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| Social Science & History Department |
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| H Grade Modern Studies |
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International Issues Section Politics of Development in Africa Study Theme 3E What is Food Shortage? Food and Agriculture Organisation defines in three stages:- 1. Malnutrition = lacking certain essential nutrients 2. Undernutrition = lacking certain basic staples 3. Starvation Food shortage is sometimes referred more accurately to as food insecurity. What this means is that there is little point in people having lots of food one year if they can't be sure if they'll have enough the next. Reliability of food supply is to a degree more important than the price. What causes food shortage / food insecurity? 1. Drought & Desertification (e.g. N. Africa & Mozambique) Causes of expanding desert not clear; possible causes include:- a) Global warming & lack of rainfall through burning of fossil fuels b) Cutting woodland on the edges of the Sahara leading to stronger winds which carry dust, preventing clouds and rain c) Changing patterns of land use - no longer grazing but more crop production, requiring more clearing of land 2. Population: growing more in Africa, esp. sub-Saharan Africa, than elsewhere, and also more than food production.
3. Economic Problems: low wages, inflation, unemployment, etc.:- a) prices of food increases and wages fall b) harvest failures mean there is nothing to eat and nothing to sell for cash (this also applies to herders if there is low rainfall 4. Colonisation has led to social changes:-
5. Changing Trading Relationships: Since 1970s, manufacturing goods prices have risen worldwide (including farming machinery) and cash crop prices have fallen. African countries have therefore become poorer. Increasing the efficiency of the farming methods used for these cash crops does not help; it simply reduces the world-wide prices of these goods. 6. Debt: To meet their needs, 3rd world countries borrowed from Western banks, who charged high rates of interest because they are regarded as bad credit risks. Much of the export earnings are consumed repaying the interest (20% Ethiopian coffee crop, 81% all Ugandan export earnings). In turn, 3rd World countries were encouraged to grow more cash crops to fund these debts, leading to more good land being lost to locals. At the same time, the surplus of cash crops leads to price falls. In 1990, Africa's total debt burden exceeded its total GNP - in other words, if everyone starved and died, and all money went to pay debts, Africa would still have been in debt in 1991. 7. Rescheduling of Loans negotiated: Western banks agreed to allow repayment of loans over longer terms, or even cancelled the loans altogether, in exchange for Third World countries agreeing tight economic controls and public sector cutbacks. This usually meant massive cutbacks in education and health improvement programmes. This in turn led to civil unrest and resentment at Western interference in these social reform programmes. Sometimes the West would simply be blamed, sometimes the people would blame their own government for agreeing to these demands; more often both happened. Internal Debt Problems:
9. Inequalities in 3rd World societies. Not all people in 3rd World countries suffer equally from food shortages:- a) Urban-rural divisions: although many poor people live there, cities are much better off than the countryside. Professional middle classes, industrial, service and clerical workers all live there and have much higher wages than farmers. They also have access to the best and widest ranges of food and can afford to pay prices for food which the rural poor cannot afford. Increasingly, city dwellers demand food only grown abroad, so that demand for traditional rural crops drops still further. b) Women and children suffer more than men:- The traditional role of breadwinner has always been a male one in Africa, and as a result men have tended to turn to cash crops increasingly. Meanwhile women have been left to grow food for the family and bring up the children. This extra burden on women has led to a decline in women's health, and diet in particular, and their children suffer too as a result, while men, with their greater access to food suffer less. 10. War:- Wars destroy a country's ability to produce and use up its valuable earnings. Above all they destroy its infrastructure of roads, railways, etc., and food cannot get through to those who need it, or else it is taken first by the armies to feed themselves. There are several types of war in Africa:- a) "Simple" civil wars where the government has been unable to resolve a dispute peacefully b) Wars between different African states c) Wars of independence or freedom from colonial powers which have spilled over into neighbouring countries, or because when independence was obtained the state boundaries were unsatisfactorily drawn How Does the Western World Respond to Food Shortages? Forms of Aid: Although some aid is "emergency aid", designed to respond to world disasters such as in Rwanda or Somalia, most is "development aid", to support modernisation programmes, perhaps through voluntary agencies, or in the form of food aid, especially from the US or the EU. Bilateral Aid Transferred direct from one country to another. Usually involves agreement on how the money is to be spent, e.g. on projects. Serious criticisms:- 1. Tied Aid: donor country benefits because its own industries and jobs are protected, also recipient cannot obtain equipment and technology from cheapest sources. 2. Developing countries can lose control of projects to donor countries who have a vested interest in securing contracts and profits. 