Whatever happened to the food crisis in Africa that Western charities, the United Nations and governments warned last year could engulf 25-million people? Did it never happen? Did they get it wrong? Did the rains come and the food suddenly grow? Did the world stump up enough cash and food?
The answer is ”no”. There may not be pictures of dying children on television, but the crisis is now at a critical point and in many countries it is worse than forecast.
Last week World Food Programme director James Morris warned the UN Security Council that 40-million people needed emergency food aid — far more than expected.
The positive side is that more than $800-million of emergency food aid has already been pledged and hundreds of thousands of tons of food are reaching sub-Saharan Africa. But at least $1-billion is needed to help people through the next few months. With the international humanitarian focus on Iraq, governments might be reluctant to donate to Africa.
The World Food Programme and donor governments say food has been pledged to June, implying the problems lie in the future. But this hides the fact that the West has not offered enough to feed everyone. Governments have often not been able to distribute full food rations and many people have received only half of what they had been promised.
What troubles NGOs is that the West, having seemingly avoided the spectacle of thousands of dying children, is now reinforcing the underlying poverty by not feeding people adequately.
A new face of African famine is emerging, confined to a sizeable rump of the ”superpoor”: growing numbers of destitute people who may never recover economically.
The West still responds to these crises as if they happen only once a decade, are caused by occasional bad weather and can be alleviated by immense, but temporary, efforts. It is only now sinking in that they may be permanent fixtures caused by ever-deepening poverty, a generation of inadequate development and semi-permanent climate change. — Â