Posted on 02/01/2006 11:05:03 AM PST by blam
Africa's hunger - a systemic crisis
By Martin Plaut
BBC Africa analyst
The number of Africans needing food aid has doubled in a decade
More than half of Africa is now in need of urgent food assistance.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is warning that 27 sub-Saharan countries now need help.
But what appear as isolated disasters brought about by drought or conflict in countries like Somalia, Malawi, Niger, Kenya and Zimbabwe are - in reality - systemic problems.
It is African agriculture itself that is in crisis, and according to the International Food Policy Research Institute, this has left 200 million people malnourished.
It is particularly striking that the FAO highlights political problems such as civil strife, refugee movements and returnees in 15 of the 27 countries it declares in need of urgent assistance. By comparison drought is only cited in 12 out of 27 countries.
The implication is clear - Africa's years of wars, coups and civil strife are responsible for more hunger than the natural problems that befall it.
Critical issues
In essence Africa's hunger is the product of a series of interrelated factors. Africa is a vast continent, and no one factor can be applied to any particular country. But four issues are critical:
Decades of underinvestment in rural areas, which have little political clout. Africa's elites respond to political pressure, which is mainly exercised in towns and cities. This is compounded by corruption and mismanagement - what donors call a lack of sound governance.
"Poor governance is a major issue in many African countries, and one that has serious repercussions for long-term food security," says a statement by the International Food Policy Research Institute.
"Problems such as corruption, collusion and nepotism can significantly inhibit the capacity of governments to promote development efforts."
Wars and political conflict, leading to refugees and instability.
In 2004 the chairman of the African Union Commission, Alpha Oumar Konare, reminded an AU summit that the continent had suffered from 186 coups and 26 major wars in the past 50 years. It is estimated that there are more than 16 million refugees and displaced persons in Africa. Farmers need stability and certainty before they can succeed in producing the food their families and societies need.
HIV/Aids depriving families of their most productive labour.
This is particularly a problem in southern Africa, where over 30% of sexually active adults are HIV positive. According to aid agency Oxfam, when a family member becomes infected, food production can fall by up to 60%, as women are not only expected to be carers, but also provide much of the agricultural labour.
Unchecked population growth
"Sub-Saharan Africa 's population has grown faster than any region over the past 30 years, despite the millions of deaths from the Aids pandemic," the UN Population Fund says.
A decline in soil quality makes land less productive
"Between 1975 and 2005, the population more than doubled, rising from 335 to 751 million, and is currently growing at a rate of 2.2% a year."
In some parts of Africa land is plentiful, and this is not a problem. But in others it has had severe consequences.
It has forced farming families to subdivide their land time and again, leading to tiny plots or families moving onto unsuitable, overworked land.
In the highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea some land is now so degraded that there is little prospect that it will ever produce a decent harvest.
This problem is compounded by the state of Africa's soils.
In sub-Saharan Africa soil quality is classified as degraded in about 72% of arable land and 31% of pasture land.
In addition to natural nutrient deficiencies in the soil, soil fertility is declining by the year through "nutrient mining", whereby nutrients are removed over the harvest period and lost through leaching, erosion or other means.
Nutrient levels have declined over the past 30 years, says the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Consequences
The result is that a continent that was more than self sufficient in food at independence 50 years ago, is now a massive food importer. The book The African Food Crisis says that in less than 40 years the sub-continent went from being a net exporter of basic food staples to relying on imports and food aid.
In 1966-1970, net exports averaged 1.3 million tons of food a year, it states.
"By the late 1970s Africa imported 4.4 million tonnes of staple foods a year, a figure that had risen to 10 million tonnes by the mid 1980s."
It said that since independence, agricultural output per capita remained stagnant, and in many places declined.
Some campaigners and academics argue that African farmers will only be able to properly feed their families and societies when Western goods stop flooding their markets.
Also, today's Black (Bantu) natives over ran South Africa around 3,000BC displacing the San Bushmen who are a completely different race.
mugabes always blight the crops.
They don't want facts to get in the way of a good sob story.
Recolonize Africa - give it to the Chinese. They're looking for elbow room and resources, and they're pretty good at feedin' themselves for communists.
"Some campaigners and academics argue that African farmers will only be able to properly feed their families and societies when Western goods stop flooding their markets."