3. Projects tend to be large-scale: Because these contracts are agreed at government level, they tend to be aimed at big projects. These tend to benefit the cities - power dams, roads, etc.. Poor in the countryside miss out, and indeed often lose land and become even poorer. Roughly 60% of all UK aid is bilateral. The most controversial part of the UK aid programme is the ATP (Aid & Trade Provision), which exists to encourage UK industries to bid for aid contracts in the Third World. Funding is decided partly by the Overseas Development Agency (part of the Foreign Office) and partly by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). The DTI is really only interested in UK industry. The DTI and FO use the ATP to benefit UK aims abroad - the Pergau Dam project in Malaysia was one example (it was linked - illegally - to an arms contract). UK aid is available in emergencies to very poor countries, but generally, middle-income countries do better. Bilateral aid is not necessarily unsatisfactory - Denmark has a very useful scheme with Sudan. Multilateral Aid Donor countries give aid to an international organisation - usually the UN or the EU - who then pass it on to Third World countries. The percentage of aid which is multilateral is growing, although very slowly. The UK mostly channels its multilateral aid through the EU. Food Aid: mostly is given as a grant, though sometimes is given as a low-interest loan. Types:- 1. Emergency Aid: Famine relief, etc.. Usually beneficial, but can take time to reach victims, and sometimes by the time it does the crisis is past, food supplies have recovered and the food aid simply floods the market and bankrupts local farmers. 2. Programme Food Aid: Recipients can decide what to do with food donations and can use the foreign exchange saved for other projects. This is generally regarded as a good idea. Often, however, locals become dependent on food they cannot grow themselves. 3. Project Food Aid: Workers are given food in exchange for taking part in public works schemes (road-building, dams, etc.). Another good idea but the schemes produced are those which tend to benefit better-off in cities more. For instance, a power dam will usually provide electricity for city and industrial users long before it reaches the countryside. World Food Programme (WFP): This is the UN's food aid distribution programme:- Can be slow to act in emergencies because it has no food supplies of its own and has to buy on the international food market at times of shortage. It is also accused of bureaucracy, etc.. But the WFP has tried to help generally by using a triangular system of distribution: it gets a Western donor country to bring from one African country and give the food to another where there is a shortage. This encourages farming in one area as well as relieving famine elsewhere. However, the EU does this much more. Generally, however, food aid frequently makes countries dependent on Western aid, destabilises the economy, leading to political instability and civil war - for instance this happened in Ethiopia and Somalia in the 1980s. Agencies and Food Shortage 1. The European Union and Food Shortage One-third of all EU aid is food aid; it is the largest donor in the world if bilateral agreements are included but only fifth, after the US, Japan, Germany and France if only multilateral donations are considered. The EU gives a lot of food aid because of the surpluses that the CAP creates. Two main groups of recipient countries are the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACP), which are former colonies of EU members, and the non-associated states, which are not members of the ACP. As well as food aid, the EU tries to develop countries in trading relationship to assist self-sufficiency:- A) The European Development Fund: gives grants and loans, but like other major agencies it tends to concentrate on over-large projects. B) Lomé Convention(s): a series of treaties between the EU and the ACP countries so that ACP countries are given preferential trading status:-
2. The United Nations and Food Shortage: The UN distributes its (multilateral) aid through specialised agencies such as the Food & Agricultural Organisation (FAO), UNICEF, or the World Bank (which often works in association with the IMF). The World Bank is criticised for:-
The World Bank argues that export promotion - by developing industries, roads, etc. - is the only way African countries can break out of the poverty/hunger cycle. Rationing and price controls must also end so that farmers can make a profit. Although poor suffer at first, in the long run everyone benefits from economic strength. 3. NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations,or Voluntary Agencies) and Food Shortages: e.g. OXFAM, Christian Aid:- Funded by charitable contributions, but many smaller projects are funded by governments, the UN or the EU because of their special expertise. Voluntary agencies argue for small-scale projects, locally controlled and sustainable - i.e. they should not damage the environment. Big schemes are irrelevant to the poorest. What would make Aid more effective? 1. Give aid to small-scale projects. Big projects by-pass the poor, and often damage the environment and local ways of life. 2. Reduce tied aid and increase voluntary aid: Tied aid benefits rich countries and reduces local control; voluntary aid agencies are much more aware of this. 3. Aim to increase local control: Foreign experts do not always know what is needed locally, and in any case local control increases self-sufficiency. 4. Aim to develop "food security": develop consistent long-term supplies of food rather than going for the "quick fix". Questions: In all questions make reference to specific African countries (excluding the Republic of South Africa) Debt is the main cause of a lack of social and economic development in African countriesÊ To what extent is bilateral aid an effective way of overcoming social and economic problems in Africa (15 marks) War is the main factor preventing African effective development in Africa Rich countries use the supply and demand of food to exercise power over less developed countries The advantages of multilateral aid far outweigh the disadvantages |
