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Africa Must Feed Itself

by Dr. Akin Adesina, Dr. Wangari Maathai and Dr. Graça Machel

Africa is rising. The 2010 Ibrahim Index of African Governance reveals some very good news: 40 out of 53 African countries have made significant strides in terms of economic and human development indicators. The Millennium Development Goals Report of the United Nations show that the agricultural growth rate has become positive, a first in almost thirty years. Between 1990 and 2005, the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 per day declined from 58% to 51%. The proportion of undernourished people declined from 31% in 1990 to 26% by 2005-2007. The African Development Bank has published an upbeat African Economic Outlook that points to a bright future for the continent.

Yes, our continent is scoring some major victories, but we are far from winning the war against hunger and poverty. Africa still has 300 million people living on less than $1.25 per day – nearly as many people as are living in the entire United States of America. The vast majority are smallholder farmers, about 70% of whom are women.

Africa’s average staple crop yield is still less than one ton per hectare, compared to a global average of 5 tons per hectare. For millions of farmers in Africa, accessing basic technologies to help them raise food production is a major challenge. Leaders have failed to urgently prioritize the challenges facing poor farmers in Africa. Leaders must act on their behalf.

Farmers should be able to at least feed their country’s population. In the USA, farmers represent only 1 % of the population, but they still feed the nation and generate enough surpluses to feed many more people around the world. Yet, in Africa, we see such shocking sights of farmers queuing for food aid. What a paradox! The 70% of our population working in agriculture cannot feed themselves, let alone the 30% that are not in agriculture. Many African countries still rely on food aid and the continent as a whole spends $25 billion every year importing food.

No politician hoping to become President in America dares ignore the American heartland. President Obama kicked off his historic election in Iowa, the breadbasket of America. But in Africa, the political cost of inaction on hunger and poverty has been zero. Our politicians count on constituents in rural areas who engage in farming for a living to keep them in office, yet they largely ignore agriculture.

But change is coming. What matters for millions of Africans is the ‘democracy of the stomach’. The food crisis and social unrest that the continent witnessed during 2007-2008, rekindled by the recent food riots in Mozambique in 2010, are tipping points. Political pressure is building as empty stomachs rumble. A growing number of countries are responding. For example, Mali is now spending 11% of its total budget on agriculture, Burkina Faso 15% and Ethiopia 17%.
But deeper changes are needed. Agriculture in Africa has for far too long been managed as a development program. Agriculture is a business and should be seen and supported as such. With 70% of our people engaged in the sector, African agriculture is a potentially very powerful engine of growth that must be kick-started to generate greater domestic income, savings and investment.
As the globe marks World Food Day, we need to ensure the right to food of every African. Begging for food is not the way to ensure that right. The right to food is only truly meaningful when a nation can feed itself.

Local solutions are working in Africa. Malawi, for example, is now self sufficient in food production, five years after it faced a major food crisis. It achieved this by significantly increasing government support for its farmers. Access to improved seed and fertilizer and the knowledge to use them turned the tide. Malawi fed its 15 million people. It also exported 400,000 tons of maize in 2009.

On the rolling hills of Rwanda an agricultural revolution has begun. The plan is bold and the payoffs substantial. Government support to farmers was provided to help them afford needed farm inputs. The result was an agricultural growth rate of 15% in 2009 and national food security.

What has brought about these emerging agricultural revolutions? The answer is simple: political will and government support for farmers. When leaders do their part, African farmers will stand and deliver.

African farmers are no different from farmers in other parts of the world. Our farmers, the majority of whom are women, are hard working and entrepreneurial. What they need are comprehensive farm support policies that will allow them to produce more food to feed the continent.

An African green revolution – one based on political will and country driven solutions – will help Africa feed itself by raising agricultural productivity in sustainable ways. When we are able to feed ourselves, our freedom will be meaningful. Only then will democracy and the right to food be truly meaningful for the 300 million of our people still living in extreme poverty.

