The magazine The Nation states that Africa “is a rich and steady source of crops consumed daily in the advanced nations.” During the recent Ethiopian famine, citizens of Britain were shocked to learn that they were eating Ethiopian fruits and vegetables. Besides cotton, Africa exports tea, coffee, sugar, cocoa, groundnuts, fresh flowers, meat, palm oil, wood, and many other agricultural products.

“In one year,” claims the magazine Newsweek, “as many as 1 million Ethiopian peasants and 500,000 Sudanese children died.”

In March 1984, Ethiopia appealed to the world for 450,000 tons of emergency grain. This was no exaggeration, for the actual need was twice that amount. Yet the United Nations and its member states paid little heed. Less than 100,000 tons of grain was offered, at a time when world grain surpluses approached 190,000,000 tons! To make matters worse, the small supplies of food took months to arrive. Meanwhile, people were starving. The death toll in one relief camp reached a hundred per day.

Then in October 1984 a British television crew was delayed while waiting for a change of planes in Ethiopia. They used the time to visit relief camps and filmed humans starving to death. “I cried when I was editing this film,” said cameraman Mohammed Amin. “I actually broke down and cried.”

A Dramatic Response

The film was shown on BBC television news and repeated on 425 networks throughout the world. Its effect was dramatic. An angry public demanded government action. Pop musicians turned their lucrative trade into appeals for charity and, to date, have raised over a hundred million dollars! All this publicity resulted in one of the greatest relief programs the world has ever seen.

Shipments of surplus grain began pouring into Africa. Governments of Europe cooperated in an airlift of food deep into Sudan. Even more remarkable was the joint operation to get food to the highlands of Ethiopia. In his book Ethiopia: The Challenge of Hunger, Graham Hancock described the scene at Addis Ababa’s Bole Airport: “Aircraft with Russian, American, East German, British and a medley of other markings were lined up on the apron loading emergency food supplies . . . It was like a vision of all the lofty principles that the United Nations stands for suddenly brought to life, and I could almost hear the swords being beaten into ploughshares.”

Though late, the world’s response to Africa’s need is said to have saved over three million lives! But, sadly, Africa is still short of food. According to recent reports, millions in Ethiopia, Sudan, and Mozambique face starvation. ‘Why,’ you may wonder, ‘is Africa unable to feed itself?’ And even more important, ‘What is the real solution?’

“I PLANTED . . . but there was no rain,” explained Idris, an Ethiopian farmer. All his seeds rotted in the ground, forcing him to leave his farm for a new life in a relief camp. “Once,” he added, “I had four oxen for ploughing and of these, when there was no food left to eat, I sold two and slaughtered two for meat. . . . I have eaten my future.”​—From the book Ethiopia: The Challenge of Hunger.

Like Idris, many African farmers find it difficult to produce enough food. Once self-sufficient, the continent now depends on large food imports. Why is this? Why do so many Africans go to bed hungry?

Drought

Africa is notorious for treacherous droughts. Particularly vulnerable are countries on the southern border of the Sahara Desert. Since 1960 rainfall in this region has steadily declined in what the magazine Ceres calls a “prolonged Sahelian drought.” Yet, many farmers manage to survive.

In the 1983-84 season, though hit by drought five Sahelian countries produced record crops of cotton. The clothes you now wear may be made from this cotton. While cotton earns valuable foreign exchange from exports, there is a price to pay. In 1984 the countries of the Sahel had to import a record 1.77 million tons of cereals. “The fact that cotton can be grown but grain cannot has more to do with government and aid agency policies than with rainfall,” states Lloyd Timberlake in his book Africa in Crisis.

Besides cotton, Africa exports tea, coffee, sugar, cocoa, groundnuts, fresh flowers, meat, palm oil, wood, and many other agricultural products. “Africa,” states the U.S. magazine The Nation, “is a rich and steady source of crops consumed daily in the advanced nations.” During the recent famine, British citizens were shocked to learn that they were eating Ethiopian fruits and vegetables. Apparently, then, drought alone is not the reason Africa cannot feed itself.