Famine in Africa

Unfortunately not my best piece of work. A night-before job, however it's here because it is a topic I have great interest and concern for.


Every 3.6 seconds someone in the world dies of hunger .This number is greatly increased in a given region during what is deemed to be a famine. Famine may be viewed as "the regional failure of food production or distribution systems, leading to sharply increased mortality due to starvation and associated disease" . Famine is often intricately linked with drought and other difficult weather conditions; however, “it is never fair just to blame the weather.” In Africa, famine occurs pre-dominantly as a result of a combination of political, economic, and biological factors. The most serious examples of famine have been derived from a combination of difficult weather conditions such as drought, misguided or inefficient economic policies, and armed conflict. These factors are interrelated and supported by other problems such as overpopulation, soil infertility, land degradation and erosion, livestock diseases, crop failure, pestilence and political dissension. In more present times the debilitating effect of HIV/AIDS has created a new ‘breed’ of famine in Africa, worsening the already dire situation that exists within the continent.

Historically, one of the causes of severe famine was colonial "pacification" efforts. In areas such as northern Nigeria, the introduction of cash crops, such as cotton, and the measures in which the colonialists forced farmers to grow these crops, impoverished the peasantry. This contributed to greater susceptibility to famine when severe drought struck, such as was the case in Nigeria in 1913. In such situations, colonialism actually “actively prevented people” from feeding themselves.

The declaration of the independence of African nations throughout the twentieth century did not reduce famine. African famines have in fact increased in frequency, severity and spread. Colonisation and its effects still constitute a profound reason for famine across the globe in present times. This may be attributed to the fact that while colonisation itself has ended, “the effects of colonialism could not be wiped clean simply by a proclamation of independence.” Many African countries are not self-sufficient in food production, and thus are still reliant on income from cash crops in order to import food. The famine in Ethiopia between 1983 and 1985 is an outcome of such a situation.

Throughout history, famines have also typically occurred because of overpopulation. Overpopulation may be defined as ‘the exceeding of carrying capacity for the human population in a given region’. Though food production has failed to increase discernibly over time, the population has grown at significant rates. In sixty four of one hundred and five developing nations studied between 1985 and 1995 by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, population growth exceeded food production. This results in too many people competing for too few resources resulting in wide-spread poverty and severe famine.

Akin to overpopulation in fuelling famine are the effects of drought and other difficult weather conditions in Africa. Agriculture in Africa is highly vulnerable to climatic fluctuations, in particular droughts, which typically reduces the amount of food produced locally. Such a change in weather conditions can create a situation “whereby large numbers of people live where the carrying capacity of the land has dropped radically” . These acts of nature not only bring low harvest but also drive up the price of food in an effort to compensate for shortfalls in food production. The resulting effect is widespread hunger and a dramatic increase in the mortality rate of such high proportions to constitute famine. Furthermore, climate change poses an unprecedented threat to food security in the future as droughts potential worsen.

Drought, conflict, and famine are intertwined; each acts as a catalyst to the others. In zones of armed conflict, the destruction of civilian food supplies, or of resources to produce foods, has formed a key obstacle in eliminating famine. Numerous African states, including Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Angola, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, have suffered devastating consequences as a result of armed conflict or political turmoil. One of these consequences is famine, which arises as a result of increased military engagement. In a situation wherein a state is involved in armed conflict, already scarce resources are shifted to the military budget. This inevitably weakens the vital development needs of the state by reducing their funding and ability to pursue drought-relief measures, social progress, or development programs. The government typically pumps all the available resources into funding the conflict, which averts it from tackling the economic needs of its people, adding further fuel to the exacerbation of famine. Furthermore, a government that engages in armed conflict has not only a high military expenditure, but a need for high numbers of soldiers. When either the government or rebel forces recruit soldiers, they are doing so from the individual households , dramatically decreasing the available industrious workforce and thus limiting production, again worsening wide-spread poverty which leads to famine.