Dr. Akin Adesina, Vice President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, Dr. Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and environmental and political activist, and Dr. Graça Machel, former first lady of South Africa and Mozambique and a member of the Group of Elders, were recently appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General to the Millennium Development Goals Advocacy Group.
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When the poor become powerful beyond of state control

by S’bu Zikode
 
 
The power of the poor becomes evident when the poor are able to organise – a moment of great promise, but also danger, S’bu Zikode told an audience in the United States recently.


The power of the poor starts when we as the poor recognise our own humanity – when we recognise that in fact we are created in the image of God and are therefore equal to all other human beings. But the recognition of our humanity without action to defend our humanity is meaningless. It is very important that we as the poor begin to define ourselves before someone else from somewhere else begins to define us. It is very important for the poor to say, this is who we are, this is where we are and this is what we want. In our movement, as in many movements around the world, we say that we are the poor, those who do not count. We say that we are the excluded and the disrespected. We say that we want our full humanity, that we want justice, that we want dignity and full participation in the planning of our communities.

The more of us that stand together the more our humanity is fulfilled. The power of the poor becomes evident when the poor are able to organise ourselves for ourselves. When we begin to achieve this it is always a moment of great promise and great danger. Frederick Douglass, the great hero of one of the greatest American struggles, the struggle against slavery, said: ‘Power concedes nothing without a demand.’ This is why a collective demand, a demand backed by organisation, determination and courage is a moment of great promise. But it is also a moment of great danger because the power of the rich and the politicians always takes the legitimate demands of the oppressed to be criminal and illegitimate. This is one reason why we need to stand together across the sea. We can only redeem the promise of our struggle if we can survive its dangers and none of us can do that on our own. I have been sent here by Abahlali baseMjondolo to build a living solidarity with the movements in America. We want to look for ways in which we can support each other to realise the promise of our struggles.

There is also a real danger for the organised poor if we do not define ourselves. If we allow others to define us and to define our struggle we risk being defined as people who are not able to struggle for ourselves – as people who need leaders and not comrades, as people who must be spoken for and not to. But when we succeed in defining ourselves, and in escaping the danger of not defining ourselves, we have to face a new danger. There is another kind of danger for the organised poor when we do define ourselves. Our movement is going through a tough time after successfully defining itself. We are under attack from the state, the rich and even a few individual leftists who are all divided in their economics but united in their politics – in their belief that it is their duty, the duty of elites, to speak for and to represent the poor.

Part of a presentation to the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative delivered to various part of the United States of America.
S’bu Zikode is the president of Abahlali baseMjondolo.

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Polygamy no fun, Ethiopian polygamist warns

An Ethiopian man with 11 wives and 77 children is urging people not to follow his example and is giving advice on family planning and contraception.
After seeing his fortune disappear under the competing demands of his enormous family, Ayattu Nure, 56, even urges people not to get married.
"I want my children to be farmers but I have no land, I want them to go to school but I have no money," he says.
But his eldest son has not heeded Mr Ayattu's advice and he has three wives

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Seven of Mr Ayattu's wives live in huts around his compound, which are in urgent need of renovation.
Another four live in huts on the other side of the valley in Giwe Abossa village, 300km from the capital, Addis Ababa in Arsi region.
He says he cannot remember all his children's names but tries to work out who they are from their mothers and which huts they live in.
Mr Ayattu says he used to be rich and wanted to share his wealth around, which is why he took so many wives.
But now he struggles to feed them all.
"I feel like killing myself when I see my hungry children whom I cannot help," Mr Ayattu says.
His wives have given birth to more than 100 children but 23
have died.
School photos
However, he blames Ethiopia's government for not doing more to help him look after all his children.
"I know I have done wrong by marrying many wives and begetting many children but I think I deserve help from the government."
But his biggest complaint at the moment is with the authorities of the local school which 40 of his children now attend.
They want photographs for each of his children's files, which will further deplete his meagre resources.
He says that he tries to share his time evenly between his wives and children, adding that although quarrels and squabbles are common, they try to solve their problems amicably.
"People see me as a funny man, but there is no fun in my condition. I am a desperate man struggling to survive," he says.
Although Mr Ayattu's eldest son, Dagne Ayattu, does not have a job, at the age of 33, he has seven children and is about to marry his fourth wife.
But he says he will not have as many children or wives as his father.

