Business Daily (Nairobi)
James Shikwati
21 October 2009
opinion
The rate at which do-gooder forces are unleashing despair on Africa can turn even the most ardent optimist into a cynic.
The chorus goes like this: Sub Saharan countries have failed to achieve Millennium Development Goals (pump in more money!); Global Hunger Index shows 220 million are faced with chronic hunger (pump in more money!); Children are dying of preventable diseases (pump in more money!) Pray tell what is the African's response to all these?
Let us assume for example, that hunger is an enemy in military terms.
Hunger is armed with four simple tools.
First the law on property rights - farmers who used to feed Africa find themselves disenfranchised from their own land following use of law to award governments land (conflict between African governments and ethnic communities).
Second, the African women find themselves landless at a stroke of a pen courtesy of an "invading legal system" that chose to recognize the male as the sole owner of property (conflict between men and women - basic unit of society).
Third, it is the foods, the injudicious adaptation of exotic crops.
Farmers spend years learning just how to manage them (conflict on whether indigenous foods are truly synonymous to illiteracy and one being "uncivilized")
Fourth, it is corruption of African sense of knowledge by the know-it all-try this-try-that "experts."
On the war front, we have African farmers armed with machetes, hoes, sticks and prayer for good rains.
The international community gives its usual refrain - pump in more money!
It may come as a surprise to some but my mother (in Africa) owns our land just as much as my father does.
According to the Western legal and land registry system, my father has the legal title to our land.
He can sell it, use it to gain access to credit, and decide to commercialize it among other activities but my mother cannot!
On the other hand, it is my mother who spends 90 per cent of her time hoe-in-hand on land.
Culturally, the land is hers, the land is hers as a mother to my fathers children - me!
African women produce 60 - 80 per cent of the food on the continent.
The seed banks we so much benefit from and agricultural knowledge passed on generation to generation was largely done by women.
Indigenous societies' respect for strategic knowledge held by women kept agriculture alive.
African women were rendered without property when Western legal system clashed with the indigenous ones.
Women ownership of land in the new system stands at only 1 per cent of arable land in the continent.
Why then are we surprised when Africa experiences famine?
The focus ought not only to be to pump in more money but to address the context that renders farmers weak in the war against famine.
A broader approach that recognizes the interconnectedness of events (past and present), activities and natural history ought to inform policy framework on war on hunger and poverty.
Wiping out the dangerous attitude that do-gooders will fix Africa is of primary importance.
To increase food productivity, a revised recognition of property ownership that respects indigenous titles to women ought to be revived.
"If credit drove wealthy nations into an economic recession, what makes them assume that pumping debt to Africa will lead to development?" a South African colleague asked recently.
Instead of pumping more money into Africa and thereby subjecting the already ill-equipped farmer into another debt crisis; focus should be on attitude change.
The African person must not equate sense of causation to conspiracy theory.
It is through understanding what causes a problem that one can provide a solution.
Shikwati is director, Inter Region Economic Network.
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