A History of Food Insecurity in Africa

        
                                          "The ruin of a nation begins in the home of its people" - African Proverb 

           As I reflect on this blog, I have covered the ideas around farmers as experts, who have utilized ways to combat the invariability of water for centuries, the pros and cons of large scale and small scale irrigation, the increase in droughts and its relationship to agriculture, and finally what the New Green Revolution entails for African farmers. I recognize that each blog post heavily relies on my contemplation of the future of agriculture and water resources based on the main premise of lowering food insecurity. Therefore, before I delve into these next weeks in discussing methods to battle food insecurity, I am intrigued in the history of food insecurity problems in Africa.  This post will look at the broader scope of food insecurity, of not just considering water scarcity problems, but asking the question of when this became such an enormous problem and why has it still not been solved?

            In my research this past week I have unfortunately not been able to find a lot of resources on food insecurity in Africa dating past the late 1990s, but from the papers I have engaged with I have been able to learn about food insecurity problems from the 1990s to present. This is due to the African history being split into pre-colonial versus post-colonial, where presently Africa has been in the post-colonial era since the late 19^th century. Regarding food security in this time period, the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), were focusing on the problem worldwide. Yet in Africa, “numbers of malnourished persons in all developing countries are expected to fall 20% from 1990-2010, but in Sub-Saharan Africa, they are expected to rise 23% (Paarlberg,1999). Presently this is still the case, where food insecurity is still on the rise in Africa, but in other developing countries it is abating. In this post-colonial period, the key reasons, as shown in figure 1,  that have been studied regarding food insecurity as a critical problem in Africa, disregarding environmental problems, are issues of poor policy, lack of government in place and difficulties regarding boundaries, and socio-economic status of people. 

Figure 1: Flow chart depicting the different variables involved in food insecurity (Source)

            To discuss socio-economic status and its relation to food insecurity, a study was done that was able to quantify the different variables of food insecurity. It stated that the greatest impact on food insecurity was poverty, at 21%, where the environment came second at 17%. (Misselhorn, 2005). This is shown in figure 2.

Figure 2: Results from the Misselhorn study, finding that poverty was tallied as the most frequent reason for food insecurity (Source)

Poverty can link to many different hardships one might have regarding acquiring food. For instance, there can be lack of access to food, not enough money to purchase fertilizer or seeds to grow crops, and lack of access to government aid. Historically, food insecurity also grew due to little foreign help in the early 1990s to invest in African agriculture. To put in to terms, between 1988 and 1992 the total investment into Sub-Saharan African agriculture was 1.7 billion a year, whereas in Asia the annual net investment was 77 billion (Paarlberg, 1999) Clearly, when looking back at history these outside sources of money skipped Africa at this crucial time of decolonization. 

            Following this post-colonial time comes the complication of governments and governmental policy. According to the World Bank, in 1994, 29 of the Sub Saharan countries had deteriorating economies, where the World Bank considered their “sound macroeconomic stance, and macro-economic policies” as inadequate (Paarlberg,1999). This explains that in this time period governments, especially in the rural areas that are dependent on family farmers, were not able to provide a sound market or economy for the people. Following this insecurity of the government is the added layer of conflict arising from violent military conflicts and civil wars that occurred after decolonization. This disrupted food markets and food availability (Crush, 2012). In more current times there is still a problem of governmental policy. In 2006 to 2007, in what was deemed the “Food Riots”, people took to the streets in at least 14 countries to bring attention to the vital problem of food security. They protested about “the importance of pro-poor policies and investments and improved governance in addressing the problems facing the poor” (Berazneva, 2012). A study was done attempting to model the food riots and state the variables that made this occur. They found the relationship between political governance and civil liberties was a significant point of people rioting (Berazneva, 2012). Geographically, figure 3 depicts the wide-spread places where African food riots occured. 

Figure 3 : Map of Africa showing the places where food riots occurred (Source)

             In conclusion, looking past the problem of water in Africa, this week I was able to learn the breadth of the food insecurity problem and its history. I have drawn a conclusion that food insecurity has become an enormous issue over time becuase of the decolonization of Africa and the lack of governmental policy implementing food scarce programs, letting in additional help and the overall minimal support to the majority of people in poverty, including the farmers themselves. For future discussions on changing food insecurity problems, it is vital to realize that governmental policy needs to also fundamentally change.