WHY CAN'T AFRICA FEED ITSELF?

[MORPH]

Why Can't Africa Feed Itself?


  "I PLANTED . . . but there was no rain," explained Idris, an Ethiopian farmer. All his seeds rotted in the ground, forcing him to leave his farm for a new life in a relief camp. "Once," he added, "I had four oxen for ploughing and of these, when there was no food left to eat, I sold two and slaughtered two for meat. . . . I have eaten my future."?From the book
Ethiopia: The Challenge of Hunger.

  Like Idris, many African farmers find it difficult to produce enough food. Once self-sufficient, the continent now depends on large food imports. Why is this? Why do so many Africans go to bed hungry?

                                 Drought

  Africa is notorious for treacherous droughts. Particularly vulnerable are countries on the southern border of the Sahara Desert. Since 1960 rainfall in this region has steadily declined in what the magazine Ceres calls a "prolonged Sahelian drought." Yet, many farmers manage to survive.

  In the 1983-84 season, though hit by drought five Sahelian countries produced record crops of cotton. The clothes you now wear may be made from this cotton. While cotton earns valuable foreign exchange from exports, there is a price to pay. In 1984 the countries of the Sahel had to import a record 1.77 million tons of cereals. "The fact that cotton can be grown but grain cannot has more to do with government and aid agency policies than with rainfall," states Lloyd Timberlake in his book Africa in Crisis.

  Besides cotton, Africa exports tea, coffee, sugar, cocoa, groundnuts, fresh flowers, meat, palm oil, wood, and many other agricultural products. "Africa," states the U.S. magazine The Nation, "is a rich and steady source of crops consumed daily in the advanced nations." During the recent famine, British citizens were shocked to learn that they were eating Ethiopian fruits and vegetables. Apparently, then, drought alone is not the reason Africa cannot feed itself.

                            Population Growth

  Some Africans refuse to limit the size of their families. To them, having many children is viewed as a sign of prestige. Not surprisingly, Africa has the highest population growth rate in the world. Undeniably, this aggravates the problem of hunger. Some estimate the present population to be 553 million. By the year 2000, according to current trends, there could be an additional 324 million mouths to feed!

  Does this mean that Africa is too small to grow enough food? No. Much suitable land is not being cultivated. India, with an even larger population and a fraction of the land, produces huge grain surpluses. "China," adds The Star, a newspaper of South Africa, "has 1000 million people and yet, year after year, it produces a food surplus. . . . We suggest that Africa is starving because of misguided advice."

                              Wrong Advice?

  Advice is one thing Africa is not short of. "If the hungry could eat words," said a BBC television commentary, "Africa would recover." Some 80,000 foreigners provide this service. "Advising Africa," states Timberlake, "has become a major industry, with European and North American consulting firms charging as much as $180,000 for a year of an expert's time."

  These experts promote expensive farming methods that require high-yield seeds, chemicals, and heavy machinery. This has meant good business for overseas suppliers but has brought little benefit to Africa's rural poor. Attention is given first to farms that produce cash crops for export and then to farms that produce food that is sold in Africa's more affluent cities. Many of these projects have proved inefficient, and some have failed. Africa's climate, explains Newsweek magazine, "is often far too harsh for the high-yield seeds put to such good use in Asia." Also, Africa's soil is fragile, and crops are sometimes damaged by new farming methods.

                            Development Aid?

  Overseas governments and aid agencies promote other expensive schemes. These likewise bring "benefits to their own companies and consultants and economies," states the development journal People. The schemes are attractive because they make African countries look modern, and they are backed by large loans of money. This helps some African governments to satisfy rich city dwellers whose support they need to stay in power. Thus, impressive hotels, universities, airports, highways, cars, and luxuries are seen in African cities while the countryside is neglected. Africa's rural peasants have a name for their rich city neighbors. In Swahili they call them the Wabenzi, meaning "the Mercedes-Benz tribe."

  The humanitarian motive behind development aid is questioned by many. "Far from aid being charity," state the authors of the book Famine: A Man-Made Disaster?, "donor countries are getting a bargain. . . . The influence and economic opportunities that both West and East get from aid is cheap at the price." Development aid has contributed to Africa's staggering $175,000,000,000 debt.