Numerous political factors contribute to the fragile food security situation in Africa. Notable political causes of famine are linked to the government, including political instability and corruption. The 1998 Sudan famine exemplifies a famine caused, in the context of conflict, by the government via an abuse of human rights. Non-Government Organisations, such as Human Rights Watch, blamed the Sudanese government for their role in destroying local agriculture and thus contributing to the severe famine in which a reported 70 000 people died. The government of that time, under President Gaafar Nimeiry, denied any food shortages, adding to the already volatile situation created by drought and economic crisis, Similarly, the Ethiopian famines of 1973 and the mid-1980s, was exacerbated by the government's censorship of the emerging crisis, making it near impossible and futile for international aid to be offered or received.

Analogous to famine caused by ineffective political regimes and governments is famine generated by inadequate economic policies. Especially in agriculture, many countries affected by poverty have brought too little investment in farming inputs, necessary rural infrastructure or essential social services. Furthermore, African farm exports fetch exceptionally poor prices on the world market compared to those of developed nations. Mismanagement in handling food supplies and trade policies also harms African agriculture and consequently limits the daily food intake able to be received by the people.

A major cause of low per capita food production in Africa, which has remained stagnant for fourty years, is the failure of crops due to a number of factors such as the depletion of soil fertility, pestilence, land degradation and erosion. With farmers not having sufficient funds and resources to take preventative measures against them, swarms of desert locusts can destroy whole crops. Governments do not provide farmers with aid, viewing rural sectors as a low priority. Over time, farmers have removed significant quantities of nutrients from their soils without having sufficient resources, such as fertiliser, to replenish what has been sapped. The result is an increased rate of crop failure and consistently poor harvests. In Africa, if current trends soil degradation continues along with population growth, the continent might be able to feed merely 25% of its population by 2025. In addition, diseases can run rampant amongst livestock eliminating huge herds of cattle due to the inability of farmers to fund effective immunisations. The disastrous pairing of crop failure and cattle elimination typically plunges an agriculturally-dependant society into severe food-production shortcomings and consequently causing famine.

Unfortunately, in addition to all the existing factors in the politics of hunger, there now exists a ‘new variant of famine’ in Africa. Constituting over 80% of the total fatalities worldwide, “Africa is the epicentre of the global AIDS pandemic” The HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa is changing the nature of famine in the region, having long-term economic effects on agriculture. Famine is fuelled and aggravated by HIV/AIDS in several ways. Firstly, HIV/AIDS abates the ability of those infected to work. Through death and sickness related to HIV/AIDS, the number of primary producers decreases exponentially. Thus, local farming systems are drastically weakened as millions of Africa's most productive farmers die as a result of contracting HIV/AIDS. Additionally, the workforce is further reduced as men and women cease work in order to care for sick partners, siblings, parents and children affected or orphaned as a result of HIV/AIDS. Secondly, by reducing the available workforce it creates new vulnerabilities to famine by overburdening already initially poor households. HIV/AIDS lessens the strength of all those infected. Weakened by the disease, men, women and children are less able to stave off the ravages of hunger and are too fragile to cope with food shortages. Thirdly, the majority of the population that die from HIV/AIDS or related diseases are middle aged, leaving a disproportionate portion of the population as the elderly, or as orphaned children. Discernibly, this places additional pressure on the economy in an effort to support these members of society, as well as on the workforce which is being constantly limited by the devastating effects of HIV/AIDS.

AIDS affected communities, both at the household and state levels, are less well-able to cope during a crisis, “leading to more rapid descent into destitution and slower recovery…if any.” Serious losses increase across the continent, including “lower incomes, decreased food cultivation and depletion of assets.” The cycle is overwhelmingly vicious; HIV infection, malnutrition and susceptibility to infectious disease all feed into one another and the downward spiral linked to famine and inevitably high mortality rates.

The context in which famine exists in Africa is uncomfortably familiar; huge debt and economic crisis, severe weather conditions, war, poor governance, corruption and generalised instability. “It is against this bleak backdrop of chronic poverty, conflict, poor government, AIDS…drought and floods” that Africa is proving to be perpetually vulnerable to famine. Natural disasters strike regularly, but it is when they hit countries already reeling from the effects of other problems “famine becomes inevitable.” With the reasons feeding into famine being so intricately woven together, the food shortage crisis is a hard cycle to break. However, with increasing awareness being raised towards the issue, there is some hope that the international community can learn from history and co-operate in order to meet in Africa the necessary human rights that are expected worldwide.


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