme population density. If it were, we would expect
to find widespread hunger in densely populated countries like
Japan
and the
Netherlands
and little or no hunger in sparsely populated countries like
Senegal
and
Zaire
where, in fact, malnutrition and hunger are widespread.
Africa
is not densely populated. Compare
Africa's
23.7 persons per square kilometer to
Europe's
108.6 and
Asia's
122.9. But of all continents,
Africa
ranks last in the use of irrigation, fertilizers, and
tractors. The problem is not a shortage of land but a shortage of money,
training, and appropriate technology to develop the land.
Africans use a very small
percentage of the globe's resources. For example,
Africa's
600 million people (11.3 percent of the world's population) consume just 2.4
percent of the world's commercial energy, while the
USA's
260 million people (4.9 percent of the world's population) consume 25.1 percent.
It is true that
Africa's
population growth rate (3.0% per year) is higher than that of any other
continent. It is important, however, for us to understand the real relationship
between high population growth rates and hunger. High population growth rates do
not cause hunger. Rather, they are both consequences of social inequities that
deprive the poor majority--especially women--of the security and economic
opportunity necessary for them to choose to have fewer children.
Having large families is a
logical response to the conditions of poverty under which most Africans live. On
the small family farms that produce most of
Africa's
food, the most important input is family labor. The high birth rate is partly a
response by parents to this need for farm labor.
With the world's highest rate
of death for children aged 0-4,
Africa's
high infant mortality rates lead to an even greater number of births as parents
try to compensate. For some mothers, however, the burden of raising another
child under difficult circumstances is outweighed by the eventual benefits of
another laborer in the family.
Data from around the world
shows a close connection between rising living standards and falling birth
rates. If African parents were assured their children would survive, they would
not need to have so many. If parents could earn enough from their labor, and
were assured of support in old age, they would see it as being in their own
interest to limit their number of children. And if women were empowered as equal
members of society, they would be able to make better use of family planning
technology. The key problem is not too many people, it's too much inequality.
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To lay all the blame on African governments is to imply that
they alone control the destiny of their countries. The forces that have
institutionalized hunger in
Africa
are made up of transnational corporations, Western governments,
international agencies and African elites as well as the governments.
Together they form a coalition whose lifestyles and interests are very
different from those of
Africa's
rural majority. Over the decades, this coalition has implemented policies
that have undermined food crops. Prices paid to farmers have
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been kept artificially low,
thus providing cheap food to people in the cities, which
reduced the likelihood of
urban unrest and allowed urban employers to pay lower wages, but also stifled
incentives for increased food production. Policy makers direct most agricultural
assistance to cash crops, mainly benefiting large commercial interests. For
example, with the implementation of structural adjustment programs in the 1980s,
credit availability for small farmers has decreased dramatically.
The fact that policy making
is dominated by men, while most food (80%) is produced by women, also helps
explain the low priority given to food crops. Most agricultural training and
development assistance is directed towards men, neglecting women farmers. For
example, agricultural extension services traditionally have been staffed by men,
for men. A recent Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) study found that under
11 percent of agricultural extension workers are women.
But food production can be
increased, as developments in
Zimbabwe
have shown. After years of guerrilla war against a white minority government,
Zimbabwe
achieved independence in 1980. During the first few years the government of
Robert Mugabe raised the price paid for food crops
and gave small farmers credit so that they could purchase seeds, fertilizers,
and tools. Although they did not reach all the family farmers in need, these
programs led to a massive increase in food production. In 1985, despite several
years of drought, small farmers not only fed their families, but they marketed
twice as much as before, exporting to neighboring countries.
Africa
is a diverse continent with over 50 governments ranging from some who are
blatantly anti-farmer to those genuinely trying to help the poor majority. But
in every nation it can be said that only when the majority gain control of their
country's resources will we see an end to policies that systematically
impoverish people and leave them vulnerable to natural disasters.
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Most people fail to realize
that the world market is
Africa's
worst enemy. Almost all African countries are dependent on exporting minerals
and cash crops. While real prices in the world market for these commodities have
declined during the post-World War II period, the prices of manufactured imports
from industrialized countries have steadily increased.
Throughout sub-Saharan
Africa,
low commodity prices have affected markets and local communities that depend on
a very narrow range of exports. Most Africans find themselves in what Oxfam
calls a "trade trap" where they are forced to produce cash crops for income that
is so low, they continue to live their lives in abject poverty.
In
Cote d'
Ivoire,
exports of coffee rose by 26 percent in volume but fell by 21 percent in value
between 1988 and 1990. Similarly, in
Rwanda,
export earnings declined by 50 percent between 1987 and 1991. Recent studies
have shown that under the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT),
Africa
will suffer more than any other geographical region. With the loss of special
trading rights with the European Community (EC) and cuts in agricultural
subsidies, it is estimated that
Africa
will lose an additional 3 billion dollars in trade income each year.