By Mohammed Adow
BBC, Ethiopia
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Encouraging Leaders to Do the Right Thing, by Nicholas van Praag

Obama in Africa 2001
"Spare the stick, spoil the child." That was the advice from proponents of the tough love approach to parenting that prevailed in Victorian times.

Plus ça change. Looking around the world today, encouraging leaders in fragile states to do the right thing, whatever that might be, is more about punishing them for erring in the performance of their governance duties than rewarding them for doing good.

There is a panoply of international sanctions to punish leaders who abuse human rights, undermine constitutionality or indulge in corruption. Some are regional, others global. Some are formal, others informal. Whatever their provenance or legal standing, the stick remains the instrument of choice.

Mechanisms to recognize or reward good leadership are few and far between. Yet leaders are human and, unless they are beyond redemption, they are more likely to respond to recognition and rewards than sanctions and reprimands.

The Nobel Peace Prize and the Ibrahim Prize are both strong incentives and could be emulated to acknowledge the contribution of leaders who consistently do well. Why not find ways, for example, to reward ministers who make a lasting impact on corruption or top brass in the military who reform the security sector peacefully?

 Initiatives such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and the Board of the Natural Resource Charter might want to find ways to boost the standing of leaders in government, civil society, and the private sector who improve the transparency of resource revenues and expenditures.

International and regional organizations could use top jobs as incentives for national reformers. The United Nation's Department of Peacekeeping Operations vets senior appointments for past human rights abuses. Other multilateral organizations could follow suit and use recruitment to reward successful reformers while barring those who have violated international law.

Rewards are often carefully calibrated diplomatic gestures rather than signals of fulsome support. For example, we learned this week that President Obama has told Sudan that if it allows the referendum on the status of Southern Sudan to go ahead in January 2011, and then abides by the results, the United States will take Sudan off its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Realpolitik aside, if the carrot is to become mightier than the stick, we need to agree on what we can reasonably expect of leaders in countries scarred by violence and accept that it will take them a long time to show progress.
Without agreement on what is worthy of reward, we are unlikely to see much shift in the balance between recognition and sanctions. But then it took decades for British parents to stop beating their children.
 
 
Nicholas van Praag, World Development Report
 
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The Danger of a Single Side Story, by Chimamanda Adichie

Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

Why you should listen to her:

In Nigeria, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Half of a Yellow Sun has helped inspire new, cross-generational communication about the Biafran war. In this and in her other works, she seeks to instill dignity into the finest details of each character, whether poor, middle class or rich, exposing along the way the deep scars of colonialism in the African landscape.

Adichie’s newest book, The Thing Around Your Neck, is a brilliant collection of stories about Nigerians struggling to cope with a corrupted context in their home country, and about the Nigerian immigrant experience.

Adichie builds on the literary tradition of Igbo literary giant Chinua Achebe—and when she found out that Achebe liked Half of a Yellow Sun, she says she cried for a whole day. What he said about her rings true: “We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners, but here is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers.”

“When she turned 10 and read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, about the clash between Igbo tradition and the British colonial way of life, everything changed: ‘I realized that people who looked like me could live in books.’ She has been writing about Africa ever since.” Washington Post

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Africa Command: Opportunity for Engagement or the Militarization of U.S.-Africa Relations? Dr Wafula Okumu

