The Issue of Poor Aid and Assistance
In order to understand the bridge between African states and their relations with both local and international political actors, the nature of the issues that African states face remain paramount. Among a few of these problems are a constant struggle for better aid and assistance, dampening education, agriculture and commerce, as well as emerging forms of violence. In order to understand these contemporary issues surrounding African states and world politics, one must recognize the origin of such circumstances. Just like most problems that any country encounters, political issues do not merely arise out of one event. Political issues are complex and multifaceted, such that there were many contributing factors to its uprising. Moreover, this paper will discuss and examine how the aforementioned political problems of East African states truly began to develop and spread.
In the forefront of world politics, the everlasting fight for sufficient aid and assistance to third world countries remains prevalent. Specifically, East African states such as Somalia, Ethiopia, and Tanzania, just to name a few, are growing desperate for any true signs of government aid. For instance, in Somalia, controversy continues to grow over whether or not food aid will help benefit the African economy. Food advocates claim that there are five principal benefits to be reaped from advancement of food aid programs: (1) enlarge available resources (2) recover the nutrition and health of underprivileged groups (3) generate employment for lower class (4) provide emergency food aid (5) boost economic policy reforms (Farzin 1991: 261). Thus, the relevance of implementing strong and lasting community aid to East African states, like Somalia, could prove greatly beneficial and lucrative to the overall region; however; it is not enough to merely state the issue at hand. One must dive further into the root of the problem to truly comprehend the severity of the situation.
Drawing from the beginnings of colonial conquest, Africa found itself divided amongst the major European powers (e.g. Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, and Portugal) during the “Scramble for Africa” (Dunn 2018). This was a time of supremacy and control for Europe, as they strived to obtain an economic surplus from these newly divided territories. Europe’s yearning for monetary gain merely began the storm of troubles that Africa would face, as they began to exploit the native African people for their natural resources (e.g. crops and minerals) to improve their own level of trade and commerce. Moreover, the European governments allowed private corporations to colonize African land, while neglecting to invest in neither their roads nor their railways (Dunn 2018). In Uganda and Egypt, the British Cotton Growing Association funded 50,000 euros “to be expended in making experiments in cotton-growing in all parts of British Africa” (Walkden 1902: 104). Thus, cotton became greatly enlarged as a cash crop, forcing the actual food yield of Egyptian farmers to lessen, which caused a scarcity of food across the lands. Although the inattention of European powers to the food drought that was caused by increased cotton production seemed concentrated and insignificant, this was only the beginning of a longstanding neglect for the proper support and assistance these African territories would need to be nurtured and self-sufficient.
As time progressed, European powers continued to import “mass-produced European manufactured goods,” while simultaneously “undermining African industrial self-sufficiency” (Dunn 2018). Not only was the self-sufficiency of the African people undermined, but the additional import of cheap Asian rice weakened the local farmers’ business and forced them to rely on these imports for nutritional sustenance (Dunn 2018). Overall, the impact of colonialism on the lives of the East African people proved to be both challenging and debilitating. The haphazardly created borders of the new African states made it virtually impossible for the people to truly come together and flourish physically, emotionally, and economically as a society. Furthermore, these new borders created “internal rivalries of diverse ethnic groups and regions”, which “made it very difficult for the new states to build a strong national identity and implement coherent economic plans” (Dunn 2018). Thus, not only did these rivalries hinder the progress of East African society, but the Europeans had set them up to fail from the start. This is because the African economy was primarily built to thrive on Europe’s agricultural and elemental exports, not their own autonomy. These societies also heavily relied on other seemingly expensive imports from different countries in order to survive. Moreover, European powers neglected to push for economic independence in Africa, leading them away from even the most abstract understanding of self-sufficiency.
As African states transitioned out of post-colonialism and into a period of independence and liberation, the struggle for aid and assistance continued throughout the nineteen-hundreds. Somalia, for instance, found itself in a divided state, as clan-based militias split existing territories into clan-controlled territories that were ruled by warlords (Dunn 2018). The ‘War on Terror’ ensued, as Ethiopia invaded Somalia in a failed attempt to dampen Islamic extremism. Unfortunately, in the wake of this unrest, the African Union’s attempt at keeping the peace was unsuccessful, as drought and scarcity of food continued to burden the people. It was these same types of civil wars that also afflicted Somalia, prolonging the Southern Sudanese people’s liberation from Northern Sudanese. Moreover, the Northern Sudanese people brutally plagued the southerners by using their sources of water, fertile soil, and even oil (Dunn 2018). Sudan was greatly exploited for their resources, which left them without many of the proper tools to provide for their peoples and surrounding territories. Consequently, Sudan’s economy began a downward spiral and they became desperate for help to bring them out of poverty. Unfortunately, instead of Europe extending a lending hand to their former subsidiary, the ignorance continued, driving East Africa further into poverty and starvation.
As East Africa continually failed to get proper aid from both eternal organizations and their former European counterparts, the people attempted to reform their livelihood themselves. This attempt at reform resulted in the creation of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), originally sparked by the ousting of Meru farmers by white settlers in 1951 (Dunn 2018). Eventually, in 1954 , Julius Nyerere, the leader of TANU, began leading protests in rebellion against the white settlers who stole the natives’ fertile farmland. This political movement widened, as more farmers, such as the Kikuyu and Embu, found themselves disgruntled with the existing colonial agricultural policies (Dunn 2018). The people were so outraged with the government’s agricultural policies that labor strikes destroyed a lot of the farmers’ own barns, crops, and livestock (Dunn 2018).