In Africa, 200 million people are undernourished.

July 26, 2004 11:44 AM

Realizing the Promise and Potential of African Agriculture
Africa is rich in both natural and human resources, yet nearly 200 million of its people are undernourished because of inadequate food supplies. Comprehensive strategies are needed across the continent to harness the power of science and technology (S&T) in ways that boost agricultural productivity, profitability, and sustainability -- ultimately ensuring that all Africans have access to enough safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs. This report addresses the question of how science and technology can be mobilized to make that promise a reality.
posted by tcp (13 comments total)

Step 1: Stop killing your neighbor and his entire family because they are from a different tribe.
posted by Ayn Marx at 1:37 PM on July 26, 2004

Step 1: Stop killing your neighbor and his entire family because they are from a different tribe.
posted by Ayn Marx at 10:37 PM CET on July 26

Things fall apart.
posted by four panels at 1:43 PM on July 26, 2004

Sam Kinison, at the Comedy Store, 1983:

"Imagining himself, improbably, as a frustrated aid worker, Sam rants, “It occurs to us there wouldn’t BE world hunger if you people would LIVE WHERE THE FOOD IS AT! YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT! YOU SEE THIS, HUH? THIS IS SAND! KNOW WHAT IT’S GONNA BE A HUNDRED YEARS FROM NOW? SAND! GET YOUR SHIT, WE’LL MAKE ONE TRIP, WE’LL TAKE YOU WHERE THE FUCKING FOOD IS AT! WE HAVE DESERTS IN AMERICA, WE JUST DON’T LIVE IN THEM, ASSHOLE!”

posted by dhoyt at 2:07 PM on July 26, 2004

This might help coastal Africa, although it won't solve the political problems that are at the base of most agricultural nightmares (Zimbabwe, I'm looking at you)....
posted by aramaic at 2:21 PM on July 26, 2004

Step 2: dump socialism, communism, and Europe as things to look up to.
posted by ParisParamus at 2:38 PM on July 26, 2004

Step 3: *
Step 4: Profit!

* This is some sort of in-joke thread where we all make the dumbest comments possible right?
posted by srboisvert at 3:32 PM on July 26, 2004

This is the entire Executive Summary"

African agriculture holds much promise and potential. This report addresses the question of how science and technology can be mobilized to make that promise come true.

I wonder what executive wants a summary barely longer than the report title? No way am I reading the whole thing.
posted by srboisvert at 3:36 PM on July 26, 2004

WE HAVE DESERTS IN AMERICA, WE JUST DON’T LIVE IN THEM, ASSHOLE!”

Bullshit. The fastest growing urban areas in the U.S.--Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Antonio, the Eastern suburbs of LA and Orange County--are all in the desert. No one lives in the fucking Sahara, and sub-Saharan Africa has more arable land than Europe. The problem is not a lack of fertile land.

Aramaic is right. Africa's problems are problems of management. And it has nothing to do with communism or socialism, Paris (in fact, the most successful economy in sub-Saharan Africa is currently led by a former communist). Any African regimes that use those words use them simply out of habit from the cold war: they were code for "Soviet Union, please send us guns!". Through most of sub-Saharan Africa, there is one system of government: kleptocracy. Corruption, cronyism, and petty tyranny dominate the political climate. Government simply does not function.

And what the fuck is with Mugabe's Hitler-stache? If the facial hair fits, wear it, I suppose...
posted by mr_roboto at 3:43 PM on July 26, 2004

I wonder what executive wants a summary barely longer than the report title? No way am I reading the whole thing.
posted by srboisvert at 3:36 PM PST on July 26
It's Kofi Annan. And I agree, it's nothing to give a careful perusal to.

I just read an article about juvenile delinquency in Kapstadt / South Africa in the newspaper "Die Zeit" today. You can find the german article here. I know it is sort of stupid to derail my own thread since this is a different problem (or at least not directly related), but it showed to me that even those regions that are considered to be on the way upward are hell on earth as soon as you leave the tourist route.

The problems described in this article are not consequences of "killing your neighbor and his entire family because they are from a different tribe" or "socialism, communism, and Europe as things to look up to", although Europe for sure played its part in this tragedy, and it is also not the cause of "living in the desert" (sarcasm detector is turned on and working), for it takes place in Cape Town, precisely in a province called Manenberg . Please note that Pagad, the organisation which the Manenberg link goes to is itself a criminal organization that has been prohibited in 1998 after a bomb attack at the restaurant "Planet America" in Cape Town. It was formed by (mostly conservative muslim) business people as a militia against the street crime in 1996, then killed some of the gang leaders and the whole thing ended like the story with the Hydra.

Manenberg, that is 50 000 people in two square kilometre of hopelesness. There are times in which a murder happenes everyday. In May 2003 for example it have been 37. According to a local newspaper survey, 45 percent of the people in Manenberg have seen a family member being murdered, every third child had to witness how someone had been shot or stabbed to death in their own home. 72 percent of the population is out of work. The district is divided up by a dozen of gangs called "Americans", "Taliban" (the "Americans" are much more powerful than the "Taliban", if that eases someone), "Clever Kids" or "Dixi Boys".
Those guys have a comprehensive "credit point system" which gives you a certain amount of credibility for killing or raping someone (for example, raping a black hooker won't give you as much points as raping a white student). They don't have to fear the police because there are only 80 policeman responsible for 200 000 people in that region. Besides that, a lot of them are on the gangsters' payroll.

(...to be continued later on if someone is interested)
posted by tcp at 3:48 PM on July 26, 2004

There have been so many agro-technical disasters in Africa that it makes your head spin. A few successes.
1) Actual starvation is invariably caused by local authorities *preventing* food from reaching some hated minority.
2) Malnutrition, however, is much more widespread. It is a part of the "inexpensive solutions to devastating problems" such as anti-dysentary powder packets, GE vitamin-A enriched rice (prevents beri-beri), iodized salt and vitamin-D milk powder, and eyedrops to prevent infantile blindness given once after birth.
3) "Next-step" technologies help a great deal. You don't give them something "new", you give them a slightly evolved version of something they know, which is "better." A good example is foot-turned pottery wheels to replace hand-turned. It radically improves their productivity with something they understand, and can re-create if necessary.
4) Microbanking. In a free-market society, most of them, capital concentration can work wonders in creating small business--the largest per capita employer. The simple idea of a business loan is revolutionary in most of the world.
5) Microinternationalisation. A new idea, consignment production and export of products that are overabundant in their local market, but valuable in the first world. For example, the largest employer in Afghanistan is a US-based consignment "dot-com", that buys high quality woven materials from women who work at home. The women get many times the local value for their goods and the US company sells them in the US at high prices. Current rate of expansion is 3x to 5x each year. They already employ several thousand women.

Each of these are adaptable to African agribusiness.
posted by kablam at 4:02 PM on July 26, 2004

I saw Youssou N'dour in concert the other night. Does that count?
posted by Eekacat at 5:18 PM on July 26, 2004

"Step 1: Stop killing your neighbor and his entire family because they are from a different tribe." - This is rule #1 in "Handbook for the Human race", right ?

Right ?.....

Meanwhile - Seed ball agriculture
posted by troutfishing at 6:58 PM on July 26, 2004

Outside of South Africa, the lack of rule of law is crushing. Inside South Africa, the tragedy is that a society with the rule of law is starting to abandon it out of misplaced and fantasizing idelogies. Hopefully they can look to Zimbabwe and see where that road inevitably leads.
posted by MattD at 5:55 AM on July 27, 2004