I’m not particularly aiming to start a STOUSH with this post, though I suppose one is inevitable. After reading Kate’s post on the food crisis in Niger, I was thinking of giving some money and I thought I’d investigate the reasons for the crisis. One thing I’ve noticed with famine in Africa is that when it (usually belatedly) comes to the attention of people in the West, it’s presented as a humanitarian crisis, and little attention is given to underlying causes.
Aid agencies’ websites give scant enough information about why what’s happening is happening. Relying only on a superficial google search, you tend to get explanations in terms of drought and plagues of locusts, and of course, bad governance. Bad governance is in part a lingering legacy of the state structures left by the colonisers, which often lacked a genuine basis for political competition and in the poorest regions, attempts to replicate the full bureaucratic and military panoply of advanced states when they simply aren’t sustainable. But, though there’s still corruption and political instability, Niger has been doing all the things the IMF Washington Consensus has asked of it, including an ambitious privatisation program.
There are a range of complex causes operating, of course, but what’s clear is that Niger is able to produce, and is producing, enough food to sustain its population. As the Nobel Prize winning economist Amyarta Sen observes, hunger and famine in the modern world are a function of food distribution not absolute food shortages.
There is plenty of food, but children are dying because their parents cannot afford to buy it.The starvation in Niger is not the inevitable consequence of poverty, or simply the fault of locusts or drought. It is also the result of a belief that the free market can solve the problems of one of the world’s poorest countries.
The price of grain has skyrocketed; a 100kg bag of millet, the staple grain, costs around 8,000 to 12,000 West African francs (around ¬£13) last year but now costs more than 22,000 francs (¬£25). According to Washington-based analysts the Famine Early Warning System Network (Fewsnet), drought and pests have only had a “modest impact” on grain production in Niger.
The last harvest was only 11% below the five-yearly average. Prices have been rising also because traders in Niger have been exporting grain to wealthier neighbouring countries, including Nigeria and Ghana.
The reason why millet is in high demand in Nigeria and Ghana is that one of the reasons why they’re wealthier is that they’ve made the move to monoculture, so need to import food staples, as their agricultural land goes to producing cash crops for the world market.
Lest anyone think that the report I’ve quoted above is some lefty Guardian distortion of the truth, a fact sheet [pdf] produced by USAID (a US government agency) answers the question -
Are West African Markets Not Working To Fix the Sahelian Food Problems?
with this poignant observation:
West African grain markets are generally working very well, and perhaps too well.
In other words, strong demand from better heeled purchasers is pricing Niger’s people out of the market for the food they themselves produce, and rational economic actors are hording millet to further raise the price through restricting supply.
So, then, markets are working very well, but not working to fix the Sahelian food problems. They’re working to fix the problem of Nigeria’s and Ghana’s inability to feed themselves through their incorporation into the world agricultural economy.
It’s worth remembering that in the year of Live Aid, 1985, $3 Billion went to Africa in aid. In the same year, $19 Billion of food was exported from the countries receiving the aid.
So it’s important to give to relieve immediate need, but if the underlying problems aren’t relieved, this year in Niger won’t be the last time we’ll be giving.
There’ll never be a “last time we’ll be giving”, Kim. “The poor are always with us”.
But it may be the last time we’re giving to Niger to prevent people starving to death – even the “invisible hand” can’t snap its fingers and remove overnight all the other structural problems (endemic or created) that lead to starvation, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Only this time is not as bad as last time, and next time will also be less bad again – and the rate of this improvement will be increased by freedom, democracy, the rule of law, reductions in corruption, and free-market policies. Just compare the places where there are still famines with those where there aren’t – I’ll think you’ll find some common differences.
This IS the underlying problem that needs fixing – or did you have another one in mind?
Tony, what do you suggest we do the alleviate the suffering in the meantime while we await the invisible hand to weave its magic?
What we do now – provide direct aid in the most sensible way possible, try to do no harm while we help. Although history seems to suggest that short term aid generally causes long term harm, we can’t do nothing (and I wasn’t suggesting that).
We also try to get the US, EU and us to an extent to drop their agricultural protections to give sub-Saharan Africa what it really needs – trade & revenue.
Or, I ask again, is there some other underlying problem we’re talking about?
So, Tony: wealthy countries don’t view free-market policies as an effective means to sustain their wealth?
There are many many underlying problems.
To expect subsistence economies to smoothly tick over and adapt while they are being integrated from above into the world market economy is dangerously fanciful. And yet that is what armchair economists always assure us will happen.
Subsistence and other no fat economies live from season to season and harvset to harvest – disruptions whether environmental or economic (eg Kim’s Ghana/Nigeria example) are often devastating. In previous eras people at least had the possibility to up and move to better places. But with the European carve up of Africa and the installation of half-arsed and often completey incompetent and/or rapacious overlords, may people have lost their escape routes. They are reduced to assembling in a huddled mass until the huddle is large enough for the international community to notice and food drops hopefully arrive some time thereafter.
None of this is political or contentious. All the historical factors that have gone into producing this disaster are done now and there’s no use trying to apportion blame. That’s for the history books.
As the economy in Africa slowly and painfully joins that of the rest of the world, it is simply a matter of will whether or not others intervene to alleviate the suffering of starvation. Sometimes we will, other times we won’t.