  "Two decades of 'development' brought Africa to the precipice in 1984," states Peter Gill in his book A Year in the Death of Africa. Development aid, according to Gill, has been "a sham." The ones who really need it, Africa's peasant farmers, have had little share. "Yet," explains the journal The Ecologist, "peasant farmers make up 75-80 per cent of the population of most African countries," being "the backbone of Africa's food production."

                                Food Aid?

  Food surpluses have become a heavy burden to rich nations. Storage costs are high. In the article "A World Awash in Grain," the U.S. magazine Foreign Affairs lamented: "This is a strange and painful year to talk about grain. Our televisions bring us pictures of starving African children, but world grain stocks exceed 190 million tons?a record surplus."

  Cheap surplus grain does not always benefit hungry Africans. Sometimes it ends up in the hands of greedy merchants, or recipient governments sell it at a profit to help balance their budgets. Dumping surplus grain in Africa has also weakened the position of rural farmers. "How can a local producer compete against free foreign food?" ask the authors of the book
Famine: A Man-Made Disaster?

  Traditional African-grown foods, such as millet and sorghum, are fast losing their popularity. Yet these withstand drought much better than other types of grain. City dwellers have developed a taste for wheat and rice?grains that are hard to grow in much of Africa's harsh climate. Some advisers promote a liking for overseas foods and thereby increase Africa's dependence on food imports.

                       Neglecting Peasant Farmers

  Farmers like Idris, the Ethiopian quoted earlier, need seeds and simple farming equipment. Food aid alone is of limited value. As the Chinese proverb says: "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." Generally, African peasants are not helped to succeed as farmers, though there are exceptions in some African countries.

  Since colonial times, Africa's best land has been devoted to the production of cash crops for export. In addition, large farming projects have been developed to provide food for the more affluent cities. Thus peasant farmers have often been pushed off good land and forced to subsist on land that is less productive. Left to fend for themselves, Africa's peasants have degraded fragile land by overcultivation and overgrazing, and by cutting down too many trees. Large portions of Africa are turning into desert.

  Their position has also been undermined by price-fixing. To please city dwellers, many African governments keep the price of farm produce very low. This policy, according to the scientific journal Nature, has "contributed powerfully to the decline of agriculture, the hunger of the same urban populations and the dependence of potentially fertile Africa on food imports."

                                   War

  "Half a million Angolans have fled from their farms, driven off by the civil war," an African newspaper stated recently. Angola, unlike some other parts of Africa, enjoys good rainfall. Yet, in the fertile highlands tens of thousands depend on having a regular supply of emergency food flown to them.

  It is no coincidence that African countries that suffer the most from famine are also involved in civil war. Though rains brought some relief to Ethiopia, Sudan, and Mozambique, civil war in those countries continues to disrupt food production, and millions are starving.

  Recently, the Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues, whose 25 members include representatives of five African countries, made this strong statement: "Armed conflicts and violence, in certain parts of Africa, add unnecessary bloodshed and turmoil to a tragic situation. . . . Priority is given to weapons of destruction, when people need hoes and seeds to grow food, clean water to drink and simple, low-cost preventive health programmes."

  Africa is not solely to blame for this. In his book A Year in the Death of Africa, Peter Gill refers to the part outside governments play in "the militarization of Africa" and asks: "Whose arms manufacturers benefit from African arms races?" Nations of the East and the West promote African wars and benefit financially from them.

                     Needed?A Superhuman Aid Program

  The question "Why can't Africa feed itself?" is controversial, and the answer is complex. Drought, the population explosion, aid policies, greed, the neglect of rural farmers, the degradation of land, and war are all among the causes, as cited by authorities. Of these, only drought can be called natural; the rest are man-made.

[Ayinde]

Of course Africa can feed its population, but not if the majority of its raw materials and the little they produce are for servicing Western countries. The latest report said that only about 10% of what comes from Africa is traded within Africa. That means the economies are still tied to the colonial system. It means Africa is still a resource base for Western consumption.

There are many reasons for this, like the deals many Africans countries were forced to make in order to gain independence, and the fact that they tie their currencies to Western money. But the main problem is the colonial mindset that is driving trade, and how their countries are governed.