The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization recently released the first of its three annual reports on the state of food shortages in sub-Sharan Africa. The annual reports are required since so many of the countries in this region perennially face food shortages. But why are these countries always running short of food this time of year? Lets look at the 16 countries cited in this years report for a possible pattern.
Here is a list of affected countries followed by the reasons the FAO gives for the existence of a food emergency,
- Angola – civil strive, population displacement
- Burundi – civil strife and insecurity
- Congo, Democratic Republic of – civil strife, internally displaced persons and refugees
- Congo, Republic of – past civil strife
- Eritrea – internally displaced persons, returnees and drought
- Ethiopia – drought, internally displaced persons
- Guinea – civil strife, population displacement
- Kenya – drought
- Liberia – past civil strife, shortage of inputs
- Madagascar – drought/cyclones
- Rwanda – drought in parts
- Sierra Leone – civil strife, population displacement
- Somalia – drought, civil strife
- Sudan – civil strive in the south, drought
- Tanzania – food deficits in several reasons due to drought
- Uganda – civil strife in parts, drought
So out of 16 countries facing shortages, in 12 of those civil strife and the inevitable refugees such strife creates are at least partly responsible for the food problems.
In Angola, there is an ongoing civil war with over 2.5 million internally displaced persons and rising. In Burundi, fighting between government and rebel forces has escalated in the past couple months with almost 400,000 internally displaced people within the country. Both the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo continue to be the focal point of a multi-country war that still has no end in sight. Eritrea and Ethiopia did finally reach an agreement to end hostilities between the two countries, but each country has hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons and crop production has yet to return to pre-war levels. Guinea is being drawn into the civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia, with guerillas attacking areas of the country that border those two nations. The situation in Somalia has actually improved significantly over the past year, but civil strife will still leave half a million people without enough food to eat. Sudan’s 40+ year civil war shows no sign of abating, and finally Tanzania has some regional problems of civil strife combined with two years in a row of lower than normal rainfall.
Overall, the FAO says that sub-Sahran Africa will require 2.8 million tons of total food aid in 2000-2001, a 5 percent increase over food aid levels it needed in 1999/2000.
Source:
Millions face food shortages in Africa. The BBC, April 9, 2001.
FAO/GIEWS: Africa Report No. 1, April 2001. Food and Agricultural Organization, April 2001.