WHY AFRICANS GO HUNGRY
Politics, economic and the environment all play a part in the complex web of forces that keep millions of Africans without food.
From the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 to the crisis in Somalia, dramatic television pictures of African famines have horrified millions of people around the world. The media's coverage of the tragedies has raised people's awareness of hunger in Africa and the human suffering it causes. But it has also contributed to overly simple notions of what causes hunger.
For instance, many people think there's not enough food in the world to feed everyone. Or that droughts and other natural disasters are the main problem.
In fact, most experts agree that the world produces more than enough food to feed everyone. Enough grain is produced every year to supply everyone on earth with what they need to eliminate hunger. The problem is that this food is not being distributed to the large number of malnourished people who need it most.
Similarly, drought is not the only reason for hunger. Africans have managed to cope for centuries with periods of drought and flood. But modem economic and political changes have made it increasingly difficult for Africa's poor to survive such natural disasters.
Hunger, experts stress, is largely a problem created by people. Its causes are
complex. Political decisions, economic policies, and environmental problems all contribute to it.
Solving the crisis will mean finding solutions to several problems at once. The following sections will help you understand the causes of hunger in Africa - and may give you some ideas of how it can be eliminated someday.
Poor Transportation and Technology
Even when there is enough food, many African nations cannot afford to transport it to needy areas. In rural areas roads are often in disrepair or nonexistent. Problems in food distribution can quickly turn a flood or a drought into a major catastrophe.
Africa also suffers from outmoded technology. In some areas, farmers use centuries old agricultural methods. Because of poor food storage techniques, an estimated
44 percent of all crops in Africa are ruined by rot and moisture or rodents and insects.
Environmental Problems
The most vital food-producing resource is fertile land, and Africa is losing it. Each year, a land area twice the size of New Jersey is turned into unproductive desert because of soil erosion. The erosion, known as "desertification" is caused by overgrazing livestock, destructive farming techniques, and the cutting down of age-old rain forests.
Many of Africa’s cash crops, such as cotton, damage the land and drain the soil of vital nutrients. In some regions, logging and ranching companies level forests and turn areas that could grow food into pasture for livestock. Much of the lumber and beef produced is not even used at home, but exported overseas. When the land has been used up, farmers move on to other areas, leaving behind desolate countryside.
Adding to the destruction are poor peasant farmers who have been driven off their lands. They tend to search out marginal, erosion-prone areas to farm. When a drought occurs, the soil dies and the farmers succumb to famine.
DEBT
Over the last 20 years, many poor African nations have borrowed billions of dollars to buy food and fund development projects. Now the are having trouble paying it back. Those difficulties compound the hunger problem in several ways.
Much of the lending is done by international agencies like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. At the lenders insistence, much of the money these countries make on exports must go toward paying off the continents $270 billion debt. That's money that doesn't go toward food production.
Faced with such massive repayments, African nations have been forced to tighten their belts. Many governments have imposed austerity programs that have cut back on worker's wages, agricultural development programs, social welfare, and raised the price of food and consumer goods. The effects are felt most keenly by the poor.
What makes the problem worse is that, at the lenders' urgings, many of Africa's loans went toward projects that encouraged export crops and industrialization, not domestic food production.
WAR
In much of Africa. violence and war are the
biggest obstacles to famine relief. Civil war in Somalia, Congo, and the Sudan hampers both production and distribution of food supplies. Both sides in these wars often use food as a weapon, denying aid and food to civilians as a form of punishment.
War also makes it difficult for relief agencies to insure that emergency supplies get to those who need it most. In Somalia, for example, the theft of food aid is widespread. The UN estimates that only half of the food aid shipped there has reached the hungry. The rest has been looted and sold for profit, or used to feed the gangs who stole it. Recently, the Red Cross hired freelance gunmen to guard its food shipments. but the gunmen themselves were accused of theft.
Many of Africa’s internal conflicts are a legacy of the continent's colonial past when European conquerors drew boundaries without regard to religious, ethnic, or linguistic groupings. To fight their wars, African nations have spent billions on weapons and armies-money that could be used to grow food or spur economic development.
POPULATION GROWTH
Africa has the highest birthrate in the world, increasing by three percent a year. According to projections by the United Nations, the continent's population, 481 million in 1981, topped 800 million in 2000. Africa’s governments worry that there is simply too little food for too many mouths.
"Sub -Saharan Africa is the only region in the developing world where food production is losing the race with population growth," a recent UN study said. If present population trends continue, Africa will have to increase its food production by 4 percent a year to escape hunger, according to estimates from the World Bank. At present, its rate of food production is declining. However, overpopulation is not - in any simple sense-the cause of hunger, experts say. Rather,
overpopulation is the result of hunger and poverty. When people are hungry and poor, they are physically weak, their productivity is low, and their life expectancy is short.
As a result, they need extra hands to help them work at home and in the fields. And that means having more children to provide those extra hands. Studies show that when people have enough to eat and are financially secure, they tend to have fewer children.
Only when the poor have food, shelter, health care, and enough money to support themselves in old age, experts believe, will parents choose to have fewer children.
DISTRIBUTION OF LAND
For generations, African peasants survived by farming their own small plots of land. They were called subsistence farmers, they grew what they needed to feed themselves. Any surplus food they sold to city dwellers.
But today, millions of these subsistence farmers are losing the land they need to raise food for themselves. Wealthy landowners and large international corporations have bought up millions of acres of farmland in order to grow crops like peanuts and cotton. These "cash crops" are not grown for local consumption, but are exported to wealthier regions like the United States and Europe.
Many of these subsistence farmers who lost the farms now work as low wage workers on the same land they used to farm for themselves. Others are totally displaced, with no work for them in rural areas. Many subsistence farmers must leave their homes to seek jobs in already overcrowded cities, which only adds to the problems of hunger and poverty in urban areas.
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
Government policies can help to alleviate hunger or to perpetuate it. Unfortunately, many African nations have been beset by corrupt leaders who have profited From outside aid and loans at the expense of their own people. Other countries have adopted economic policies that contribute to food shortages and worsen hunger.
Until recently, many African nations spent large amounts of money to build Western-style industries- often at the urgings of lenders from the West. For many nations, however, that effort led to debt, not economic growth. At the same time, they often neglected agriculture, and food production dropped.
In other countries, government policies have favored production of food for sale abroad (cash crops) over production of food for consumption at home. This often means that farm loans, seed, irrigation, and technical assistance and are given to commercial export farmers, but not to the poorest peasant farmers.
Finally, as the population of Africa’s cities has mushroomed, some governments have tried to keep food prices in the cities low. This policy is designed, political observers feel, to keep city people content and uninterested in rebellion.
But low food prices reduce farmers incentive to increase production. And reduced production can cause food shortages, forcing governments to import costly food from abroad.