Irony Of The Debt's Situation In Africa example essay topic

Africa's Human And Environmental Problems Essay, ResearchAfrica's Human And Environmental Problems How are Africa's problems of poverty, hunger, debt and environmental deterioration inter-related? Poverty, hunger, Third World debt and environmental deterioration are four factors that are regarded by the international community as being intrinsically linked with Africa, more specifically sub-Saharan Africa 1. For years, the world community were either ignorant to or unaware of the plight of the African population, until such events as Band Aid (I & II) and recently Jubilee 2000 / Net Aid brought the situation to the forefront of public attention. Africa has since become very closely associated in public mind with the crisis of development, noted in a report for the Africa Review Group as "a crisis of government and people seemingly trapped in poverty and debt and in danger of being left behind as other nations become richer and stronger'2. Years of economic crisis have produced disaster with reference to the exports and balance of payments of African nations. Africa is regularly described as being in ' crisis', yet, some dispute the use of the word when looking at the history and contemporary situation of Africa, as a whole.

' Crisis's seems to denote a problem or problems that are prevailing, which are short term and seemingly solvable. This cannot be the case with reference to Africa. Firstly, it is difficult to generalise when speaking of Africa because of the sheer size and diversity of the continent: it is diverse in culture, language, history, geological and environmental make-up, political processes and general human and demographic development. So, we can't correctly say ' Africa is in crisis' because not all of Africa is in ' crisis', although much of sub-Saharan Africa is or has experienced the difficulties raised in this essay.

Secondly, crisis is a very ambiguous description of problems. It could refer to human or physical problems, and it is not a quantitative description, so to what degree of extremity must a problem get to become a crisis? How, if it has become qualitative, can ' crises' be measured? Perhaps to get a fuller understanding of the problems of Africa, the analysis of them should be factual and graphic, as opposed to descriptive and often emotional.

However, it is obvious that some proportion of moral judgement must be used to assess the problems because it is only this that encourages aid and charity; but humanitarian action and cold politics often do not mix particularly well, in the same way that people at home watch the appalling scenes of famine and degradation on their television screens, feel ' pangs of guilt' but do little about it. Sub-Saharan Africa's problems (predominantly food shortages, agricultural issues, natural disasters and increasing international debt) are ongoing. The rise of the debt burden, the expense of energy in developing countries and one of the fastest growing populations in the world has led parts of Africa into great strife. It is easy to see the Catch 22 situation the countries find themselves in.

It is a cyclical and worrying situation. People are hungry, but are too poor to buy enough food to live on, and they have an expanding family. In an attempt to subsistence farm the land, they cause the fragile environment to deteriorate. They cannot reap a big enough harvest, they are then hungry again.

The government is lent money by World banks or other governments, but it is put into feeding the people by importing foodstuffs and is not used as revenue generating capital. The country has increased debt, the money is a stopgap and the people begin to get hungry again. The cycle begins again and the outcomes are only negative hunger and debt, and poverty and poor environments. Of course, this model is simplistic and non-specific, but even with such a simple example it is easy to see what can happen to a country in a very short space of time. The problems these countries are facing are unresolved, and a solution does not look imminent, not without drastic measures, and assistance from oversees – be that aid or the cancellation of debt. So is this the only way the cycle can be broken, with foreign assistance?

What is the key factor that is going to help Africa help itself? Is it that people need to be educated in the ways of new agricultural technology, as has been seen to an extent in India's Green Revolution? These questions as well as the others that the average man in the street could ask have been and are still been asked in massively important global circles and committees. There are answers available, this is not the dispute, but what is the best answer, and is the process of implementation that is so problematic. Nigeria's economic growth declined in the 1970's, as the oil boom ended. The government decided to resort to large scale borrowing in order to pay heavy import bills, because the country could not produce enough food to provide for itself in the absence of economic and political incentives to farm.

Colonialism stopped people working the land in Nigeria, because it was overtaken by industrialisation and mining, and plantations. The country became increasingly urbanized. At the end of colonial rule, the people had fewer skills and less ability to farm effectively, and there was a lack of land because of the ' concrete jungle' created. Sutcliffe 3 outlines the irony of the ' debt's situation in Africa. He explains that the estimated total debt of all the countries in Africa is around $80 billion 4, which is over half of the gross continental product. The irony is that this indebtedness is literally and relatively far less than many other countries in the world, particularly Latin America.

