The African continent is currently facing the worst food crisis since 1945. According to the World Relief Organization millions could die in the upcoming months alone. The African food crisis dates back at least 25 years and stems from a multitude of reasons, which vary by country and region. In Kenya, a combination of consistent droughts and population growth have resulted in nearly four million Kenyans living without food security. In Somaliland yearly droughts have depleted livestock numbers, forcing families to flee their home. In the country of Burundi pests and plant diseases has drastically reduced food production. In Sudan violence within the Darfur region has displaced many families and farmers, disrupting their ability to produce food. And in South Sudan regional conflict has displaced millions of South Sudanese, making it almost impossible for everyone to receive access to basic necessities such as food and water. Whether it be environmental decline, under development, or external and internal conflict, the resulting food crisis has crippled the food economy of many African countries. The resulting effects: rampant starvation and malnutrition predominately in children and girls. Below are graphs form select African countries which illustrate the decline in food production over the years.
As a region, Africa accounts for around 20 percent of U.S. aid, with Egypt, Kenya, and South Sudan being the biggest beneficiaries. During a press conference in 2005 with Prime Minister Tony Blair, former President Bush stated, ‘Over the past four years, we have tripled out assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa.’ The administration at the time claimed $3.2 billion dollars was sent overseas to help with development and infrastructure. In actuality 68% of the aid provided by the United States went towards emergency food aid, rather than assistance for any type of sustainable development that Africa would need to achieve lasting poverty reduction. What does this mean? One could argue that only providing aid towards emergency food provision and not economic advancements to aid the country in developing has created a dependency on foreign aid to feed the continents growing population.
The Ethiopian emergency in 1984 was visualized and broadcasted all over the world. Harrowing pictures of starving children as young as newborns was displayed all over newspapers and commercials. However articles date the start of the African famine to the early 1960s. This is characterized by a steady decline in per capita food production aggravated by low world food prices. A simple statistic that illustrates the drastic stagnation in food production within Africa: In 1960 both sub-saharan Africa and India produced 50 million tons of food. Today India produces 150 million tons while Africa remains stagnant at a little less than 50 million tons of food production still. Another indication of the lack of increase in food production to meet the demands of a growing population: the average African farmer produces 600kg of cereal a year. In countries such as Canada and North America that number is about 80,000kg. Why is a country as rich in natural resources and fertile land as Africa continuously unable to meet food production demands? A report by the World Bank in 2012 reported that African farmers have the potential to grow enough food and produce a surplus of $20 billion dollars. If this is true what are the barriers that prevent such? Could it be a result of the droughts? The rapid population growth? The rampant internal and external violence that has displaced so many families?
In 1983 five Sahelian countries produced a record number of cotton though they had been hit by a drought. Though cotton export yields valuable foreign exchange, that same year the countries of Sahel had to import 1.77 million tons of cereals. Lloyd Timberlake, in his book Africa in Crisis wrote, “The fact that cotton can be grown but grain cannot has more to do with government and aid agency policies than with rainfall.” Droughts alone cannot cripple a countries ability to feed its masses. Traditional values and cultural beliefs in many African countries promote having as many children as possible. Not surprisingly Africa has the highest population growth rate in the world. Even so the African continent possesses the land necessary to produce enough crops to feed the growing population. India, which boasts an even larger population with only a fraction of the land, produces massive grain surpluses every year. China, with a population of 1.4 billion people also produces a food surplus. The combination of drought, conflict and economic crisis in many of these African countries has significantly impacted vulnerable households’ ability to cope. And with the majority of foreign aid received by these countries going towards emergency food aid, very little progress has been made towards addressing the economic instabilities that have prevented a continent as rich as Africa from being able to feed its people.
What does foreign aid mean to a country? What are the implications of receiving food aid and what does it mean for the country’s own farmers? Without a doubt emergency food aid benefits a country short term wise. During emergencies foreign food aid allows for the government to restore crop storages, implement new farming tactics and strategies while also maintaining the ability to feed its most vulnerable population. It also allows the government the resources to maintain good prices and give incentives to agricultural producers. However when year after year a country is dependent on foreign countries and their aid to feed its population what are the effects then on a country’s economy? What are the negative effect that a continuous need of foreign food aid can have on a country’s own ability to produce and meet the needs of its citizens?
The World Bank and the IMF have argued that the key action to stabilizing food production within struggling countries is to ‘get the price right’. Both organizations call for maximizing profit by setting a market price that takes into account the cost of production, yields maximum profit and is also relatively affordable to those in the region. I happen to disagree as farmers within developing countries only sell for profit their surplus. Whereas farmers in Europe and North America may respond to price signals, a good deal of African farmers produce food to feed their families.
