Are you looking for an inexpensive way to get publicity? Well, look no further: All you need to do is to make some noise about how the world is ignoring black Africa.
This is what pop singers Bono and Bob Geldof have been doing for years.
African famine became a globally fashionable subject in 1984. Remember those TV images of starving children and dying mothers? They made Ethiopia the most famous African country throughout the world. According to estimates by the Organization of African Unity, now renamed African Union, in the decade that followed, Ethiopia received something like $1.5 billion in foreign aid or the equivalent of a 10 percent annual growth rate.
And, yet, we are back where we were in 1984. But why?
Before we tackle that question let us straighten out a few points.
First, it is the height of arrogance to ask, “Have we done enough for Africa?” Such an approach puts the entire African continent in the position of a mere object of history. That kind of Africa is worse than a beggar because a classical beggar at least does some begging.
The question is not only insulting but also unfair. Most estimates show that each year twice as much money flows out of Africa, into Western banks and businesses, than the other way round. The truth is that many African political and business leaders are plundering their nations and putting the proceeds into the safe havens of the West.
The second issue that needs to be sorted out is what we mean by “Africa”.
During the past three decades 18 of the 53 African nations have experienced what the World Food Program describes as an “emergency”.
Of these, eight suffered famine because of civil war or other forms of armed conflict. Three others were stricken by famine at the end of long wars that destroyed part of their agriculture. A further five were pushed into food “emergency” because of the arrival of large numbers of refugees from neighboring countries. (Africa, with just 15 percent of the world’s population, produces some 60 percent of all refugees.)
The remaining two famine-stricken nations were victims of poor decision-making by their respective governments.
Now let us return to the crucial question of why a nation suffers famine. The Nobel prize-winning economist Amaryta Sen insists that there is famine because people are too poor to buy food.
So what should one do?
If one provides cash to buy food with, the affected Africans will simply turn to Western producers who are capable of offering the type of food needed at the time desired. This would leave no opportunity for African agriculture to raise its head, even in the best years. If, on the other hand, one provides free imported food, again there will be no incentive for local producers.
Over the past two decades the 18 countries concerned have received something like $12 billion of aid in various forms.
It is quite possible that the aid in question has been, at least in part, responsible for the persistence of famine in most of those countries. Such a claim might sound outlandish but let us examine it further.
The aid in question has enabled the governments concerned to divert their resources from providing food for their citizens either to war or to corruption. The completely senseless war that Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a couple of years ago cost them a staggering $4 billion. Before that Ethiopia had been involved in wars in Ogaden and Tigre, not to mention the Eritrean war of liberation that lasted 20 years.
The case of Angola, No. 4 on the African list of famine-stricken nations, is equally instructive. During the past three decades Angola has earned almost $80 billion from oil and diamond exports, enough to make it one of the continent’s richest nations. And yet half of is population is now on the edge of famine. The reason? A long civil war that ended only a year ago, and a government that is universally regarded as a kleptocracy.
War and corruption are also at the root of starvation and famine in other concerned countries, from Mauritania to the Sudan and passing by Liberia and Zimbabwe.
According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Africa is now more prone to famine than it was a generation ago when it was still largely under colonial rule. Since the 1960s Asia has cut the famine probability rate from 43 percent to less than 13 percent. In the African countries concerned, however, that rate has risen from 18 percent to 38 percent.
Famine is not a natural phenomenon; it is the inevitable result of the policies of despotic regimes that cannot survive without war and internal repression. More than food, Africa needs freedom. For where there is freedom there is no famine.