But at all times it is up to us whether we respond. There are of course people who devote their life’s work to attempting to address the problem. When they are accused of making matters worse it irritates me enormously. I picture some blimp on a couch fiddling with the remote mumbling half remembered free market nostrums. The ideology of the market is as dangerous and murderous as any other.
It’s greatest problem is that absolves us of any responsibility for our fellow humans. At least communism recognised the duty of one to the other. The market obliterates even the idea that we are dependent upon each other. The misery of the African poor is evidence of their failure to allow the market into their lives. They have wandered from the path of the righteous.
We feel sorry for them, but deep down we know they have brought this upon themselves.
The same We, who are the beneficiaries of the incredible achievements of untold millions and the toil of more millions and the sheer damn luck of having been born in a country made safe by distance, heritage and the minerals under our feet.
Reading the USAID reports hints at many of the problems. As Kim points out there is a range of complex causes operating as echoed by wbb. Kim is not the one trying to create the false dichotomy.
It is possible that policies of globalisation may help Niger. But is now the best time for implementation?
Kim is definitely not creating false dichotomies. Kim is commenting on Africa. A rare & gutsy feat in itself.
Most are put off doing likewise by the the myth that Africa is inevitably tragic and exotically excluded from our understanding.
Africa is merely the next place that needs to get it’s shit together. It’s just a place with people like anywhere else.
John Quiggin is matching donations to the MSF Niger appeal, if any readers are interested.
For African nations to be self-sufficient is a huge problem, as IMF, WB strategies can actually reduce their ability to feed themselves (like Amnesty International’s slogan “Eat Money?”). But trade must be the answer, surely, or am I another brainwashed child of capitalism? As all countries require resources from other nations, surely our approach must be two-pronged: feed those without, and help them to get work. I sympathise with wbb’s points, but lets look at what we the little people, the wealthy masses, can do – buying fair trade goods, for example, and conciously buying goods from nations in need. This should empower the workers, shouldn’t it? so that they too can start to change? And pressure our government to help the governments of third world countries to get their houses in order.
I have a modest proposal…
[...] Australian blogger Larvatus Prodeo looks at the causes of the crisis in Niger. There is plenty of food, but children are dying because their parents cannot afford to buy it. [...]
Which is Nabs? I don’t pretend to have all the answers. All I’m saying is that the people of Niger are paying a big price (=death) for their integration into the Global Economy. Is that right? Can we salve our consciences by giving food aid? Just saying…
Can I just clarify one thing: how is it exactly that integration into the Global Economy(TM) causes starvation in Niger?
Fyodor, simple. Nigeria replaces sustainable agriculture with monoculture, and needs to import food from Niger to feed Nigerians. The Nigerians have more money, and the price goes up to a level which people in Niger can’t afford because supply is slightly affected by climatic factors.
Kim, the food crisis in Niger is not caused by Nigerian “monoculture”. You didn’t read the whole text of the USAID pamphlet, or chose to ignore important parts of it.
The food insecurity in Niger is particularly dire amongst pastoralists in the South-West. Although the grain harvests in Niger have not fallen by all that much, drought and locusts have devastated the fodder supplies for the pastoralists’ herds. Result? They’ve dumped their animals (which they can’t feed) on to the market, depressing the price they get. Unfortunately, in the normal course of events the pastoralists sell some of their animals when they want to buy grain. Right now, the price they’re getting for the animals is depressed at the same time as grain prices have increased – an extremely adverse shift in the terms of trade that means they can’t afford to buy food.
This has nothing to do with the Washington Consensus or any neoliberal conspiracy you want to point the bone at. The problem is due, as a number of commentators have noted, to a variety of factors: climate, ecology and, above all, chronic poverty that makes it hard for the country to withstand any kind of economic shock.
Remember that without the ability to trade, more Nigeriens would be starving, due to their reliance on imported grain.
Fyodor, while I acknowledge your point, and what you’re saying accurately reflects the situation as it is now, my broader point is that monetisation and marketisation (in the absence of viable development strategies) is what causes “poverty” to emerge – measured in terms of relative ability to buy goods in a market as opposed to traditional patterns of sustainable agriculture. The question remains – is a different path to development possible which produces the ability to have food security?
Kim, you say you’re acknowledging my point, but you’re not. Your own sources say that the people most at risk of starvation are traditional pastoralists, pursuing the lifestyle and economic roles they have maintained for centuries. “Monetisation” and “marketisation” [sic] have nothing to do with their plight.
Those are perfectly good Marxist terms, Fyodor no need to write [sic]
I can’t see any contradiction at all, as the nomadic pastoralists are forced to “sell their assets or labour” according to the fact sheet, thus implying their incorporation into a capitalist economy which cannot pay them wages or a return on assets high enough for them to feed themselves adequately.
Mark, monetisation is not a Marxist term, and had nothing to do with the subject. I’ve read Marx, Mark, and I don’t believe he ever used the term “marketisation”. It’s too clumsy a neologism even for a literal German translation.
Oh, that’s alright then. Capitalism being the root of all evil, it’s a safe bet it’s also responsible for drought and plagues of locusts, too. Nigeriens were herding goats, camels etc. before Washington was built, let alone had a Consensus.
Pedantry, Fyodor, the terms are often used in neo-Marxist economics.