allAfrica.com: Africa: Unnatural Disaster (Page 1 of 2)

While the mainstream media doesn't always ignore the pressing issue of hunger in Africa, it rarely explores the root causes of this problem. Behind most news on the issue, there's an assumption that casts hunger as a natural result of unfortunate weather conditions, coupled with bureaucratic inefficiency and bad economic planning.

With this in mind, in 2005 the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced a plan to "help millions of small-scale farmers lift themselves out of poverty and hunger." In the years since, the foundation has been joined in its efforts by a number of other organizations that have founded the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

ACCORDING TO AGRA

AGRA programs develop practical solutions to significantly boost farm productivity and incomes for the poor while safeguarding the environment. AGRA advocates for policies that support its work across all key aspects of the African agricultural "value chain"-from seeds, soil health, and water to markets and agricultural education.... A root cause of... entrenched and deepening poverty is the fact that millions of small-scale farmers-the majority of them women working farms smaller than one hectare-cannot grow enough food to sustain their families, their communities, or their countries.

AGRA's assumptions -- and those of the mainstream media -- rest on the premise that the Africa's hunger problem is one of production. While production may be part of the story, it's far from the complete picture. The heart of the agriculture crisis that Africa and the world are currently experiencing lies in the failed policy paradigm promoted by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, institutions that still have enormous control over economic policy in many African countries.

WORLD BANK ROLE

The World Bank's intervention in African agriculture began in 1981 with the study Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action. Also known as the Berg Report, the study paved the way for World Bank involvement in the African agriculture sectors. The Berg Report prescriptions represent the first incarnation of the market fundamentalist policies that have been dominant in the African agricultural sector thereafter.

Since the Berg report, the World Bank has insisted on market liberalization and privatization of Africa's agricultural markets. Subsidies of all kinds have decreased since 1981 and most state marketing boards and crop authorities have been greatly weakened or eliminated. No one -- including the World Bank -- denies that the net result of this policy is to expose small farmers to increased shocks. But the World Bank argues that shocks may be beneficial, in that exposure to actual market fluctuations will lead small farmers to grow high-value export crops instead of low value crops for local consumption. This "rational peasant" theory, as it was known in the 1980s, argued that small farmers shifting to high value exports such as coffee, sugar, cut flowers, etc. would ultimately bring in more money to the domestic economy, enabling rapid growth and development.

MARKET FUNDAMENTALISM

This theory -- that government regulation should get be eliminated so that the market can do its job of "getting the prices right" -- underlines World Bank thinking not only in the 1981 Berg report but also in their 2008 World Development Report, titled Agriculture for Development. Twenty years of the same failed policies are apparently not enough for the World Bank to change its tune.

The World Bank's continued market fundamentalism is difficult to understand, especially in light of the fact that after more than 25 years of imposing these policies in Africa and Latin America, success stories are few and far between. Those countries that do have productive agricultural sectors (almost none of which are in Africa) either rely on huge landholders to be productive (Brazil, Argentina, Chile) or on massive subsidies (India) or both (U.S., EU). The countries that have eliminated their subsidies and privatized their grain boards, including many in Africa, are those that are doing the poorest.

In fairness, one or two changes can be seen in the World Bank's thinking between 1981 and today. The first can be seen as an admission of failure -- migration to more developed countries and the subsequent flow of remittances to families left behind, is mentioned as part of a strategy for reducing rural poverty (p. 73). While this is certainly true in the current global economy, there are few who would argue that forced migration is a path to development. Anecdotal evidence suggests that remittances may have a slightly greater correlation to development than the correlation between aid and development, but this is hardly high praise, considering the failures of the aid programs of the last 30 years.

The second concession that the 2008 WDR makes to reality (as opposed to market fundamentalist ideology) is an allowance for targeted subsidies. While subsidies have historically been a four-letter word for the World Bank, in recent years the Bank has come under fire for insisting on market liberalization in developing countries while acknowledging that developed countries have much higher subsidies than those in African countries. The World Bank's answer to this is to continue to talk about various kinds of subsidies that distort trade and the need to stay away from those policies, while simultaneously allowing for the possibility of targeted subsidies to help the poorest of farmers who may be the most vulnerable to price shocks. This may be a step forward, but it is a small one and does little to relieve the burden of over 20 years of lost African development for which the World Bank bears a large share of responsibility.

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