“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.

Development Aid?

Overseas governments and aid agencies promote other expensive schemes. These likewise bring “benefits to their own companies and consultants and economies,” states the development journal People. The schemes are attractive because they make African countries look modern, and they are backed by large loans of money. This helps some African governments to satisfy rich city dwellers whose support they need to stay in power. Thus, impressive hotels, universities, airports, highways, cars, and luxuries are seen in African cities while the countryside is neglected. Africa’s rural peasants have a name for their rich city neighbors. In Swahili they call them the Wabenzi, meaning “the Mercedes-Benz tribe.”

Cheap surplus grain does not always benefit hungry Africans. Sometimes it ends up in the hands of greedy merchants, or recipient governments sell it at a profit to help balance their budgets.

To please city dwellers, many African governments keep the price of farm produce very low. This policy, according to the scientific journal Nature, has “contributed powerfully to the decline of agriculture, the hunger of the same urban populations and the dependence of potentially fertile Africa on food imports.”