Africa Hunger and Poverty
Facts
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that
239 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were hungry/undernourished in 2010
(its most recent estimate). 925 million people were hungry worldwide. Africa
was the continent with the second largest number of hungry people, as Asia and
the Pacific had 578 million, principally due to the much larger population of
Asia when compared to sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa actually had the
largest proportion of its population undernourished, an estimated 30 percent in
2010, compared to 16 percent in Asia and the Pacific (FAO 2010). Thus
almost one in three people who live in sub-Saharan Africa were hungry, far
higher than any other region of the world, with the exception of South Asia.
In 2008, 47 percent of the population of sub-Saharan
Africa lived on $1.25 a day or less. (United Nations 2012).
What are the causes of hunger and poverty in Africa?
In general, the principal causes of poverty are
harmful economic systems, conflict, environmental factors such as drought
and climate change, and population growth (WHES 2012). Poverty itself is
a major cause of hunger. All are very important as causes of poverty and hunger
in sub-Saharan Africa.
Poverty
Poverty is the principal cause of hunger in Africa and
elsewhere. Simply put, people do not have sufficient income to purchase
enough food. Conflict and drought, for example, are certainly important causes
of hunger, but the most typical situation is that people just do not have
enough income to purchase the food that they need—they could be starving in
some slum somewhere, for example. As noted above, in 2008, 47 percent of
the population of sub-Saharan Africa lived on $1.25 a day or less, a principal
factor in causing widespread hunger.
Harmful economic systems
Hunger Notes believes that the principal underlying cause
of poverty and thus hunger in Africa and elsewhere is the ordinary operation of
the world's economic and political systems. Essentially control over resources
and income is based on military, political and economic power that typically
ends up in the hands of a minority, who live well, while those at the bottom
barely survive. We have described the operation of this system in more detail
in our special section on Harmful economic systems. The role that harmful
economic systems play cannot be demonstrated briefly and should not be taken as
confirmed truth by students, who should nevertheless consider it seriously.
Controlling the government and other sources of power and income is a
fundamental way of obtaining income. Freedom in the World is an annual
index that measures the degree that people have political rights and civil
liberties. See its (mainly low) freedom rankings for sub-Saharan African
countries http://www.freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-world.
One way that those in positions of power obtain income is through
corruption. The 2011 map of perceived corruption worldwide
done by Transparency International (2011) shows that many sub-Saharan African
nations are viewed as corrupt.
Conflict
2011 saw suffering on an
epic scale. For so many lives to have been thrown into turmoil over so short a
space of time means enormous personal cost for all who were affected. We can be
grateful only that the international system for protecting such people held
firm for the most part and that borders were kept open. –Antonio
Guterres, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR 2012)
Conflict is a principal source of human misery, including
poverty and hunger. Poverty rates are 20 percentage points higher in countries
affected by repeated cycles of violence over the last three decades. Every year
of violence in a country is associated with lagging poverty reduction of nearly
one percentage point. People living in countries currently affected by violence
are twice as likely to be undernourished and 50 percent more likely to be
impoverished. Their children are three times as likely to be out of school
. Countries with serious human rights abuses or weak government
effectiveness, rule of law, and control of corruption have a 30 - 45 percent
higher risk of civil war, and significantly higher risk of extreme criminal
violence than other developing countries (World Bank 2011b).
The threat of death and serious injury resulting from
conflict can result in such a desperate situation that people leave their
homes. This is in spite of the fact that this requires leaving nearly
everything behind: house and land, sources of income, and most
possessions, becoming uprooted from the place where you have lived (which
was home and loved), to go--typically a journey of great danger--in search of a
better alternative, which is usually a very bare bones refugee camp or other
marginal situation. Africa had an estimated 13.5 million refugees and
internally displaced persons in 2011, as Table 1 indicates. While not all
refugees are caused by conflict/violence, most of them are.
Table 1. African refugees, internally displaced persons
(IDPs), returnees (refugees and IDPs, and others of concern to
UNHCR (end-2011)
|
Type
|
Number
(millions)
|
|
Refugees
|
3.5
|
|
Internally
displaced people (IDPs)
|
7.0
|
|
Returned
refugees and IDPs
|
2.6
|
|
Other
|
0.4
|
|
Africa
total
|
13.5
|
|
World
total
|
35.4
|
|
Africa
as % of world
|
38%
|
--Adapted from UNHCR 2012 p 45
Environment
Africa faces serious
environmental challenges, including erosion, desertification, deforestation,
and most importantly drought and water shortages, which have increased poverty
and hunger by reducing agricultural production and people's incomes. Many
of these challenges have been caused by humans; the environment can be said to
be overexploited. Deforestation, for example, has been caused by humans
seeking new places to live, farm, or obtain firewood. Drought, water
shortage and desertification in Africa have been caused to some extent by
global warming, which has mostly been caused by the effects of human energy use
outside of Africa.
Population growth
Africa's population has been increasing rapidly, growing
from 221 million in 1950 to 1 billion in 2009. Africa, the world's
poorest continent, has the highest population growth rate. A woman in
sub-Saharan Africa will give birth to an average of 5.2 children in her
lifetime (Guardian 2011). This rapid growth, along with other negative factors
such as harmful economic systems, conflict and deterioration in the
environment, has limited growth in per capita income, causing poverty and
hunger.
Bibliography
Freedom House. 2012. Freedom in the World
2012http://www.freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-world
Food and Agriculture Organization. 2010. The
State of Food Insecurity in the World 2010http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/i1683e/i1683e.pdf .
Guardian, The. October 22, 2011. "Global population
growth fears put to the test in Africa's expanding cities." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/22/global-population-growth-africa-cities
Transparency International. 2011. Corruption
Perceptions Index 2011http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/
United Nations. 2012. "Millenium Development
Goals Report 2012"http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/MDG%20Report%202012.pdf.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 2012.
"Global Trends 2011." (41 page PDF file) http://www.unhcr.org/4fd6f87f9.html
World Bank. 2011a. World Development Report 2011:
Conflict, Security, and Development. http://wdr2011.worldbank.org/fulltext
World Bank. 2011b. "WDR 2011 Facts and
Figures."http://wdr2011.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/ENGLISH_WDR2011_FACTS_FIGURES.pdf
World Hunger Education Service. 2012. "World
Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics"http://worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm
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