The deterioration of
Africa's
terms of trade means that most African governments have been forced to spend
more in the world market than they earn. They have filled this gap by borrowing.
By 1992, external debt for sub- Saharan Africa was over $200 billion
debilitating number that represents 109 percent of its GNP, an 80 percent
increase since 1980 The World Bank has concluded that "the bite that
debt-service payments take out of a country's capacity to import each year is
clearly unsustainable in an environment of low investment and stagnant GDP."
The world financial system is
a greater cause of hunger in
Africa
than is bad weather. Forced to produce foreign-exchange earning crops to pay off
un payable debts, African nations find themselves
importing more and more food. Food imports, currently estimated at 10 percent of
total imports, place considerable strain on
Africa's
balance of payments.
Markets allocate food
according to wealth, not nutritional need. The few large corporations that
control 85 to 90 percent of world grain shipments are concerned with profits not
hunger. It is a cruel irony that 37 percent of world grain consumed goes to feed
livestock, while widespread hunger affects millions of Africans. We also find an
increasing trend toward the substitution of grains in eastern and southern
Africa.
In
Sudan,
Tanzania
and
South Africa
the production of wheat and rice for wealthy and upper classes has increased
relative to the production of staple grains such as sorghum and millet, which
are the staples of the poor majority. A similar trend exists in
Kenya
and
Zimbabwe,
where there has been a significant increase in the acreage used to grow export
crops.
Policy makers claim that
economic progress will be achieved if markets are left alone. But the problem is
not market intervention per se, it is the way in which institutions and
governments intervene against the interests of the poor majority, in favor of
the rich and powerful. Markets can be tamed to serve the interests of the
majority, but only when governments and institutions are genuinely committed to
the poor.
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The
United States
has donated large amounts of emergency food to
Africa,
food that has undoubtedly saved thousands of lives. But while it is essential to
help people in need, we must remember that food aid, at best, only treats the
symptoms of hunger and poverty, not its causes.
As discussed in Food First
books "Aid as Obstacle" and "Betraying the National Interest," most food aid
from the
U.S.
government is not even intended for the hungry. It is purchased by foreign
governments using money loaned by the
United States.
Recipient governments then sell the food on the open market, which means the
poor do not benefit.
Food aid can undermine local
food production by flooding local markets and depressing food prices. Dumping
large quantities of low-priced grain or other commodities can make it impossible
for small farmers to compete in the marketplace. In
Burkina Faso,
heavily subsidized wheat from the EC is sold at about a third lower than the
cost of producing and marketing locally grown staples such as sorghum and
millet. In addition, pastoralists in the Sahel
region have seen their regional livestock trade fall by one-third due to the
recent dumping of cheap EC beef on the local market. Food aid can also create
dependence on foreign aid or be used by recipient governments to manipulate the
poor.
The concentration of
U.S.
aid on only a few countries shows that its objectives are strategic rather than
humanitarian. Of all the
U.S.
aid to
Africa,
60 percent goes to just one country:
Egypt.
Of
U.S.
aid to the 53 African countries other than
Egypt,
nearly one-half, (45 percent) goes to just six
countries (South
Africa,
Mozambique,
Ethiopia,
Senegal,
Liberia
and
Zambia).
These countries contain only 22 percent of
Africa's
population, and their governments historically did not follow policies favoring
the majority, though they did have naval bases, CIA listening posts, and other
strategic assets.
U.S.
foreign aid has occasionally been eliminated to punish governments that refused
to toe the
U.S.
line. Both
Zimbabwe
and
Mozambique,
for example, were cut off from
U.S.
food aid when their governments criticized U.S foreign policy. While punishing
governments that have demonstrated a commitment to helping the poor, Washington
has lavished aid on corrupt regimes such as those of Samuel Doe in Liberia,
Mobutu Sese Seko in
Zaire and Siad Barre in
Somalia. In exchange for naval and military bases at the strategic
Red Sea
port
of
Berbera,
the
U.S.
granted
Somalia
millions of dollars in economic and military aid, which in the early 1990s was
used by the Barre government to wage war on its own
people. This brutality by the U.S.-backed government ignited the civil war that
destroyed
Somalia
as a nation.
Nearly all
U.S.
foreign aid is directed to repressive elites who have enriched the few while
impoverishing the many. They use
U.S.
aid money to strengthen their hold on power. Given the undemocratic nature of
these regimes,
U.S.
aid is more likely to perpetuate hunger and poverty than eliminate it.
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