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Update, November 2002: Since this item was written, Africa's famine has spread to include large parts of eastern Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea and the Horn of Africa) and, through a combination of destructive rains followed by drought, Lesotho. Bad governance - the deliberate destruction of the commercial farming sector - has worsened the situation in Zimbabwe.

The comments below remain applicable. A letter, summarizing the author's views, has been added.

Famine has struck Southern Africa once again, with Malawi the worst affected. BBC News and FAO reported a horrific situation: deaths from starvation, fights for food, farmers sleeping in their fields to avoid theft of crops. Government grain reserves have been totally inadequate to meet needs, and Malawi is seeking 1.8 Mt of maize to meet basic food needs. International and charitable relief agencies are mounting relief programmes, but too late to prevent deaths affecting many villages.

A revealing comment is reported from an elderly chief who recalls the 1949 famine. "The difference is that is 1949 we could walk long distances for food. Now there is nowhere to go to find food."

Zimbabwe and Zambia are also affected, with maize crops well below average and stragetic food reserves exhausted. In Sub-Saharan Africa (April 2002) 19 countries "are facing exceptional food emergencies", with southern Africa's food import requirements at 16 Mt, inclusive of food aid. They lack the foreign exchange to pay for this.

But are such situations really "exceptional?"

Population growth, land shortage, and endemic recurrent famine

An FAO forecast made 25 years ago forecast the countries likely to be unable to meet the food requirments of their populations by the year 2000. In a previous news item, Famine in Africa: the fundamental causes, we showed the striking coincidence between the countries forecast to be most at risk and those in which there were now emergency food relief operations.

All too soon, the situation has been repeated. Drought, and in some cases misgovernment or civil strife, are triggers which set off a basically food-insecure situation. Where populations increase to levels which exceed the capacity of land to sustainable support them, famine becomes endemic, happening every time there is drought or other, recurrent and inevitable, adverse situations. Countries with rising populations, no spare land, no capital for farmers to buy fertilizer, and no substantial sources of foreign exchange to import cereals face a situation (set out for the case of Malawi) in which it is hard to find solutions short of the tragedy of famine.

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"African countries will never be able to survive the recurrent bad years of drought, flood, or other natural disasters - unless greater efforts are made to check population increase...Better governance, land reform and agricultural improvement are of course needed, but any such advances are inevitably nullified by pressure of population. As said by the world's scientific academies, meeting in 1993: "Family planning could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single technology now available to the human race." Anthony Young, Letter to The Times, 14 October 2002.

 

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June 2002, updated November 2002

Food security, famine, and pressure of popuation upon land are discussed in Chapter 13, Land, food and people, of Land Resources: Now and for the Future.