Yeah, that will help their soil.
This is overall a very good article because it correctly places most of the blame on the African's themselves. Government corruption seemed to be the greatest factor of all in the hunger problem. Bet the South Africans wish the white farmers were back in business, life was much better for them then.
They refuse to stop having babies that they can't feed. Even when their children are literally starving to death, they go right ahead and have more. They obviously don't care, so why should I? Frankly, I'm more concerned about the fact that they're wiping out wildlife by overrunning and destroying every square inch of land they can get their hands on.
This is a perfect argument for Empire America. The US moves in, takes over these third-world misery factories. It installs an effective local government overseen by American supervisors. Through that government, food is distributed, agricultural practices are reformed, and infrastructure is improved to the point where starvation is no longer epidemic. If the locals object to the "colonization" of their precious dungheap, then they can have the starvation, the disease, and the pestilence back. If not, then maybe they can learn to be human and eventually take over for themselves.
The late Sam Kinison had the right solution to the problem.
When this is pointed out to many; however, the blame will fall squarely upon, 'centuries of colonialism,' which in all honesty represented the highest standards of living much of the continent has ever known.
marking
Can anyone point to black majority ruled countries that are not unmitigated disasters and dependant upon outside financial and technical support?
The new PC definition of "compassion": maximizing the number of humans who must die, as long as possible, and call it "compassion".
At the end of the day, when it is no longer possible, just say, "we mwnat well".
Yes, but their mistake was in leaving before their time. They succumbed to the pressures of "anti-colonialism" and left the rats to scurry around their own hole and make a mess of things. Certainly, they have that right. But if they do, and they CHOOSE to do so, then they have no high ground from which to demand that the rest of the world subsidize their barbarism.
In other words, we'll bail you out for humanitarian reasons. But be assured that our money DOES come with strings attached. And those strings are -- among other things -- that you can't randomly hack each other up into chum, that you can't steal the money to buy hookers and limos, that you can't even claim to be a legitimate government. You're only caretakers until we give you the green light.
For a perfect example of the decay of a de-colonized African country, look at the history of Congo/Zaire. And they were colonized by the FRENCH, for cripes' sake!
The first world sends tens of billions in direct aid and hundreds of billions in loans, on terms that rarely involve actual repayment in full with interest. They make this available to and through corrupt governments more interested in the French Riviera than in their own countryside. But access to this endless stream of free money depends on political power in Africa, and manipulation of PC world opinion. So the lesson to would be leaders is that production is utterly unnecessary, but political control is absolutely essential.
So when the farmers dislike how they are treated, who is supposed to listen? Their production in unnecessary for the local pols. Their repression is mandatory, to maintain access to the western money stream. When local conditions get so bad their produce is driven to scarcity and its value soars - natural law's way of ensuring their useful cooperative work is rewarded and maintained - the first world steps in again and floods the place with free food, driving what should be their most valuable commodities to zero.
Then first worlders pretend all of Africa's problems are domestic and they have nothing to do with it. Or worse, that they must give twice as much no-strings bakshish to the dictators, and twice as much free agricultural product to the people.
"Botswana has maintained one of the world's highest economic growth rates since independence in 1966. Through fiscal discipline and sound management, Botswana has transformed itself from one of the poorest countries in the world to a middle-income country with a per capita GDP of $10,100 in 2005. Two major investment services rank Botswana as the best credit risk in Africa."
They have diamonds, which helps. But they haven't made a hash of things, and in fact have used the wealth those brought in, quite wisely.
Zim went from a food exporter to importer solely due to Mugabe's brutal dictatorship. What Africa needs is an end to corrupt dictators and enforcement of property rights and contract rights. And a little less agricultural protectionism in the West would help.
Do you keep up with the 'Cathy Buckle' series of e-mails from Zimbabwe?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1562632/posts
Go have 'clive' put you on the ping list. It is good. It is a real heart breaker. Go check on her e-mails over the past few months.
http://www.africantears.netfirms.com/thisweek.shtml
Since getting independence and democratic self rule in 1965, Botswana has elected both sitting vice presidents they have had. They've had a grand total of 3 presidents in 41 years. Seems more like a stable oligarchy with the assistance of the diamond merchants than a thriving democracy... but at least they can feed themselves when they're not dying of preventable diseases.