 Background

Until recently, Africa has not been strategically attractive to the U.S.  This is partly because U.S. interests in Africa had not been clearly defined and it had no bureaucratic structure to manage those almost nonexistent interests. For a long time, the strategic thinking has been that the U.S. has “no compelling interests in Africa” and “do not want anybody else to have any, either.” However, whenever a non-Western nation or idea made its way into Africa, the U.S. got very nervous. This is what happened from the 1960-1990, when the Soviet Union tried to spread its communist ideology to Africa. Today, many think the U.S. is very nervous of Chinese economic penetration into Africa. America’s concern is that the Chinese are trying to control the continent’s natural resources and gain influence over it. The U.S. is also worried that radical Islamism is a dangerous idea that could germinate in poorly and badly governed states of Africa. Africom is being sold as an answer to these threats. Until the enunciation of Africom, the continent had been haphazardly divided into three U.S. commands—European, Central and Pacific.  In order to understand this state of affairs we need first to understand the basis of U.S. foreign policy towards Africa.

Basis for Understanding U.S. foreign policy towards Africa

U.S. foreign policy towards Africa has been variously referred to as either “benign neglect” or “manifest destiny.” In other words, these postures have defined or driven U.S. relations with Africa. Despite changes of U.S. administrations since 1960, when most African countries started gaining independence, the substance has always remained the same. Only the styles of various administrations have changed. As we shall see later, when given a choice between supporting the liberation struggles of the African people or bolstering its NATO allies, the U.S. easily chose the latter. On the other hand, it has sent Peace Corps volunteers to remote villages to assist in improving agricultural production while at the same time erecting trade barriers against products of these local farmers. It is this principle of “manifest destiny” that seems to be embodied in Africom’s objectives and stated mission.

Africom’s Stated mission

Prevent conflict by promoting stability regionally and eventually ‘prevail over extremism’ by never letting its seeds germinate in Africa.

Address underdevelopment and poverty, which are making Africa a fertile ground for breeding terrorists.

 “…view the people, the nations and the continent of Africa from the same perspective that they view themselves.”

Build the capacity of African nations through training and equipping African militaries, conducting training and medical missions.

Undertake any necessary military action in Africa, despite its non-kinetic nature such as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

Why the U.S. really wants to set up Africom

Despite the above stated objectives, there are many reasons why the U.S. wants to set up Africom. First, the U.S. has become increasingly dependent on Africa for its oil needs. Africa is currently the largest supplier of U.S. crude oil, with Nigeria being the fifth largest source. Instability, such as that in the Niger Delta, could significantly reduce this supply. The U.S. National Intelligence Council has projected that African imports will account for 25% of total U.S. imports by 2015. This oil will primarily come from Angola, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Nigeria. Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, has now overtaken Saudi Arabia as the third largest oil exporter to the U.S.  The importance of the African oil source can be gleaned from the fact that in 2006, the U.S. imported 22% of its crude oil from Africa compared to 15% in 2004. President Bush appeared to have African oil supplies in mind during his 2006 State of the Union Address, when he announced his intention “to replace more than 75% of (U.S.) oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.” Continuing unrest in the Middle East has increased the urgency for the U.S. to build a security alliance with Africa in order to achieve this goal.

Second, Africa is an unstable region with badly governed states that can only manage their affairs, particularly security-related, with outside assistance. Since September 11, 2001, U.S. foreign policy has heavily focused on preventing and combating global terrorist threats. The events of 9/11 changed the way the U.S. views and relates to the rest of the world. Likewise, the foreign policies of Western powers have increasingly been militarised to secure and defend Western interests. Terrorism has been identified as one of the biggest threats to these interests. Africom is expected to stop terrorists being bred in Africa’s weak, failing and failed states from attacking these interests.

It is widely held in the West that failing and failed states in Africa create opportunities for terrorists to exploit. Among the targets of these terrorists are Western interests such as oil sources and supply routes. Improvement of African security would inevitably promote U.S. national interests by making it less likely that the continent could be a source of terrorism against the United States.

Third, one of the critical challenges facing Africa and the UN is training, equipping and sustaining troops in peace missions. African armies need training in peacekeeping. It is proposed that through Africom, African troops will be trained and aided to keep the peace in African conflict zones. This should come in handy when it is considered that all African Union-led peacekeeping operations deployed so far have encountered monumental problem

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Will the G20 Deliver for the World’s Poor?

