Africa. Sahel. Famine
Africa's pastoralists: being left to die?
Sahel, 2010 and now 2011. A Niger chief walks by a cow dead of starvation;
mother and child waiting for emergency aid in a refugee camp in Somalia
The news team reports: Readers will be well aware that populations in Somalia, and also in Ethiopia and northern Kenya, are now suffering from the impact of what most reports term 'drought' or 'famine'. But an increasing number of commentators do not see this latest crisis in these terms. Certainly the Sahel, the strip of Africa south of the Sahara (see map below) is becoming increasingly arid, and it's highly likely that one reason is human-made global climate change. But what continues to happen in the Sahel is not just a 'silent tsunami', a natural disastrous process whereby more of sub-Saharan Africa becomes desert.
The Sahel is shown in brown. Populations most likely to be severely short of food, or starving, are (from west to east) in Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Sudan (North & South), and also in Ethiopia and Somalia
There's more to it than that. Political and economic policies and practices are creating conditions of acute food insecurity and even of famine. Last year the hardest hit region of the Sahel was in the west, including in Niger. A report then stated: 'The paradox of this year's worsening food shortage is the presence of plentiful quantities of food in many markets throughout the country'. A local witness stated 'There is a relatively good flow of food into the markets in Niger, yet prices remain extremely high. Since 2008 there has been a lot of speculation and tension in the markets. There has been good food production in neighbouring countries, yet prices are abnormally high'. The report continued: 'Speculation in agricultural commodities on the international financial markets since 2006 has been blamed for price increases of up to 300 per cent for some basic foodstuffs, including rice and cereals, a phenomenon described by [then] UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, as "silent mass murder".'
Urban Jonsson, an Association Council member with long experience of work in Africa, a former UNICEF chief of nutrition now based in Kenya, comments: 'The people of the Sahel will continue to need emergency aid. But the underlying and basic causes of this perpetual crisis need to be recognised and addressed, not just as a matter of charity to communities in distress, but as a fundamental issue of human rights and entitlements. One cause of acute food insecurity in the Sahel is climate change, in turn caused by the overuse of resources in materially rich countries. Another cause is political and economic programmes forced on African countries in return for extortionate foreign loans, which require food to be grown not for the people of those countries, but for export, in order to earn dollars. The aid that Africa needs, above all, is lifting of its foreign debt burden'.
Claudio Schuftan was in Senegal earlier this year with the World Social Forum, and has also worked in sub-Saharan Africa. He comments: 'So many of us are trained to think that poverty, and all that comes with poverty, is just "one of those things" and that "the poor will always be with us". But actually what continues to happen in the Sahel is not a tragedy, it is an outrage. We are indeed seeing the social and other basic determinants of undernutrition and starvation at work in Africa. This is in good measure a consequence of the policies and practices of powerful countries. Certainly food and medical aid is needed. What is needed above all, are conditions of mass social mobilisation that lead communities to stand up for their rights'.
There may be an even more basic issue, indicated by John Vidal of The Guardian in the report summarised below. The natural way of life of the peoples of the arid and semi-arid lands of Africa south of the Sahara, is pastoral. Their economy does not depend on cash or credit in what is now the usual sense. Communities and families trade in goods, including brides, animals, crops, and other valuables, and make relatively little use of coins, let alone bank accounts.
So their regions and countries are identified as 'least developed', because the measurement of 'development' is made in terms of cash turned over, assessed as gross national products. Those forces eager to 'develop' Africa and make it work for international business, most of all areas where minerals and other resources may be found, would find it easier to do so if pastoralist societies vanished – if they became extinct. By this analysis, what is happening in the Sahel is a version of what happened in the US in the 19th century, as a result of which the remnants of the original people were and remain stockaded.
Box 1
The basic causes of the Sahel crisis are not 'natural'
This is an extract from a report in The Guardian of 21 July, written by their distinguished environmental correspondent John Vidal.
A massive drought, as if out of nowhere, has settled over the Horn of Africa, and the people fleeing to the camps are said to be 'climate', 'drought' or 'environmental' refugees. The land, we are told by the international agencies rushing relief to the region, can no longer support its people.
Fifty or so years ago, the region had regular 10-year climatic cycles which were mostly followed by a major drought, and now the droughts are coming more frequently and are lasting longer. In the 1970s, say the pastoralists – the nomadic herders who move their cattle ceaselessly across the region in search of pasture – they started having droughts every seven years; in the 1980s they came about every five years and in the 1990s every two or three. Since 2000 there have been three major droughts and several dry spells, this one being not the worst, just the latest.
But to pin this crisis on drought or climate change is wrong. This is an entirely predictable, traditional, man-made disaster. The 10 million people who the governments warn are at risk of famine this year are the same 10 million who have clung on in the region through the last four droughts and were mostly being kept alive by feeding programmes.
The fleeing Somalis seen on TV are the same people the UN warned about in 2008 when it said that one in six were at risk of starvation. Josette Sheeran, head of the UN's World Food Programme, appealed for US$300 million emergency aid this week – just as she did in 2008 when she told of 'a silent tsunami [of hunger] gathering'.
Nor was the crisis unexpected. The rains failed early this year in Kenya and Ethiopia, and there has been next to none for two years now in Somalia. Aid agencies and governments have known for almost a year that food would run out by now. But it is only now, when the children begin to die, and the cattle have been sold or died, that the global humanitarian machine has moved in. Just as in 2008, the war in Somalia is primarily responsible for the worst that is happening. But remember too, that Somalia has been made a war zone by the US-led 'war on terror'. It's our fault as much as anyone's.
But another, more insidious war has also been taking place across the region. This one is being waged by governments and businesses against the pastoralists. Over the years, they have been steadily marginalised and discriminated against by Ugandan, Kenyan and Ethiopian governments, and now they are further jeopardised by large-scale farming, the expansion of national parks, and game reserves and conservation.
For the politicians in Kampala, Nairobi or Addis Ababa, the lifestyle of these people seems archaic and outmoded. They are said to be outside mainstream national development, and to be pursuing a way of life that is in crisis and decline. So the politicians think little of taking away their dry season grazing grounds or blocking their traditional routes to pasture land. However, as seen in major international studies, the pastoralists produce more and better quality meat and generate more cash per hectare than 'modern' Australian and US ranches.
Instead of starving the region's people of funds and then picking up the pieces in the bad years – as governments must do now – Britain, the EU, the US and Japan must help people adapt to the hotter, drier conditions they face. With better pumps and boreholes, better vaccination of cattle, help with education, food storage and transport, people can live well again.