4% is not high. North Korea spends 40%, that's high.
The question was has anyone managed to govern well since independence, and the answer is yes.
Also it is not the growth rate, it is the $10,000 per capital GDP that stands out from the rest of Africa. The next best is probably Cameroon, which has also enjoyed continued political stability. It has 10 times the people, and a per capital GDP of only about $2000, and a 5% growth rate. Still way better than most of the continent though.
As for "unemployment", it is a pretty meaningless stat in most of Africa, where employment in the western sense is almost unknown outside of the larger cities. Most people work for themselves or extended family units, and much of the economy isn't traded for money at any point from effort to consumption.
It's heartbreaking what is happening in much of Africa. It will take a lot more than Bono and feel-good European "debt forgiveness" to put it right.
"Botswana has one of the world's highest known rates of HIV/AIDS infection,"
Do you really not know what this refers to?
Now that the bottom has fallen out of the cobalt and copper markets, there is little chance that any of the IMF money will be repaid. Much of the mining machinery is broken down or just plain obsolete, and because of the nationalization of so many foreign investments, nobody will invest a dime there.
So refugees, corruption, and ignorant "self-determination" continue to suck the country dry, while its leaders beg money from anyone with a buck to spare.
It's a perfect example of a bed made for lying in. And you can't lay it at the doorstep of the colonizers. The Belgian Congo was stable for half a century while the Westerners ran things. Yes, it was a brutal, inhuman regime. But the rickety apparatus that replaced it is no better, and at least Leopold made the trains run on time. Under Mobutu, the trains didn't even run on tracks.
A more enlightened colonization could liberate the Congo. But world opinion would rather let them suffer and die under their own inadequacies than accept rule by their cultural superiors. Can Kabila turn it around? Don't be ridiculous. He's not even the man his father was, and HE wasn't much.
America just forgave a 40 BILLION DOLLAR debt to Africa, what more do they need from the 'first world', welfare checks and 4,000 tons of government cheese?
South Africa, under white 'apartied', was actually doing so well agriculturally that they were exporting food products. As soon as the white farmers were chased off the land by the 'friendly' new government they began starving to death. This, I believe, speaks very well for itself.
A nation with the total population of 1,640,115, which is the approximate population of Philadelphia.
A nation where the life expectancy at birth for the total population is 33.87 years.
A nation where the 2003 est. for adult prevalence rate for HIV/AIDS is 37.3%.
A nation where the major infectious diseases still include the food or waterborne diseases: bacterial diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever ---- in addition to the vector-borne disease: malaria (2004)
Unemployment officially is 23.8%, but unofficial estimates place it closer to 40%.
HIV/AIDS infection rates are the second highest in the world and threaten Botswana's impressive economic gains. An expected leveling off in diamond mining production overshadow long-term prospects.
All of the above is from the same source you quoted...
When all the facts are considered - the picture of Botswana is NOT nearly as bright as the GNP would indicate -- since the GNP is NOT equally distributed amongst the population...
Income from their ONLY significant industry - diamond mining - falls into very few pockets..
Now then -- back to my original question.
Can anyone point to a black majority ruled nation that is NOT an unmitigated disaster?
Semper Fi
That was NOT my question.....
My QUESTION was:
Can anyone point to black majority ruled countries that are not unmitigated disasters and dependent upon outside financial and technical support?
Semper Fi
And yes I can lay it at the doorstep of the colonizers, as well as crooks like Mobutu, and the present gang of Marxist thugs, all of them complete rogues from start to finish.
The modern form of extraction in most of Africa consists of attending development conferences and buttering up first world bankers, followed by a soft loan, followed by simple robbery, followed by default. Where that isn't in the working part of the cycle, any available asset or raw material is gathered by press gangs with guns at their heads for the sole benefit of the extractors.
Nobody even tries to build wealth from the people up. There is vastly more wealth outside to be had through scams, and nothing the people make can compete with western subsidized agriculture, or the allure of a soft loan.
If the west actually gave a damn about Africa is would first abolish its own farm subsidies, second grant unilateral free trade to everybody there willing to take it, third cut out all the free money and handouts to ruthless tyants, and four back any reformers it could find who aren't Marxist thugs or looters, and if they can't find any go kill said thugs and make their own reforms.
