Ending Hunger in Africa
by Every year we get the same adverts on the television and in the papers asking us to give money to feed people in Africa during times of famine, provide them with refugee camps and help the poor get through the difficult periods. We see the refugees on the news and the pictures of starving children and hear how these wonderful organisations are helping. But it never seems to get any better. Obviously, giving donations is great; there is no other solution to help people live through these times of crisis.
In many African countries, the people live in poverty for most of their lives, with no help from anybody until there is a war or a drought and then everybody rushes in to help them, putting them in temporary refugee camps, feeds them and then it all gets packed up and the organisations leave when the crisis is over, leaving the people to go back to their normal lives, their lives of poverty.
I’m sure most Africans would rather not be receiving aid from the developed countries. Most of them want to earn their own lives and feed their own families. They don’t want to spend their whole lives in refugee camps. Refugee camps are not a permanent solution; they should only be a temporary solution. After a crisis, people want to return to their own homes. Homes where they can live with at least enough food, clean water, shelter and healthcare. Homes like we have, homes we take for granted.
Yet in many cases, these people could have the basics of life the way we do in the West. However, their governments, who it is unlikely they elected democratically, would rather buy weapons so that they can wage war on their neighbours instead of spending money on healthcare and education.
These governments also allow large foreign businesses to come into their countries and exploit the workers, giving them no rights and paying them so little that they can’t feed their families. There are only two winners in this scenario, the business that can make a larger profit from the unprotected workers and the government officials from the bribes and taxes they receive.
Image via Wikipedia
There are African nations who have military budgets that are ten times as big as their education and healthcare budgets put together. Then there are the countries where the governments do want to help their citizens but have such huge repayments to make on the loans they received from the West with the cutbacks they are forced to make by the IMF and the World Bank.
So how are the African people trying to help themselves if their governments can’t or won’t help them? African women are getting together to work towards a long-term solution to poverty. Women are forming cooperatives to work together to accomplish as much as they can. These women are learning trades, finding new markets for the things they produce, save money for collective village projects such as health care and education.
One of the many benefits these cooperatives provide is day-care centres where women can leave their children safely while they go out to work. Another benefit is the building of healthcare centres where classes are given in basic nutrition and sanitation.
Image via Wikipedia
So a simple lasting solution to the poverty in African would be for companies in the West to engage in fair trade with these cooperatives. OK, so fair trade won’t stop wars, prevent droughts or stop corrupt governments but it is a way of helping Africans to be more independent and give them more control over their own lives and may mean that when there are crises they are more able to withstand them without resorting to hand-outs from the West.
Liked it
