Food Deficits and Agricultural Policies in Tropical Africa

Hunger is the most immediate, visible, and compelling symptom of a continent-wide agricultural breakdown in tropical Africa. The crisis of food deficits has now become so perennial and so widespread that it can no longer be understood as the outcome of particular political or climatic occurrences such as wars, ethnic strife, or drought. SubSaharan Africa is the only region in the world where food production per capita has declined during the past two decades. As a result, the average calorie intake per capita has now fallen below minimal nutritional standards in a majority of African countries. By current estimates, approximately 150 million out of Africa's 450 million people suffer from some form of malnutrition originating in an inadequate supply of foodstuffs. This abysmal picture is further highlighted by the fact that the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations recently indicated that no fewer than 28 African countries were faced with food shortages so critical that further famine might occur imminently. This stark reality challenges fundamentally our earlier assumptions about the possibility of economic devlopment.