But they can't be bothered. So the worst human beings on earth prey there with impunity.
When you give billions to ruthless tyrants, it stabilizes ruthless tyranny.
It would also be nice if the US lifted the effectively world wide ban on DDT imposed by its green Nazis, and so eradicates malaria.
If would also be nice if the EU, instead of paying every French farmer thirty eight gazillion dollars to grow three beets and a potato, ended its agricultural subsidies and traded freely with primarily agricultural societies.
And no, giving away free rice to tyrants is not a substitute. Farmers in Africa have no status because their overlords do not need them. Guess why.
If someone told you that you could tell the black death was raging in Europe because the population just doubled, would you look twice?
I agree 100 percent. However, it is not Western interests doing the "extraction." It is the Africans themselves. Or at least an influential elite.
Nobody even tries to build wealth from the people up.
I'm not sure how that is done. It's a bootstrap process, since it requires a fairly robust economy to build capital, let alone to attract top-down investment. And there is no African country I can think of that boasts even a stable economy, let alone a robust one.
If the west actually gave a damn about Africa is would first abolish its own farm subsidies, second grant unilateral free trade to everybody there willing to take it, third cut out all the free money and handouts to ruthless tyants, and four back any reformers it could find who aren't Marxist thugs or looters, and if they can't find any go kill said thugs and make their own reforms.
I agree with the last two ideas, disagree with the first two. I don't have time to go into any detail, but I don't think export trade -- especially in agricultural commodities -- is the answer for most African nations. It's everything they can do to feed themselves, let alone have any kind of surplus for export.
But they can't be bothered. So the worst human beings on earth prey there with impunity.
I don't believe that the predators are Western. I think they are home grown.
Now the topic goes from starvation to 'status'? Africa is its own worst enemy. Nothing of what you claimed in your "blame the West" tirade rings true with me. It's just more of the tired old blame game and inability to take responsibility for themselves.
Every country has a government, and if you're going to try to help starving people it's those governments that must receive and distribute the aid to their people; there's no other viable way to do it. If Africans are so corrupt and unprincipled that they stand by and watch their own people die of starvation so they can feed their soldiers it is not up to the West to "fix" them. They need to "fix" themselves.
The last time the U.S. tried to help the African people they got ambushed by Somalian civilians, militia and guerillas loyal to their 'warlord'. Don't even get me started on that. The best foreign policy we can ever have with Africa is to pretend they don't exist until they can establish a government that will work with the rest of the world instead of against them.
As for how bottom up wealth is done, it is remarkably simple - you let the people work and keep the results of their efforts, and you don't give the tyrants any other way to get rich, than to have rich peasants. When the safety, wealth, and power of the governors depend entirely on the work, safety, and well-being of the people, the governors rapidly discover where their real interests lie. The few that don't, you or a smarter ambitious neighbor can go kill or remove.
Export trade is the route to prosperity for most of Africa. Coffee, cocoa, rubber, and other "cash crops" bringing in hard currency and delivering it not to the hands of corrupt banker's toadies in the cities, but people who actually work in the countryside, can and would develop the place. You can get a lot more rice with a ton of exported coffee than trying to grow it directly.
And first world ag subsidies dramatically harm the entire agricultural third world. They dramatically lower world wide prices for all agricultural products. They tell the rest of the world, "only urban production is of any profit or interest". And this is both nonsense, and a recipe for permanent hunger in the poorest nations, who produce the least. They are precisely the ones that should have the greatest portion of their output focused on agriculture. And instead, we keep most of world-wide ag output in the richest countries. Not because economics calls for it, but by deliberate government policy forcing it to be so.
The predators are equal opportunity scumbags and moral idiots, lots of them homegrown and some of them not. Including quite a few in the first world who pay no attention to the actual effects of their actions, and seem constitutionally incapable of making the simplest moral distinctions between African farmers who work for a living and African murderous goons who do not.
"The best thing we could do to help the poor in Africa and ourselves is to STOP giving them aid of any kind."
I agree. Unfortunately, the Republicrats are not onboard with this idea.
"They refuse to stop having babies that they can't feed. Even when their children are literally starving to death, they go right ahead and have more. They obviously don't care, so why should I?"
