Africa Can Feed Itself in a Generation, Experts Say

Science Daily ^ | December 3,2010 | Calestous Juma,

[jmcenanly]

— Africa can feed itself. And it can make the transition from hungry importer to self-sufficiency in a single generation.
The startling assertions, in stark contrast with entrenched, gloomy perceptions of the continent, highlight a collection of studies published December 2 that present a clear prescription for transforming Sub-Saharan Africa's agriculture and, by doing so, its economy.

The strategy calls on governments to make African agricultural expansion central to decision making about everything from transportation and communication infrastructure to post-secondary education and innovation investment.

[Mase]

If this should ever come to fruition (and that is a really big "if") then Africa has an American scientist named Norman Borlaug to thank. Most of the world is able to feed itself today thanks to Borlaug's efforts. Borlaug is probably the most important scientist this country has ever produced yet few know of his accomplishments. Borlaug was frustrated by Africa because governments were preventing the continent from taking advantage of its vast natural resources to move from perennial basket case to self-sufficiency.

The technology is there, government is not.

[Spok]

Post-colonial Africa has been an unqualified failure politically and economically, and has been propelled into bloodshed and starvation by the meddling of arrogant westerners, mostly through the UN.

[Jakarta ex-pat]

Do they know it’s Christmas?

[blackdog]

The entire story is summed up with only one word, investment.

IOW, send money to feel better. Hardly a new twist on time proven methods of raising revenue for the dictators in power. They used to be able to sit the fence of the cold war to raise cash. Not so much anymore.

[QBFimi]

>> [I] read an article about how China is colonizing Africa...

Yeah, and they ain’t taking any $hit from tin-horn kleptocrats, either. Good for them. Stupid for us.

[ßuddaßudd]

I seriesly doubt that.

[mmercier]

Africa is a fine, sustainable continent.

The only thing wrong with this premise is the reality of the people that control said continent.

Africa is and always has been a place of mass life and mass death. The people there have adapted to this reality over milena. This fact escapes those who have spent their lives trying to understand causation and reality.

No Harvard nerds brilliance, or a Bill Gates trillion dollar investment will change a thing that is, to a thing that could be.

If such were possible that $hithole of cyclical mayhem and discourd would already be a paradise on this Earth.

They haven't even removed and sold all the scrap iron that remains of the tractors the UN has been giving them for generations. Instead, they persecute what remains of the white farmers who actually knew how to use them for something other than cover in a gunfight.

Intellectuals make me sick.

Drop their ass into Nigeria and let them talk out their nonsense with the people on the ground who make the real decisions.

[ryan71]

No they won't. No amount of money or technical assistance will help them feed themselves. The dictators won't allow it.

[jiggyboy]

Still doesn’t sound like they are taking Sam Kinison’s sound but profane advice from over a decade ago.

http://comedy-quotes.com/sam-kinison/world_hunger.html

[himno hero]

...so rich a continent, such a backwards people

For those who feel bad, please send contributions to drop box in my favor, free republic.com

Thank you

[dfwgator]

And monkeys CAN fly out of my butt.

[SparkyBass]

Now why would they do that when the world keeps sending them food?

[SharpRightTurn]

“Africa can feed itself.”

Then let them.

Stop the foreign welfare.

[himno hero]

also need land reform
Its difficult to find tracts large enough to run equipment on
and then if you do you suffer raiders on the equipment or the crops/ livestock

[Red_Devil 232]

In Mexico, where he developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties. Borlaug led the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. Between 1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations. Yep! The technology is there, government is not.

And once the government is there Monsanto will be close behind.

[BwanaNdege]

"If it wasn’t for power hungry thieving socialist dictators - Africa would have been feeding itself for decades."

DING, DING, DING!

We have a winner!

Mugabe

Mobutu

Amin

Bokassa

And the list goes on...

PS The big names have plenty of corrupt underlings that need to go, also!

[YankeeinOkieville]

Africa Can Feed Itself in a Generation, Experts Say

Whereas America is feeding off the next generation.

[Mr. K]

How do you fix a hell hole like this?

I often try to imagine Bill Gates or someone with $1billion just starting in one carner and expanding outward- you hire locals to build roads and houses, then they get to buy them and live in them while they work building more houses, and water treatment plants and etc etc

Start businesses... all the while expanding the territory outward with a HUGE security force on the perimeter with orders to shoot to kill anything that crosses without permission

I dont know...

[mmercier]

It would be interesting to compare the mass human slaughters on the continent in relation to the cyclical mass animal population/migration/decimation's. We can now do this easily, not that any genius would care to.

I shall now cease thinking back to myself.

[Cheetahcat]

They can feed themselves? Never ,look at what they have done here!