For the past year the United Nations’ World Food Program has been warning of several pending famines in southern Africa, but a report by The Times UK suggests that aid agencies may have exaggerated the extent of hunger in countries such as Zambia.
The Times dispatched reporters to Zambia and could find little evidence of the famine that threatened three million people there according to the WFP. While Zambians are poor, they didn’t appear to be starving.
The Times quotes former Zambian Agriculture Minister Guy Scott as saying, “It looks to me as if the international donor community wanted to see a disaster without being critical enough.”
This is brought into focus by looking at the consequences of Zambia’s much-publicized refusal of food aid from the United States because of concerns over genetically modified organisms. Despite that refusal, however, the mass starvation forecast for Zambia simply never happened. As Scott told The Times,
I thought that the Government’s refusal to accept GM maize was going to lead to a large number of deaths. But it hasn’t. Of course you want to err on the side of caution. But the GM ban, and the lack of any consequences, has raised questions about the severity of the crisis.
Scott tells the Times that he believes aid agencies probably focused on areas worst hit by drought and so overestimated the extent of food shortages.
Source:
Southern Africa famine is ‘exaggerated’. Michael Dynes, The Times (UK), January 22, 2003.