The Looming Global Food Crisis and its Implications for Human Security in Africa
blurb:isstoday:12052008food
12 May 2008: The Looming Global Food Crisis and its Implications for Human Security in Africa
Whatever the causes of the global food crisis, it is clear that it is going to have a severe impact on human security in Africa. According to Mr. Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, an estimated 33 countries around the world face potential conflict and social unrest because of the acute hike in food and energy prices. Most of these countries are in Africa.
Unrest linked to food and fuel prices has already been witnessed in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal. Egypt, a regional power in North Africa has 30 million of its 80 million people getting by on less than $1.58 a day and 16 million are living on even less than that. In Sudan more than 2 million people in the Darfur region require food aid. The situation is similar in many other African countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and in particular the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes Region.
The effects are devastating. The food crisis not only burdens national health systems since many diseases in sub-Saharan Africa are related to a lack of adequate nutrition, it also threatens personal and political security as whole communities face potential extinction from internal strife and conflict. Meanwhile governments face the prospect of delivery failure and even being overthrown because of civil unrest and war resulting from the food crisis.
Several reasons have been advanced to explain the current global food crisis. It is triggered by rising prices, declining outputs and growing scarcities worldwide. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food prices have increased about 83 percent over the last three years while the price of rice alone has skyrocketed by about 141 percent since January this year. The increasingly high cost of food is pushing more families in Africa into poverty. This will potentially generate emergencies and disasters resulting in massive movements of people.
Meanwhile the world population has continued to grow rapidly while the amount of arable land is declining. Between 1980 and 2000, the global population rose from 4.4 billion to 6.1 billion people. It is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050. Experts predict that in order to keep up with the population growth, more food will have to be produced worldwide over the next 50 years than has been produced during the past 10 000 years. The FAO already estimates that 854 million people worldwide do not have sufficient food for an active and healthy life.
Furthermore, climate change also plays critical role in the present food crisis. According to experts, climate change is causing loss of agricultural land, as a result of drought, floods, storms and erosion. Scientists predict that competition over scarce resources will also lead to conflicts and further environmental destruction.
Developing countries especially in sub-Saharan Africa have equally been blamed for investing little in the agricultural sector in the last decade. This has led to reduced production that has directly affected the cost of food and the ability of these nations to feed their population.
Other factors affecting the food crisis in Africa include speculation on prices of raw materials and increasingly high prices of oil leading to the growth of “energy crops” for bio fuel instead of grain for food.
Finally, according to the United Nations, the poor distribution of food and a lack of purchasing power exacerbate the food scarcity.
There is a need to address both the structural and policy issues that lead to this linear problem that has left hundreds of millions of people worldwide without enough food to eat.
Dr Rose Mwebaza,
Senior Legal Advisor, Mifugo Programme, ISS Nairobi
