After a little reflection, I was left wondering what good had been done for our continent after years and years of media campaigns showing Africans every few years starving in droves while sitting in refugee camps with flies hovering over them. The image is almost always the same and so are the results. People remember the last full meal they had, feel guilty and decide to write a check for $10 to help those African kids get a bag of rice to hold them over until the rain falls again.

Frankly though I have found myself thinking from time to time about that young man’s comment. It must be one of the thoughts which cross a person’s mind when the only information they have about famine is that 30 second T.V. spot once a year. Realistically, it is easy to understand why he thought what he thought; even if the average person might have addressed the issue with a little more tact.

We often hear about the effects of natural disasters on populations in Africa while being flooded by images of starving women and children during one campaign after another launched by large NGOs to “Save the Africans”. There is no doubt that there are many Africans who are currently suffering and dying because of famine. But let us not forget that the cause of famine isn’t always natural disasters or as simple as lack of rain.

Famine might be made worse by a natural disaster or lack of rainfall. But it is often caused by absolute poverty. Poverty after all does not simply mean a lack of income; but a lack of access to basic needs, as food is one of those needs its natural that famine could be an end result.

But let us be realistic in looking at the causes of poverty in Africa. It isn’t simply a matter of Africans being too simple minded to know where and how to plant. It is instead a combination of issues, one of which is not having access to land at all. All we need to do is look at the case of Zimbabwe to find an extreme example of what happens when the people have no access to land. With over 80 percent of all fertile land in the hands of white farm owners; it isn’t very complicated a task to understand that even if local citizens were excellent farmers, it would be pretty difficult to feed over 90 percent of the population with less than 20 percent of the land available to them. Considering that the majority of farm workers who work on the white farms are underpaid and that the revenues from those large farms is not shared with the Africans who have called Zimbabwe home for thousands of years… well the recipe is one for exactly what we have today: mass famine and poverty. Right now in Southern Africa as well as in the Horn of Africa, there are millions of people at risk of dying from malnutrition.

I use the case of Zimbabwe to illustrate my point; but we can also look elsewhere in Africa to find many more examples of the way in which resources remain out of the hands of the poor. In Gabon for example, which is one of the wealthiest countries in Africa; the government decided to base its economy on its natural resources (oil, minerals and a rare lumber). This has led the average Gabonese citizen to be completely dependent on imports for all his basic needs, including food. In Gabon which is a coastal country, most people eat fish which comes from one of its neighbors. Gasoline, which is one of its major export products, costs 3 times more than in the United States.

In Kenya you will find refugee camps where Somalis who fled the war in their own country over 20 years ago currently live. However, they are still not allowed to leave the camps to find jobs. They are instead living precariously in refugee camps indefinitely. They are afraid to return to a country which some have never even seen and which is still in a civil war and has no form of government to speak of. Yet, they are not permitted to become citizens of the country they have lived in for over two decades and in which many were born. Living hand to mouth thanks to donations made to large multinational NGOs is hardly a way to create a lasting solution to these men and women who would certainly be happier being able to provide for their own families.

As you can see, poverty isn’t just a matter of having money or not. It isn’t about being poor and unable to buy food. It is a much more complex issue than that. Here is a short list of some of the causes of poverty in Africa:

• Lack of access to education
• War and armed conflicts
• HIV-AIDS and other illnesses such as cholera and malaria (most are preventable)
• Lack of access to sanitation and clean water
• Land mismanagement
• One-crop economies
• Short term aid and restructuring programs
• Overpopulation

We’ll be discussing the impact and importance of all these causes during this month’s articles concerning poverty in Africa. So, join me again next time for Poverty has a variety of causes

Thanks for stopping by today. See you again soon…