The greatest factor which has aided in keeping Africa dependent on food imports while also reducing the incentive to increase domestic food production has been the very low prices of food in the international trade and the high domestic food prices. High domestic food prices do not offer any incentive for local farmers. By bringing in free imported this results in lower national food prices which forces local producers to try and compete with these prices. How can a small local farmer compete with a large influx of free grains and cereal? There is no longer any incentive for a small farmer to sell their surplus in the market place as they’d now have to reduce the cost of their crops to be able to compete. What further aggravates the dilemma are the rules and regulation that come with receiving foreign food aid. CARE, one of the world’s biggest charities, is walked away from a $45 million a year in federal funding in 2007. Why? The decision centered around on the practice of importing American farm products under the pretense of emergency food aid in African countries that in some cases compete with the crops of struggling local farmers. Under this system, the U.S. government buys goods from American agribusiness, ships them overseas on mostly American-flagged carriers and then donates the goods to the aid groups. The groups sell the products in poor countries for a very low price and use the money to fund their anti-poverty programs there. While this program helps those in immediate need, in the long term it causes many small local farmers to be unable to compete with the low prices of these foreign imported crops. It has resulted in predominately American grown products being sold in the local markets for much cheaper than the domestically grown crops. And for a struggling family, they will purchase the cheaper foreign grown food. Below is a graph comparing food production and import trends in Africa broadcasted over the next 18 years
This trend has created a negligence towards smaller farmers that dates back to colonial times. Smaller farmers have been pushed aside and neglected since periods of colonization. Dating back to colonial times, Africa’s more richer lands have 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. Their position has also been undermined by price-fixing. To appease 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.”
American law requires that aid groups establish and document that sales will not discourage production by local farmers. Many non-profit organizations hire consultants and market advisors to calculate how many tons of a product or resource they could safely sell within a country’s market with disrupting market prices or forcing local farmer to compete. However CARE states “The truth is that the subsidized importation from the U.S. reduces the growth in the local market.” Unless properly managed and controlled, constant food imports within a country, though addresses and helped ease food shortage emergencies, impedes a country’s own farmers ability to produce and profit from a surplus of their own crops.
There is also an issue of policy deficiencies in countries that are recipient of foreign food aid which must also be addressed. At times the underlying issue is not an overall lack of food, but an inability to get it to those most vulnerable. In many African countries, the inability of administration to efficiently allocate the food available in the best manner to avoid malnutrition has been the greatest setback in development. I wish to stress that the receiving of foreign food aid in itself is not detrimental to a country’s advancement and improvement. Food aid is most effective when coupled with improvements in overall policy and economic regulations. African countries such as Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe have developed with great speed flowing their independence as former colonial states. However the same cannot be said for many sub-Saharan governments which have been inefficient in regulating and distributing food supplies.
If African leaders agreed to dismantle trade barriers, an article by the World Bank states, African farmers could potentially grow enough food to feed the continent and avert future food crises if they removed cross-border restrictions on the food trade within the region. Currently domestic technical regulations permit countries to bar certain products from entering their markets if the products do not meed certain standards. These measures are aimed at protecting citizens from everyday food hazards however further agreements had to be instated to prevent countries form using these measures to simply block trade. The agreement states explicitly that the measures cannot be employed in “a manner which would constitute a disguised restriction on international trade.”.
Member of the Kenya Institute of Public Policy Research and Analysis Mr. Hezron Nyangito states, ‘while the agreement aims to safeguard the health of citizens, it also provides a loophole that allows countries to introduce measures that result in higher levels of protection than the international norm.’ Studies by the US Department of Agriculture and the OECD showed that questionable technical barriers were reported in 62 countries in 1996, leading to estimated trade losses of five billion dollars. The barriers certain countries implement are not for health concerns, but rather to keep products from farmers of other neighboring African countries from entering their market. The loss of revenue from not trading within the continent could have gone towards development and infrastructure. Removing questionable technical barriers would be the first step in fostering an independence from foreign food aid.
There is also the issue with structural adjustment programs, or SAPs, which a majority of African countries are forced to undertake under the guidance of the World Bank and IMF. These consists of loans provided by both organizations granted to countries experiencing economic crises. SAPs are supposed to allow the economies of the recipient country to become more market oriented, pushing governments to focus on trade and production as means to boost their economy. These loans are criticized for implementing generic free market policies and their lack of involvement from the borrowing country. The supply of additional food aid granted as part of of the SAPs can make it very difficult to increase food prices after the impending food crisis has been averted. With the influx of food received as part of the agreement, the cost decreases drastically in the marketplace. Often times when government of recipients countries attempt to increase said food prices as part of the program, riots occur and governments may be overthrown. For example in Zambia the government was forced to call off the agreement with the IMF and the World Bank.
In conclusion though a compound disasters such as natural disasters and displacement of citizens from their homes because of violence have contributed to the hunger famine in Africa, there are some very tangible steps which could be taken to address the underlying issues which have contributed to the yearly declines in food production per capita. There are food surpluses being produced by African countries that other African leaders need to utilize. Triangular trading refers to a multilateral system of trading where a country pays for its imports from one country using its exports to another. If the continent as a whole were to utilize this system, it could help address the food deficiencies that some countries face, while allowing for profit gain in those that produce a surplus. For example if this system was promoted, food aid received by countries could be used to purchase corn from Zimbabwe, which normally produces a surplus each year, and could then be transported to Zambia which has a food deficit. This would create an incentive for Zimbabwe farmers to increase food production while also providing aid in Zambia. As previously mentioned, though temporary foreign food aid can help divert an emergent food crisis it should not be used to provide continuous food support to a country. Africa has the means of labor and the land to produce enough food to support its growing population. There are just certain measures African governments must undertake to make this possible.