In his July 11, 2009 address to Ghana, Obama boasted this positive message; “You have the power to hold your leaders accountable, and to build institutions that serve the people. You can serve in your communities, and harness your energy and education to create new wealth and build new connections to the world. You can conquer disease, end conflicts, and make change from the bottom up. You can do that. Yes you can. Because in this moment, history is on the move.”
Empowering Ghana, Africa to Promote Change
At the heart of his powerful address was an even more powerful message: that Africa's historic dependence upon foreign nations for continued support should come to an end. Targeting rural farmers in his speech, Obama declared that Africa should shift their reliance upon hand-outs and excessive foreign aid, and instead strive to develop systems of sustainable economics and food production. In Africa, this must be recognized as the fundamental goal of any and all efforts to promote positive shifts in national economic and agricultural growth.
Criticism roared over Obama's strategy, mainly attacking Obama for not being sensitive to the real reasons that Africa remains a nation in distress. Resident economist Samah El-Shahat from Al Jazeera writes that Obama's strategy is contradictory, as it fails to identify the core of the issue, which is, she says, that Africa's lack of prosperity is due not solely to poor governance, but also to adjustment policies set in place by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank. These policies, she says, “have uprooted the agricultural infrastructure that Africa had in place”.
Obama does state that national development is based on good governance, and he also sponsors the belief that a sore lack of good governance in Africa is the primary cause for its overwhelming condition of food scarcity and poverty. However, although a historic lack of good governance does contribute to sub-Saharan Africa's failure to produce and provide for its own people, there are many more issues to consider when understanding this nation's most severe dilemma; hunger.
Foreign policies, globalization, food subsidies, the commodificaton of food, the industrialization of the business of agriculture, and geographic and climactic variances are all factors which influence the severity of issues plaguing the majority of sub-Saharan Africa.
Development in Africa Begins with Agriculture
For the purpose of initiating a feasible action-plan for change, Obama suggests that the population must first begin to experience a state of self-reliance. Because the majority of sub-Saharan Africans are involved in agriculture, and food production is a necessary condition to achieve any measurable amount of food security, self-reliance must first happen on the farm.
Obama has revealed that the administration's $3.5 billion food security initiative is directed towards providing new methods and technologies for farmers, as opposed to being spent on relief in the form of goods and products. In his July 2009 address, Obama states: “the purpose of foreign assistance must be creating the conditions where it is no longer needed”.
Shifting From Hand-outs to Agricultural Stability
A shift from foreign aid to a system yielding agricultural security is a topic met by much debate. However, such a shift is needed, as Obama's proposal recognizes that a system built on nation-dependence and food-aid is no longer conceivable. To promote the idea that the developed worlds should and could continue to produce enough food to feed the less prosperous nations is a dangerous idea. Such a plan is not sustainable, and is hardly a feasible solution to end widespread hunger, which grows as the African population rises at a rate of 2.36%, according a 1998 UN Report.
In his book, The Doubly Green Revolution, Gordon Conway writes: “Such massive food aid would place heavy burdens on both the donors and recipients. To meet their own market demand and that of the developing countries, and provide the necessary food aid, the developed countries would have to nearly double food production by the year 2020...Inevitably, the environmental costs of such a scenario would be high. The costs to the developing countries also would be significant.”
Continued foreign aid is no longer an option for Africa, nor the donor countries. Developing the means by which to procure a sustainable future through agricultural advancements is in itself a difficult and complicated undertaking.
However, as Obama mentions, any such plan begins with the rural farmer, and should be focused on meeting the rising food demands of the burgeoning population.
Rasham Nassar - Rasham Nassar is an emerging writer from the California Bay Area. A graduate from the University of California at Berkeley, Rasham's ...
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