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Africa through the eyes of the West …who is profiting from the hunger and the wars?

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THE stereotype image of Africa on the world stage is that of hunger, poverty, diseases and wars. I am tormented by it (stereotype) especially when I visit Western capitals.
“How is the situation back home?” is a common question asked by the hosts probing hunger, politics and HIV/AIDS. It’s a dehumanising way of interacting. It makes one feel worthless, indeed the wretched of the earth.
Hunger in Africa has produced Western philanthropic heroes. African poverty has been one of the West’s fastest growing industries; we are in the poverty business, many NGOs proudly claim.
African diseases have fuelled phenomenal growth in the Western pharmaceutical industry while African conflicts/wars have underpinned a thriving arms industry in the West.
How can the wretched of the earth prop industries that seat and unseat Western presidents?
My history lecturer always encouraged us to probe the sources of historical opinions — interrogate the evidence. In other words seek to get to the bottom, the root of a story.
The story of hunger in Africa always begins with emaciated images of hunger-stricken Ethiopians of the 1980’s.
Similar images have subsequently been reproduced as depicting the situation in many other African places.
The story conveniently leaves out the fact that hunger at this scale is unAfrican. The pre-colonial African agriculture landscape was not as exposed to famine as that of today.
Africans controlled agriculture in fertile regions like the Nile Valley, Great Lakes region and the Zambezi Valley.
Africans grew crops that were both nutritious and suitable for the environment. Major African civilisations were underpinned by successful farming of rice, bananas, yams and cattle.
In ancient Zimbabwe zviyo or rukweza (small seeded millet) was the principal food crop.
It grew well under both dry and wet conditions.
It was stone ground and used extensively in making porridge, sadza, maheu and beer.
Mupunga (rice) in its brown and white varieties, was also grown and eaten extensively in this country before colonisation. Also grown but on a smaller scale was maize/mabarwe/chibage which had been introduced by the Portuguese in the 16th Century.
Nyemba, misnamed cowpeas in English, provided the main source of protein. It is the oldest legume to be grown in this country by the first Bantu farmers two thousand years ago.
There were numerous other local domestic and wild food varieties that supplemented this food stock.
With colonialism and resultant Alvordism, Agricultural demonstrators (Madhumeni) were unleashed on the African agricultural landscape, ostensibly to modernise African agriculture. The result was that in under a century most of the traditional grains gave way to maize dominance.
Sadly, colonial agriculture has failed. This has been worsened by declining rainfall and increasing conflicts. Western donors have worsened the hunger situation by investing in food handouts at the expense of agriculture.
In Africa we need dams, irrigation equipment and affordable inputs. Instead we are left clutching food packs inscribed: “Gift from the people of the USA”.
Food packs that represent massive investment in Western agriculture. Hunger of the scale witnessed in recent times in Ethiopia, Somalia and parts of DRC and Uganda comes out of this vicious food hand-out cycle.
Hunger feeds into many other ills that have been used to stereotype Africa. Hungry communities are vulnerable for recruitment by warlords to fight in seemingly senseless wars on the continent.
At the micro level we have seen how, in the face of hunger, families have traded their livestock on the cheap. From livestock they go for farming implements; gejo, joki, chikochikari.
Alternatively they go after their daughters; marrying them off young or driving them into prostitution under the cover of roadside vendors or domestic workers. The hunger and poverty results in malnourishment and diseases like kwashiorkor.
Early marriages result in birth complications. Girls who are forced into early marriages and prostitution become vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. Still it would be simplistic to say hunger/poverty/diseases/wars are predominantly African ills.
Recently we were discussing African conflicts and a view was posted suggesting that wars are a continuation of our history.
The Zulu Kingdom under Tshaka is given as an example of a region perpetually at war. They fought daily and died in their hundreds daily.
When the Mfecane spilled north, the killings went a gear up.
Were it not for the timely intervention of colonialism, Shona groups were on verge of extinction, we are told. For nearly fifty years these communities, would not have had opportunity to grow crops and rear livestock because of these wars. From the graphic picture painted in our colonial history books you would expect spears and human skeletons to be the most common archaeological finds on the Zimbabwean plateau.
It was with interest that I read of the launch of The Sentry, founded by George Clooney and John Prendergast to probe the financing of conflicts in South Sudan, Sudan, Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Sentry seeks to trail the money used to fuel conflicts in Africa.
Africa swaps mineral wealth for misery and conflict. The West in return gets to build electronics and motor vehicles industries.
The complexity and length of that supply chain is that for years, corporations claimed it was opaque, that determining whether their products were perpetuating a cycle of killings and rape in the DRC was an insurmountable task, both financially and logistically.
Today attitudes are changing as companies prepare to face up to the requirements of new legislation requiring them to track these minerals right back to the mine (whence) they were dug.
Unfortunately The Sentry, like many other Western philanthropic initiatives, ends up as a tool to punish Africa and not the Western funders of African conflicts.
It becomes a tool to control resource trade in Africa and use certification of mines as a kind of sanctions. Africa is further plunged into poverty through restrictions on its trade in mineral resources.
By following the money I had hoped the trail would lead The Sentry to the arms industry fuelling conflicts and hunger in Africa. Next time you are in Europe ask the host, “How is the conflict funding situation?”

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