By Norm Dixon
Almost 40 million people are now threatened by hunger in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation report released in June. It estimated that in the Horn of Africa 20 million people need more than 2 million tonnes of emergency food. Another 18 million people are at risk in southern Africa.
Yet despite the FAO's warning, just one of many over the last two years, donors had promised only 2.6 million of the 6 million tonnes of food needed to prevent the catastrophe now ravaging Somalia.
Famine in Africa is usually presented by the press and western governments as the result of sudden "disasters" — a drought, a war. Yet Africa lives through a daily disaster of almost absolute poverty. When any factor worsens, there is simply no margin left to deal with the crisis.
Western governments and their hired scribes deliberately confuse the symptoms of African poverty with its causes to obscure one of the fundamental failings of the world capitalist system: that advanced countries continue to derive much of their great wealth from the exploitation of the majority of the world's population in the Third World.
In sub-Saharan Africa, one in every two people live in absolute poverty. The number of children dying in Africa was higher in the '80s than in the previous decade. The rate of under five infant mortality is 180 per 1000 (10-15 in the developed countries). Only 65% of urban and 26% of rural Africans had access to safe water. Life expectancy at birth was 49 years for men and 53 years for women. Only 32% of Africans can read and write, and among women the figure is less than 10%.
Wealth drains from the poorest parts of the world to the richest. According to the United Nations Development Program's Human Development Report 1990, "The net [annual] transfer of resources to the developing countries has been reversed from a positive flow of $42.6 billion in 1981 to a negative flow of $32 billion in 1988". The UNDP estimates the annual debt-related transfer of resources now to be $50 billion.
Africa has suffered most from capitalist de-development. Per capita GDP ceased growing in 1974, stagnated until 1977, and declined from then on. It has dropped to the level it had reached in 1960 — Africa has been rolled back three decades economically.
The long-term debt of sub-Saharan Africa, US$6 billion in 1970, is now US$340 billion. Africa's foreign debt is 112% of its total gross domestic product and more than three times its annual export earnings. Servicing the debt currently consumes over 30% of total exports.
Primary commodities
The countries of Africa inherited from colonialism economies highly dependent on the export of a few primary products. The European powers did little to develop Africa's infrastructure other than to expedite export of raw materials to the advanced capitalist countries.
After independence, corporations based in the former colonial metropolis continued to own and operate these major export industries, and little capital was invested in other sectors. Monopolisation of international marketing by multinational corporations kept prices paid to African countries to an absolute minimum.
In most cases, governments in the newly independent nations of Africa did not challenge this control by foreign companies. The ruling elites, often having been directly fostered by the colonial power, formed a close alliance with these imperialist companies and their governments.
Too poor to raise their own capital for investment, and with most of the profits generated by foreign companies exported, African countries were unable to diversify their economies.
Primary commodities account for more than 90% of the continent's exports. Only five basic commodities account for almost 75% of exports. Most sub-Saharan economies depend on no more than three export commodities for 80% of their total exports, making them especially vulnerable to fluctuations in a world market over which they have no control.
World primary commodity prices collapsed beginning in the mid-1970s. Prices for Africa's most important commodities have fallen almost 50% since 1980. In 1986, average real commodity prices were at their lowest level in this century. They have continued to fall.
As a result of the massive drop in export earnings, African countries were forced to borrow heavily from Western governments, banks and institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in order to buy essential imports (often staple foods).
'Adjustment'
The policies of the IMF and the World Bank plunged these countries even deeper into crisis. IMF/World Bank loans come with stringent conditions. Governments have no choice but to implement "Structural Adjustment Programs" and comply with IMF and World Bank advice. A refusal results in a cut-off of further loans from all public or private financial sources in the capitalist world.
The thrust of these programs is to force the debtor to export more and spend less. Countries are forced to slash public spending, remove protection and allow unrestricted penetration by multinational corporations. Wage freezes and budget cuts are imposed. Government activity in the economy must be kept to a minimum (leading to , mass retrenchments of public sector workers and deregulation of the economy).
Budgets for health, education and welfare are the first to be cut. In the poorest 37 countries (most of which are in Africa), per capita spending on health has fallen by half over the last few years, and education by a quarter. Madagascar, which has a "strong" adjustment program according to the World Bank, has doubled its infant mortality since 1980. An estimated 150,000 people died in a malaria epidemic in 1988, which went unchecked because of a lack of medicines. Today, 1 million are desperately hungry in a largely unreported famine in southern Madagascar.
Rarely does the IMF demand cuts in military or police expenditures. This is not surprising: only governments prepared to use harsh repression will survive the popular discontent that usually follows implementation of a structural adjustment program.
There is a net transfer of around $1 billion annually from Africa to the IMF. Between 1982 and 1987, the poor nations of the world transferred to the advanced capitalist economies US$287 billion more than they received in new loans or aid.
IMF/World Bank policies have led to increased dependence on external aid, increased production of raw materials for export and increased dominance by multinational corporations. The IMF and World Bank force Third World countries to export more of a narrow range of primary products. Already glutted markets become more so, and already criminally low commodity prices continue to drop.
Human goals
For Africa to escape the nightmare requires a new, just and equal system of international economic relations.
One proposal that points in the right direction comes from the UNDP. It suggests that a number of "essential human goals" can be attained in the Third World by the year 2000. These include: basic education, primary health care and safe water for all; the elimination of serious malnutrition; at least 80% access to family planning; the creation of employment to absorb the new additions to the labour force and reduce absolute poverty by 50%; and significantly accelerated GDP growth rates.
These goals could be achieved, the UNDP argues, if the current debt-related net transfer of $50 billion a year to the industrial countries is halted by the cancellation of debt. If military spending throughout the world were reduced by at least 3% a year, by 2000 a total "peace dividend" of $1500 billion would be available. If OECD countries increased their foreign aid budgets to the international target of 0.7% of GNP (currently they average just 0.35%) another $51 billion each year could be directed to the world's poor.
Is the New World Order capable of such achievable goals? Will the Bush ominates the United Nations and easily found the $50 billion necessary to destroy Iraq during the Gulf War, now work towards ending the poverty of the Third World? The deliberate neglect of developing hunger throughout Africa and especially in Somalia over the past 18 months may provide the answers.