Response to
9/8/11 alternet.org article, Food Emergency: How the World Bank and IMF Have
Made African Famine Inevitable by Rania Khalek
“The
hungry starve as scarce land and water are diverted to provide luxuries for
rich consumers in Northern countries.” ~ Vandana Shiva
It
is nearly impossible to believe that in less than 50 years, East Africa has
gone from having an abundance of food to mass starvation. The media
continues to inundate the public with many serious reasons for why the
Sub-Saharan hunger crisis has persisted and intensified for the past five
decades. The news does tell us how record droughts, rising food prices,
biofuel production and land grabs by foreign investors, and terrorist groups
have all caused the starvation of hundreds of thousands of people in East
Africa. It certainly cannot be denied that these are true causes for the
tragedy that continues to worsen in East Africa. But these circumstances alone
did not cause the famine. Unfortunately, mainstream media sources have
not revealed how policies of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World
Bank are major contributing factors to what has led Africa further into
despair.
Because
a changing climate, rising food prices, land grabs, and biofuel production are
occurring in every country, there must be more reasoning behind the disasters
in Africa, especially since East Africa was, as the article states, “…a food
net exporter between 1966 and 1970, with an average of 1.3 million tons of food
exported each year” (Khalek, 2011). Less than five decades is a
reasonably short period of time for region to go from food abundance and
security to mass starvation. Khalek goes on to explain how the influence
of two administrations of Reagan and Thatcher were able to instill certain programs,
such as Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPS), that were carried out by the IMF
and the World Bank as a means to accomplish their pro-corporatist end. In
the name of promoting the “free-market”, SAPs required massive privatization
and deregulation in developing countries.
The
agenda of the SAPs entailed cutting much needed government subsidies for small
farms, removing tariffs, selling most of the region’s food and grain reserves,
and encouraging cash crop exports to the west while promoting massive importation
of expensive goods from the US and Europe.
Khalek states, “Ironically,
as they demanded that African states eliminate subsidies for small-scale
farmers, the United States and Europe continued to provide their agricultural
sectors with billions of dollars in subsidies, forcing peasant farmers to
compete with an influx of cheap, subsidized commercial staples from the
west—clearly a losing battle.” The initiatives also caused mounting debt instead of
fostering intended economic growth. The insurmountable debt of Sub-Saharan
Africa has forced the region’s governments to spend their capital on debt
repayment rather than investing in for instance, education and health
care.
From
this particular article, it has been made clear that individual politicians and
interests groups throughout history have had tremendous influence in the say of
international organizations. At this
moment in time, there must be more transparency to the general public about the
historical context and reasoning behind the current crises in Sub-Saharan
Africa so that the broken food system may be fixed. Unfortunately, this probably won’t happen
because powerful international organizations do not want to take responsibility
for their actions of wealth-seeking self-interests that caused so much havoc.
History repeats itself. This is not the first time when the wealth of
the privileged has come from that of the vulnerable. Throughout history, governments have been
able to conceal the reasoning behind certain circumstances. It is still happing in our own country,
especially with American Indians, Native Hawaiians, and the indigenous people
of Alaska. The lands of the indigenous
peoples of these regions already have been and are now being stripped bare of
soil, energy, water, and food resources so that wealthy Westerners may live a
superfluous lavish lifestyle, while Indians are put on reservations and spend
their whole lives suffering in poverty.
The government still does not want to reveal that they were responsible
for most of this destruction. Now, the
same thing is happening on an international scale. I honestly do not know how we can confront this
economic violence. I am glad, though,
that it is becoming clearer to a small minority of the population. Now, we must spread the word, elect better
politicians, and proactively question the corrupt system that exists today so
that there is hope for the future of all indigenous people.
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