It is just really unfortunate that the African population have had to suffer ' enforced declines in living standards' because they don't have the advantage of living in a credit worthy country, but instead a marginalised one. However, it is because the African nations involved are so acutely poor that even this small amount of debt and its accumulated interested can become ' inordinately burdensome'. Also, the relatively ' small' amount of debt owed by individual countries means that they have none of the ' debtors power' retained by some of the larger indebted nations such as Brazil or Argentina. This just shows that a country can have a ' debt crisis' without having such a massive amount of debt. It is always, therefore, relative to the wealth of the country.

The Ivory Coast and Kenya suffered because of the late 1970's fall in exported commodity prices. This caused increased foreign exchange problems as well as external indebtedness, although they recovered slightly to enjoy moderate success in the 1980's. Many countries in Africa became dependent on a single crop. Swaziland and Natal for example harvested mainly sugar cane. With the advent of the European Common Agricultural Policies, the EU began to encourage the production of sugar beet in European countries, thus they subsidised this production, undercutting the price of sugar cane, creating vulnerability and inability to sell sugar cane at profitable prices, leading to further debt and poverty. Adding to the problem was the reduction of sugar consumption in the Western world.

This system has become absurd because the EU was concurrently paying farmers in Europe to leave land fallow due to the fact that there is ' too much' food in the system. Indicated by the much publicised ' butter mountains' and ' wine lakes'. The inexperienced members of post-colonial, Socialist and one party governments attempted to implement over ambitious industrial development plans and policies which more often than not failed. Factories became extremely inefficient, production grinding to a halt at the slightest problem. This lack of industrial growth continued until the late 1980's, with only 5% of growth per year between 1973 and 1980, but was then negative until the early 1990's. Tordoff suggests 5 that the egalitarianism employed by the Socialist structures in many post colonial African states led to unsuccessful results.

He shows that both rural and urban workers were deprived of the success experienced by many in market economy based states who made the most of both the ecological conditions they had, and developed industrial revenue. Cameroon, Malawi, Senegal and Botswana all benefited from market economy or ' capitalism', Zaire, however found limited success. The success of these nations was measured by their relative GNP, but this can be an inaccurate yardstick to measure economic success because it does not take into account the baseline as a starting point, and statistics in some states can be inaccurate. Tordoff also suggests that, (even taking in to account the accomplishment of the aforementioned states), some countries rich in mineral resources tended to neglect rural economies, only realising this economic error when prices of commodities fell. Examples include ' oil rich' Nigeria and ' copper based' Zambia. It is essential for success in a stable and equal society that governments are concerned with all areas of the economy, as these countries experienced food shortages after their decrease in income from the reduction of export.

6 As a last resort, these and other countries attempted what Tordoff calls ' grandiose, over capitalised agricultural schemes that carried few benefits for the peasant farmer', thus still being resultant in food shortage and hunger, the projects often causing environmental damage. Debt was therefore increased because of the money spent on the unsuccessful programs, and the loss of export income; inability to wages led further to poverty and strife in rural and urban communities. Natural disasters in developing countries always appear to be more catastrophic than in, say, Los Angeles, USA. Africa, particularly, is vulnerable partly because globalisation marginalizes the poorest people into the underdeveloped areas of the World which are less naturally adapted to cope with such problems. The peoples' attempts to get what they can from the areas they live in can increase the chances of the disasters occur, and they have far fewer resources and far less money to cope with the consequences. Drought, flooding and general environmental deterioration are widespread in certain countries.

These problems are often influential to the problems of food shortage and therefore hunger and famine. The most drought-prone area of Africa runs through the Western African Sahel and Sudan into northern Ethiopia and Kenya. Over the past thirty years this region has experienced several periods of severe drought and subsequent crop failure, often leading to loss of human and animal life. The region is very vulnerable to drought, and therefore hunger because of a fast growing population, inconsistent rainfall patterns, some civil war and, importantly, bad management of farming land. These factors have put pressure on the natural resources the land has to offer, which are deficient to begin with. Thus, the loss of farmable land has meant that people are unable to grow enough food or graze animals on the land, thus this leads to hunger again.

