Africa Face
Chronic Food Shortages
By Barry Mason
20 August 2005
World
Socialist Web
As
the news of starving people in Niger drops from the headlines, warnings
of food shortages in many parts of Africa have been issued by the US
Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS), the United Nations World
Food Programme (WFP) and a number of aid agencies.
In Niger itself
the eventual response of Western governments to the shocking media coverage
has seen airlifts of emergency food aid and free distribution of food.
But the same powers are ignoring warnings that many other countries,
and Niger itself in the longer term, are facing a food crisis.
In Niger the WFP
say that all the 2.65 million people affected will begin to receive
food from its organisation, the Niger government and NGOs over the next
few weeks. But the WFP is concerned that far more financial support
will be needed next month to get through to the harvest in October.
Its appeal for $US57.6 million has a current shortfall of $US32.8 million.
Oxfam reported that
nomads in Niger such as the Tuareg and Fulani, who make up about 20
percent of Nigers 12.9 million population, are facing particular
difficulties. Up to 70 percent of their livestock has died as the result
of the early end of last years rainy season, a plague of locusts,
and above all extreme poverty. Oxfams regional director explained,
To these people, losing your animals is like losing your life
savings. Without their animals they have no means of survival.
Dr Milton Tectonidis
of the medical relief charity, Médecins Sans Frontières
(MSF), has just returned from Niger and was interviewed on the MSF website.
When asked about his mission to Niger, he said, Those who say
that this is just a situation like past years are just wrong. There
is a real food shortage in many households and a lot of catastrophic
cases arriving at our centres.
While Niger is the
worst affected country in the Sahel region, other countries continue
to face a crisis. In neighbouring Mali, WFP representatives are warning
of the danger of famine by the end of the month. A WFP food appeal so
far has a 63 percent shortfall. The nomads who live in the north of
the country are most affected. According to the BBC, warehouses in Timbuktu
have only 447 tonnes of millet but need 1,000 tonnes to meet current
needs.
If the rains fail
and the aid is not forthcoming then famine is a real possibility. Yusuf
Gitay, a retired school teacher, who lived through the famine in 1973
in which thousands died, told the BBC that this year could be the worst
since then. The government says that over a million people face food
shortagesaround eight percent of the population.
In Mauritania the
WFP states that up to 600,000 people were affected by locust infestations
and drought, and there is currently a 58 percent shortfall in donations.
Although not as seriously affected as Niger, Mali and Mauritania, about
500,000 people in Burkina Faso were affected by crop losses in 2004
and the WFP has been stepping up assistance to vulnerable groups.
Commenting on the
situation in West Africa, Oxfams Regional Director said, Niger,
Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso have been forgotten by the rest of
the world and this neglect has led directly to the current crisis. It
is appalling that many rich governments only remember these countries
when they see children there dying of hunger on their TV screens.
In its latest report,
FEWS cited 12 African countries with more than 20 million people receiving
food aid. Six of these are listed as urgent action requiredChad,
Sudan, Ethiopia, Niger, Somalia and Zimbabwe.
Southern Africa
also faces a particularly serious food crisis in a few months time.
The WFP estimates that as many as 10.7 million people in Lesotho, Malawi,
Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe will need assistance by the
2006 lean season. Together with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation
(FAO), it conducted a survey of food and crops in Southern Africa and
concluded that not enough food was being grown for domestic consumption.
Even with large imports of commercial supplies, food shortages would
persist until the harvest in May 2006.
An updated FAO report
on Malawi in August showed over four million people, a third of the
population, as not having sufficient food. This years maize harvest,
the staple crop, of 1.3 million tonnes was down 26 percent on last years.
FAO emergency coordinator
in Malawi, Tesfai Ghermazien, explained: The rains failed during
the critical period from late January to end of February when the maize
crop was pollinating and forming cobs. The dry spell also coincided
with cassava and sweet potato planting in some areas... The impacts
of the failed harvest wont be felt fully until the lean season
sets in between October and April. We need urgent assistance from the
donor community to prevent a further escalation of the crisis and to
avert widespread hunger and malnutrition, especially among children
under the age of five.
In Zimbabwe, according
to the WFP, one million are currently in desperate need of food aid,
but this figure is likely to increase to 4.3 million in the next few
months. The crisis is compounded by the actions of the Mugabe regime
which has made up to 700,000 people homeless and without food in a slum
clearance programme.
In a report published
this month, the Washington-based International Food Policy Research
Institute attempted to forecast the long-term food security status for
Africa, up to the year 2025. It pointed out that the number of malnourished
people on the continent has more than doubled since 1970. In relation
to food security, it commented, the situation in Africa is stagnant
or worsening. More than 200 million Africans now suffer from malnutrition.
The report outlined
the factors leading to food insecurity, one of which is the HIV/AIDS
epidemic. The FAO estimated that by 2020 the epidemic will have killed
20 percent of those working in agriculture in Southern Africa.
The document also
explained that the soil in Africa is losing fertility, with 72 percent
of arable land and 31 percent of pastureland being classified as degraded.
Nutrient levels have declined over the past 30 years, resulting
in low levels of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, it stated.
Poverty is a major
factor, with nearly 47 percent of the continents population being
classed as poor in 2001, or living on less than a $US1 a day.
Another significant
factor is the state of the infrastructureroads, power and communications.
Sub-Saharan Africa inherited a highly dispersed and unevenly distributed
infrastructure from its colonial past, the report stated.
Other factors affecting
food insecurity include the decline in agricultural research on the
continent and lack of irrigation. Agriculture in Africa is rain-fed,
and when those rains fail so do the crops, exacerbating food insecurity.
Climate change would appear to be making the probability of poor rains
more likely in the future.
The report presented
three possible scenarios for the future: business as usual,
pessimistic and vision. It admitted that the
pessimistic scenario, which would result in more than 60
million malnourished children by the year 2025, is the more plausible
one.
The vision
scenario is based on the interventions necessary to reach the UN Millennium
Development Goal target of cutting the proportion of people suffering
from hunger in half by 2015. According to the report, it would require
a $95.4 billion investment in roads, $82.3 billion in education, $49.1
billion in clean water, $48.7 billion in irrigation and $27.8 billion
in agricultural research.
Such an investment
is easily within the capabilities of Western governments. But the criminally
slow reaction to the Niger crisis, and the continuing refusal to heed
the warnings from the aid agencies of a potentially much wider disaster,
highlight the brutal reality that under capitalism no such response
will be forthcoming.