Agreed. If you can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em.
People without guns can't "fix themselves" the murderous scumbags with all the guns oppressing them. And no, it doesn't help to give giant Citibank lines of credit and endless boatloads of free food to the goons with the guns. It hurts.
Do you honestly think the typical African tyrant would last five years without hard currency imports for his cadres? If they oppressed their peasants and nobody bailed them out, they would starve to death in that time. The natural relationship between them is, thug with gun needs farmer to eat, ergo must treat the farmer decently. Take away the thug's need for the farmer, and the thug simply has all the cards and wins.
You can't run around giving free food to tyrannies and pretend it has no political effects. You make the tyrants independent of the productive class of their own society. That is a deeply political act with dramatic political consequences. Cause by misguided intervention interacting with home grown thuggery.
We pay the PA billions a year to murder Jews and wonder why there isn't peace. Stop paying for it and then see. We pay Africa tens of billions a year in aid and loans on a basis of "need", and then wonder why there is need in Africa. Stop paying for it and then see.
"This is a perfect argument for Empire America. The US moves in, takes over these third-world misery factories. It installs an effective local government overseen by American supervisors. Through that government, food is distributed, agricultural practices are reformed, and infrastructure is improved to the point where starvation is no longer epidemic. If the locals object to the "colonization" of their precious dungheap, then they can have the starvation, the disease, and the pestilence back. If not, then maybe they can learn to be human and eventually take over for themselves."
Of course, the western countries came in and did this very thing during the colonial period, the golden age of Africa. Now the infrastructure built by the west is decaying. A new round of colonialism will result in the same cycle: we spend untold billions, they will be ungrateful and ask us to leave, and the country will go back to the bush. I don't want $1 of my tax money going there. No more foreign welfare when we have staggering deficits.
Can anybody point to a black majority ruled American city which is not an unmitigated disaster?
If they try to forcibly seize the assets we've paid for, we exterminate them and replace them with someone more appreciative.
The Romans had it right.
I guess I can see how exporting cash crops would enrich the Congo, but in order to do that, you have to have an infrastructure -- to get the crops in the ground, to harvest them, to transport them to market, to store them, to load them ... And you have to have a stable government if you're going to promote market agriculture. Farming beyond the subsistence level requires a substantial investment in machinery and land, in many cases in irrigation as well. The capital for those investments has to come from private wealth, or from loans. And no one would secure a loan in a country as unstable as Congo.
First world ag subsidies keep first world farmers alive, and finance an industry that is unmatched anywhere else in the world. Granted, it makes it tough for other ag producers to compete, but it makes it easy for consumers to buy American farm commodities, and for nations in Africa to concentrate on crops that America can't produce cost-effectively.
I doubt that the predators in the First World are going to be overly concerned about the well-being of the Third World, if for no other reason than the appearance that the folks in the Third World don't seem to be particularly concerned about themselves.
"Recolonize Africa - give it to the Chinese. They're looking for elbow room and resources, and they're pretty good at feedin' themselves for communists."
I don't really think it's a good idea to encourage the Chinese to get any bigger than they are.
"They refuse to stop having babies that they can't feed. Even when their children are literally starving to death, they go right ahead and have more. They obviously don't care, so why should I?"
I'm 55 and I can't remember a time when Africa wasn't having some kind of crisis or other. We've been sending them aid forever and it doesn't seem to make any difference.
Yes export agriculture requires political stability. The places that have managed the latter have managed the former, to their considerable gain. But there won't be any political stability in Africa as long as the rest of the world pays no attention to the difference between a tyrant and a just worker and pretends the superficial similarity between them is more important than the moral difference.
When a country ruled by a tyrant faces famine, demand the government step down as a condition of sending food. If they don't, send lots of guns and advisors to teach how to use them, but not an ounce of food. And forbid all western loans or aid to tyrannical governments. And end nonsense like DDT bans, and farm subsidies. The tyrants won't last a generation. If instead the victims being slaughtered by them are blamed, subsidized food is dumped free while being handed out by the tyrants, the tyrants can borrow whatever they want and steal whatever they please and never pay any of it back, then Africa will remain a playground for demons in human form, and the victims thereof will be the innocent common people of Africa.
And the blood will be on our hands as well as those of said demons.
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