Children in a slum area
Children in a slum area
Ben Phillips,  Save The Children’s Asia Strategy Director (The Guardian)

With over 8 million children dying each year from preventable causes, a global financial transaction tax could be the solution

To be in South Korea as part of its hosting of the G20 summit which will be held on 11 and 12 November is to witness a piece of history.

In the lifetime of South Korea’s leaders, and in a triumph of development, the country has gone from having a GDP per capita lower than much of sub-Saharan Africa to being one of the world’s largest economies, and is now a larger aid donor than some European countries. It didn’t get here by following the “guidance” of the international financial institutions. Instead, South Korean growth came from redistributing wealth, managing market engagement and making massive public investment in human capital.

Indeed, the success of east Asia, and the failure of the Washington Consensus, prompted me to ask the G20 representatives attending the recent High-Level Development Conference in South Korea earlier this month whether we should swap the Washington consensus for a Seoul consensus. The eclipsing of the G7/G8 by the G20 marks a change in the global political economy. It changes the culture of global meetings too. I’m pretty sure, for example, that this is the first time a host government of such a meeting has had an official pop song.

But for those who had hoped that the expansion of the old colonial G8 into the more inclusive G20 would bring a greater focus on poverty, there will be some disappointment. The G20 do not want to discuss aid or debt for example, and it was a struggle to even get development on the agenda. Even with development now an official topic of discussion, I had one (western) government representative at the meetings confess: “I don’t know much about development, I’m an economist.” And though the chairman of the African Union is invited as an observer, the AU is still not a permanent, equal member of the forum. “There has to be a balance between efficiency and inclusiveness,” goes the mantra. Those who complained about the old G8 but made it into the G20 go along with this. All reminiscent of the natural human tendency that when you’re waiting for a bus in the rain, you shout at the buses that keep driving past; but when you get into the bus, you join in with the others shouting to the driver that the bus is too full to keep stopping at all the stops to let rain-drenched passengers in.

The civil society groups attending the meetings of Civil G20 have taken a different approach, with more than 100 participants from across the world. It is a wonderfully diverse group: in my first five minutes at a meeting I met an obstetrician, a teacher, a lawyer and a priest. But it is a hard group to organise. At times we got a little sidetracked. Discussing a civil society submission paper to the G20, someone asked another participant: “Are you upset because of the comma?”

For those focused on global poverty, the most important issue being discussed at the G20 is the idea of an FTT, a financial transaction tax to help raise the money needed to fight poverty. It sounds wonkish, but at a rate of just 0.05%, and applied globally, this could raise between £256bn and £446bn annually, roughly four to seven times the current level of overseas aid. Among the G20 representatives, opinion is divided. A senior official from a major economy told a group of community activists from Asia, Latin America and Africa that while the idea of taxing irresponsible traders may seem attractive, in the end the costs would fall upon “ordinary people like me and you”. In the middle ground was the government representative who acknowledged that the FTT was a good idea but declared that it would be “hard to do”. (Can the world’s “premier economic forum” not do hard things?) But a representative from another G20 country urged me: “Please keep pushing on the financial transaction tax. We need you to do so. It’s like with the landmines treaty. Governments said it couldn’t be done. You in the NGOs kept pushing. And it happened. This can happen too. It will happen – if you keep pushing us.”

Civil society advocacy stands little chance when all governments are opposed to us – but when an issue is in contention, like this one, we can be the force that makes the difference, that pushes an issue beyond the tipping point. The world is short of more than 3.5 million health workers, and an FTT could help pay for them. For some of the more than 8 million children who die every year from preventable causes, that could mean life instead of death. An FTT won’t be agreed this month or next month, but if we can keep it on the agenda, as the French start to organise for their chairing of the G20 in 2011, we can help to ensure that it does happen, and that we make another piece of history.

South Korea has gone from having a GDP per capita lower than much of sub-Saharan Africa to being one of the world’s largest economies by not following the “guidance” of the international financial institutions. What should African countries learn from that?

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