The Challenge for Africa (31 page)

Many national agricultural policies have relied on buying “cheap food” (such as corn, wheat, and white rice) in international markets, usually from large producers in industrialized nations. But such food is no longer cheap, and was never particularly healthy—and, indeed, is much less nutritious than the beans, grains, greens, root crops, and fruits that formed the basis of many traditional diets. Since, as has already been described, many cash crop producers are subsistence farmers who receive very little for their harvests, with payments often delayed, the result of all these policies taken together is that throughout Africa farming families experience hunger and malnutrition where their own parents and grandparents had surplus food.

For decades, the African elites have ignored agriculture because of an attitude that working the land is only for the uneducated.
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Even those with agricultural degrees in Africa generally prefer to work in an office in a capital city rather than provide agricultural extension services to farmers. Contrast this with the work that land-grant universities in the United States have undertaken for almost 150 years. They helped to professionalize farming, supporting those with land who wanted to farm but didn't have the knowledge to do so, and educated the waves of immigrants who came to the United States possessing only rudimentary farming techniques.

How can Africa maximize the potential of subsistence farmers—such as the woman I saw on the hillside in Yaoundé, those whom I represented as a member of parliament, and those who form the bulk of the communities the Green Belt Movement works with? Clearly, African governments need to invest in making agriculture—and farmers—more productive. As the actions of the farmers on the hillside of Yaoundé suggest,
African agricultural extension services have been underfunded. At the same time, other regions outside Africa have increased food production in scale and efficiency, and have used subsidies, fertilizers, and mechanization that have allowed them not only to feed themselves but to produce food so cheaply that it undercuts local African markets. Because of corruption and the uncertainty of international commodities markets, the cash crop economy has not enriched ordinary Africans.

At the beginning of this book I suggested that we need to focus development efforts where Africans are, and that much of Africa is with that woman farmer on the hillside in Yaoundé. At the very least, I would like to see not poor farmers scrabbling to produce tea or cassava on a piece of land that long ago lost its productivity, but rather cooperatives that provide farmers with accurate and timely information about their crops and weather conditions, affordable essential inputs, and vibrant local and regional food markets. Governments will need to institute and enforce policies that ensure fair prices for their farmers in the global economy—for both commodities and products with added value. This will also entail a commitment to rooting out corruption in parastatal agencies that, as in the case of the coffee farmers in my constituency in Kenya, further exploit and impoverish small farmers.

Africa needn't intensify its farming sector so that it takes on the character of the industrial-style agriculture that dominates the West and, increasingly, parts of the East. As we are learning, industrial farming may be efficient, but it has enormous downsides for the environment—from destruction of biodiversity to heavy dependence on fossil fuels and chemical fertilizer, to massive water use and runoff that fouls rivers and creates marine “dead zones.” Indeed, a recent UN assessment concluded that this method of farming is no longer viable in a world of resource constraints and climate change. The report's
authors recommend a rapid shift to more ecological and sustainable ways of producing food.
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Africa does have options: only 7 percent of arable land is under irrigation.
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While there may be opportunities to increase this, so that the majority of African farmers aren't wholly dependent on rain to water their crops, irrigation systems are expensive and inappropriate for regions where water is already scarce. Governments in Africa, as well as individuals, need to do all that they can to improve land and water management—by, for instance, preventing erosion by covering the soil with vegetation and trees, avoiding overgrazing, harvesting water, and retaining essential nutrients in the soil.

African leaders also need to address the way they look at land—and to employ it equitably for their people's benefit. There are many small-scale farmers in Africa who are not using their land in the most efficient way. If, for example, someone like Njoya had been a better farmer, and the government had provided him with an agriculture extension service, he would have had no need to be on another person's land.

Given the inequitable distribution of land in many countries in Africa, and the inequities perpetuated by governance and economic systems that are inherently unjust, it is difficult to wholly avoid incidents of people or peoples fighting for access to resources—especially when politicians use land to incite violence. Furthermore, those without land will find it difficult to accept that some in their country may own thousands of acres. Despite the passions and ongoing controversies inflamed by land ownership in Africa, however, there can never be any excuse to take another's life.

The ultimate goal cannot be simply to make subsistence farming easier. While some redistribution is important, it is my belief that not every African needs, or must have, a parcel of land they can call their own. Given population growth, not
enough land is available without drastic encroachment into forests and reserves. If Africans did try to utilize entire land-masses for crops or grazing, they would destroy the complex natural systems upon which agriculture, and indeed all life, depends. Therefore, while it is important that Africa's farmers thrive, Africa cannot just rely on agriculture and commodities to develop. Once again, governments need to increase the capacities of their peoples in other areas.

In so doing, they could encourage the growth of sustainable industries that provide good employment in well-managed cities and towns—not the crowded, filthy slums with virtually no infrastructure that blot too many African cities and too many Africans' lives. Africans can also, like citizens in other regions of the world, work to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels and harness renewable energy sources to industrialize in a way that provides work for the millions of Africans migrating to cities, and allows some of those currently practicing subsistence agriculture to move off the land. While it would be preferable for Robert Njoya to grow his own food rather than poach wild animals, ownership and exploitation of land cannot remain the only way to become wealthy in Africa in the twenty-first century.