It is ironic that the arid district of Sub-Saharan Africa is very small geographically, and so, relatively, is the population. A lot of the rest of Africa has favourable climatic conditions, and if long-term development was successful, the other areas would doubtless provide the people ' condemned' to life in drought ridden areas with hope, and somewhere more prosperous to settle. However, economic policies have almost ensured that many of the other areas which could be developed and industrialised have not been. Plantation farming began with colonial rule in the mid 1800's. It was then that the indigenous population were effectively forced off the land they were occupying, predominantly valleys and flat lands, it was here that the climatic and soil conditions were best for agricultural production and building. The plantation farmers, generally rich White colonialists, wanted the flat, fertile lands to grow monoculture crops.

Often, deforestation techniques were employed in order to create a large, open plan easily-farmed area. The planters gained their labour force in the form of African people, from various races and cultures, so their own individual cultures were eroded through the ' process of assimilation on the plantations'7. The result of the brutal and inhumane treatment of the slaves led to various revolts and the African's involved in the escapes established remote ' Maroon colonies' and became subsistence farmers. However, the revolts led to political and social change and helped in the abolition of slavery. After the abolition, the settlements away from the plantation lands, on the poor land, developed a type of peasantry. The land on the higher ground is very difficult to farm.

The soil is thin and rocky and the natural vegetation consists mostly of trees and spiny shrubs which need little water and have strong roots, holding the little soil there is in place. In order to make a living, the settlers removed the trees and vegetation to subsistence farm the land available to them. They have no access to fertiliser and the crops they grow on the land are generally poor. The land is then overgrazed and over farmed, and because of the deforestation and the removal of nutrients from the soil, along with the incline of the land (causing surface run-off), soil erosion is prevalent.

Eventually, there is not enough soil left to farm and the peasants are unable to produce food to feed themselves, generally this leads to hunger, but over a long period of time, when all the available land is used up (the crops produced on the plantations are sold for export, Nestle, Nescafe etc) then it can lead to famine and widespread poverty amongst the peasant population, typically in the dry seasons. When aid is appealed for, it arrives too late, more often than not. The aid organisations such as Oxfam or Unicef, need a relatively long period of time to raise public awareness, then raise the funds, buy the necessary supplies and then transport them to the areas that are in need of them. Often, by the time the aid arrives, there has been rainfall and the areas still able to harvest have done so, so there is ' native' food available.

The market is therefore flooded by the cheap or often free foreign aid, and this then depresses the prices of the African produce. The farmers are then unable to sell their grain and it often goes to waste or is sold at non-profit making prices. The aid, comparatively unneeded at this point competes unfairly with the African farmers, who lose out and again fall into a cycle of poverty and although they aren't going hungry in the meantime, they often don't have enough capital to raise a second crop. There are therefore fewer incentives to produce more food and the livelihoods of those who are already poor and indebted suffer, leading to greater debt and deprivation. As the African population continues to grow, (with the advent of better health care and a fall in infant mortality), they are becoming increasingly dependent on imports of food. However, they are not generating the capital to pay for it, getting deeper in debt all the time.

This has become a a wholly unsustainable process. In conclusion, it is obvious that the four problems are intrinsically linked. They all occur as a result of another, but the debt seems to be the biggest problem, the one which is hardest to solve. In order to try and resolve the interrelating problems, many African countries have borrowed from the World Bank, however conditions have been imposed to enable them to do so. These conditions take the form of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) which aimed to promote economic and industrial growth through stabilisation of the economy and more effective resource allocation, at the same time reducing marginalisation. The SAPs were originally meant to be ' short term' measures, but some nations have been held under the weight of these conditions for over 15 years.

The World Bank has imposed conditions of improving health and education services and the environment. This is incompatible with goal of the reduction of state expenditure and therefore the problems remain interrelated because debt cannot be alleviated without borrowing but the programs cannot be successful without injection of state money; the nations can't keep up the repayments and conditions of the loan in combination, thus exacerbating the problems of poverty and therefore hunger. Jubilee 2000 is project headed by academics and people in the public eye (such as U 2's Bono David Bowie and Dave Stewart). It aims to put pressure on the IMF and international governments to get them to cancel Africa's debts, therefore allowing Africa to become self-sufficient and be free of the burden of constant interest repayments.

It is clear that without this cancellation, it seems implausible that Africa will be able to repay the debts in the foreseeable future without further borrowing or aid.