The Parsimony of Oil Wealth
The scourge of mass starvation is once again visiting various countries in Africa. Drought after yearly drought, warfare resulting in mass displacements of farming populations and the malicious neglect in some instances of ruling despots have created a situation of persistent famine.Aid agencies are beside themselves with worry over how they will ever fulfil their mandate to help feed the starving masses. We are told that a colossal change in the world's weather patterns is affecting Africa disproportionately, leading to these droughts, season after season. The World Food Bank is overwhelmed.
Roughly twenty million people are being fed in Africa because of the fall-out of the latest drought. Kenya, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Sudan all are desperate for food support. Some of these situations can be directly attributed to the malign governance of countries like Zimbabwe and Sudan, where the former threw out long-time white farmers whose work was directly responsible in maintaining agricultural prosperity for the country. In Sudan black farmers have been murdered by marauding Janjaweed militias who covet the farmed land for their own pasturage.
Moreover, where once countries suffering from massive drought conditions were able, once the drought situation had passed, to pick up once again and plant viable crops and bring them to harvest, this is becoming increasingly difficult as these countries are finding it more and more difficult to recover with each succeeding drought situation. Gone too, because of crop failures, are the vital seeds for the following year's planting and harvest.
Pastoral farmers in eastern Kenya face additional difficulties, as their cattle can no longer graze where drought has wiped out traditional grazing lands. They watch in helpless misery as their prized cattle die of starvation; the very herds upon which they themselves depend to stave off their own starvation.
Half of the World Food Agency's work is being conducted in countries which are members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Muslim Africa. Black Africa. Fully less than one percent of this United Nations Agency funding comes from Arab countries. The World Food Program and other UN agencies have gone cap in hand to open offices in the United Arab Emirates in an effort to increase the amount of aid Arab countries have thus far been willing to extend. Heretofore funding has come primarily from the stricken consciences of the Western world.
What message are we to take from this?
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, March 09, 2006
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