CLIMATE CHANGE
will bring massive ecological and economic challenges. In such a context, therefore, alleviating dehumanizing poverty—and achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—will become even more difficult. The MDGs, agreed upon by the UN General Assembly in 2000, increasingly guide global development policies, practices, and aid flows around the world. As some observers have noted, they are imperfect measures—not least because, when they were announced, different regions of the developing world had made more progress toward achieving the goals than others; sub-Saharan Africa was, overall, the furthest behind. Nevertheless, the MDGs offer a useful heuristic device not only as a tool to analyze development in general, but as measures against which the commitment of leaders in both the rich industrialized countries and the developing world to progress in human welfare and sustainable development can and should be judged.

The eight MDGs, to be met by 2015, are: 1) eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; 2) achieve universal primary education; 3) promote gender equality and empower women; 4) reduce child mortality; 5) improve maternal health; 6) combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases; 7) ensure environmental sustainability; and 8) develop a global partnership for development.

Achieving each of the eight MDGs depends heavily on healthy ecosystems; but this fact is often overlooked, and the seventh MDG has not received as much attention as the others.
In my view, however, it is the most important, and all of the other goals should be organized around it. What happens to the ecosystem affects everything else, as is illustrated by an example from the Central Highlands of Kenya.

The environment on and around Mount Kenya and the Aberdare mountain ranges has gradually degenerated, and the biological diversity that led Mount Kenya to be designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO is threatened. The Aberdares serve as one of Kenya's main water towers—a system of natural reservoirs that hold moisture in snow and mist, in soil and vegetation, and in aquifers above- and belowground. For decades, these mountain ecosystems have been ravaged by deforestation, illegal logging, nonindigenous plantations, overcultivation, and other forms of human encroachment. Yet within the mountains' forests lies some of the most fertile soil in Kenya, and the glaciers and rainfall the forests attract feed hundreds of tributaries of the largest river in Kenya, the Tana. The Tana flows 440 miles from the Central Highlands to the Indian Ocean and provides drinking water for millions of Kenyans in major urban centers, including the capital, Nairobi. These water resources, and the forests, are essential for Kenya's agriculture, livestock, tourism, and energy sectors, as well as household water and fuel.

If the mountains' ecosystems continue to be degraded, it will become impossible to achieve the MDGs in Kenya. With the destruction of the mountains' forests and the gradual disappearance of glaciers (apparently due to climate change), the Tana's water flow is reduced. Simultaneously, massive deposits of river-borne silt reduce the lifespan of the dams built across the river. Both lead to lost capacity for hydropower, which provides 60 percent of Kenya's energy.
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Without this (clean) energy, Kenya is unable to provide electricity to a very large part of her rural and urban populations.

The dearth of adequate and reliable sources of energy stymies the possibilities of further rural electrification as well as national industrial growth. Demand for power in Kenya is growing by an average of 7 percent per year.
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Due to shortfalls in hydropower that go back many years, Kenya has been forced to buy power from Uganda—with money that should have been used for development. In so doing, the government sacrifices other priorities like combating HIV/AIDs, malaria, and other diseases (MDG 6) and improving maternal health (MDG 5). Shortages of electricity also mean that poor people in rural and urban areas use wood fuel for energy, furthering deforestation and limiting prospects that MDG 7 will be achieved.

Agriculture in Kenya, as in most of Africa, is watered by rain, not irrigation systems. With the destruction of the mountain forests, rainfall patterns are affected, and with them, yields from cash and food crops. Small-scale farmers working degraded soils are among the poorest people in Kenya. For them and their families, not having enough nutritious food to eat is a common phenomenon. The lack of regular rainfall, therefore, also undermines prospects for eradicating extreme poverty and hunger (MDG 1) and reducing child deaths (MDG 4) from causes associated with malnutrition.

The loss of the forests also means that no vegetation remains to hold the soil in its place. As a result, enormous amounts of valuable topsoil are swept or blown away. When rainwater runs downstream through lands that are extensively cultivated, it can cause massive soil erosion and sometimes flooding, which not only damages farms and food crops, but can displace people from their homes. When the rains fail, and subsequently crops, aid in the form of food, clothing, and shelter from the government or donor agencies becomes necessary. In 2005, three million people, or nearly 10 percent of the population
of Kenya, were dependent on government food aid. In such an unsettled—and at times desperate—situation, children's schooling is disrupted, and in this context governments cannot hope to achieve universal primary education (MDG 2).

As deforestation gathers speed, women are forced to walk longer and longer distances to find wood for cooking and heating and clean water. In times of environmental difficulty, children, particularly girls, may be taken out of school to help with harvests and the collection of wood and water, or to look after their younger siblings as their mother's workload increases. Thus, protecting the mountain forests would help achieve gender equality (MDG 3) and improve the chances that all girls complete primary school, and as a result have a chance to continue their education to a higher level (MDG 2).

In addition, many of Kenya's national parks, and the wildlife within them, benefit from the Tana River and the rainfall from Mount Kenya and the Aberdares. (The presence of two species of monkey, more commonly found in Uganda and Congo, in the Tana basin is a reminder of the rainforests that once covered much of Africa from west to east.) If the mountains' ecosystems are destroyed, the savannahs will not be sustained. Tourism then will be a thing of the past, even though it's one of the most important sectors of the Kenyan economy and a major generator of employment, which, of course, contributes to poverty reduction. It goes without saying that city dwellers also depend on the environment's capacity to provide food, sources of energy, and water.