MYTHS AND REALITIES ASSOCIATED WITH DEVELOPMENT, POVERTY AND FOOD SECURITY IN AFRICA

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MYTHS AND REALITIES ASSOCIATED WITH
DEVELOPMENT, POVERTY AND FOOD SECURITY IN AFRICA

• Prof. Dr. Emmanuel Boon
• International Centre for Enterprise and
  Sustainable Development (ICED),Accra, Ghana
• September 2011

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Outline

• Introduction
• Food Security
• Poverty
• Myths associated with development, food security
  and poverty
• Specific myths associated with Africa
• Realities of Africas development
• Conclusion Redressing the development imbalance

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Introduction

• The term development often carries with it an
  assumption of growth and expansion.
• During the industrial era, development was
  strongly connected to increased speed, volume and
  size.
• Today, many people are questioning the concept of
  growth for numerous reasons.
• Community development is a "grassroots" process
  by which the community members become
• more responsible
• organize and plan together
• develop healthy options
• empower themselves
• reduce ignorance, poverty and suffering
• create employment and economic opportunities and
• achieve social, economic, cultural and
  environmental goal.

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Introduction (1)

• The most important thing about community
  development is whether it is sustainable.
• A first implication of this question relates to
  the concept of needs, in particular the essential
  needs of the poor, to which overriding priority
  should be given.
• Secondly, the idea of limitations imposed by the
  state of technology and social organization on
  the environment's ability to meet present and
  future needs.

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Introduction (2)

• In todays interdependent world, many aspects of
  sustainable development are international or even
  global.
• Many decisions taken at the national or even
  local level actually have international
  consequences economic, social, and
  environmental.
• For example, emissions of greenhouse gases,
  generated mainly by highly industrialized
  countries, lead to global warming and flooding of
  certain low-lying islandsresulting in the
  displacement and impoverishment of entire
  nations.
• Thinking of the world as a system enables us to
  understand that air pollution from Europe affects
  the weather and air quality in Africa.

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Food Security

• Food security is a multi-faceted concept.
• UN defines food security as "all people at all
  times having both physical and economic access to
  the basic food they need."
• Food security has three dimensions
• availability
• accessibility
• affordability

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Food Security (1)

• Food insecurity in Africa results from
• climate change
• urban development
• rapid population growth and poverty
• unfavorable terms of trade

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Poverty

• It is generally agreed that there is no
  universally accepted definition of poverty.
• The World Bank Development Report (1990) used
  370 per person per year (or US1 a day) as the
  absolute poverty line.
• The OECD (2001) describes poverty as an
  unacceptable human deprivation in terms of
  economic opportunity, education, health and
  nutrition, lack of empowerment and security.
• For UNDP, poverty is being deprived of those
  opportunities and choices that are essential to
  human development.
• In general, poverty is the inability of people to
  meet economic, social and other standards of
  well-being.

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Myths associated with development, food security
and poverty

• Contextually, a myth is an illusion or
  falsehood.
• Hence, development myths poverty myths and
  food security myths are basically wrong or
  ill-conceived ideas, philosophies or concepts,
  society holds about them.
• A reality on the other hand is a truth or
  certainty society should brace itself to uphold
  or accept.

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Some Common Development-related Myths and
Realities
MYTH MYTH REALITY
TYPE DESCRIPTION REALITY
1 Poor People do not Work Regional rates of unemployment illustrate further the falsity of this assumption. The unemployment rate in sub-Saharan Africa, the overall poorest region in the world, with 751 million people, was 10.9 in 2003. Since most of the world's population is concentrated in poor countries, one would perhaps expect a greater percentage of the populations of these poor regions to be unemployed, but considering the large number of people living there, the rates are rather low.
2 Globalization is Potentially Useful in Reducing Poverty in Developing Countries whilst Increasing the Wealth of the Developed Ones Globalization focuses on consumerism (selling products to people through international trade) denies people in traditional cultures the ability to support themselves by growing their own food, making their own clothing and otherwise providing for themselves. When corporations and industries take land from self-sustaining cultures, they push those people into poverty by depriving them of the resources they need to survive.
3 The Poor are Dangerous, Criminals, or Mentally Ill Poverty is not the result of personal failings, nor is it only a matter of income. Poverty is directly related to health, education, housing, political opportunities, and other factors. Likewise, poverty worsens people's social status and diminishes their involvement in their communities and in the larger sphere. Additionally, there are political and economic policies that can contribute to impoverishment. Most of the explanations are, however, as problematic as poverty itself.
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Some Common Rural Poverty-related Myths and
Realities
MYTH MYTH REALITY
TYPE DESCRIPTION REALITY
1 The majority of the poor live in inner-city (urban) neighborhoods Overall, poverty rates in rural areas have been and continue to be consistently higher than those found in urban areas, which includes inner cities.
2 Poverty in rural areas looks much like that found in urban areas While poverty exists in both urban and rural areas, the characteristics of those living in poverty in these two places are distinctly different. Rural areas do not only have consistently higher rates of poverty than urban places, but also have higher rates of persistent poverty and they are dispersed over a larger geographic area.
3 Most people are poor because they do not want to work Many of those living in poverty are not of working age. Many of the poor are elderly and even more are children or have a work - disability.
4 Rural equals agriculture The rural population can be empowered through capacity - building and microfinance support to undertake a wide-range of supplementary, income - generating off-farm activities.
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Some Common Food Security (Hunger)-Related Myths
and Realities
MYTH MYTH REALITY
TYPE DESCRIPTION REALITY
1 Not Enough Food to Go Around Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world's food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,200 calories a day! The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food. Even most "hungry countries" have enough food for all their people right now. Many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products.
2 Nature is to Blame for Famine It's too easy to blame nature. Human-made forces are making people increasingly vulnerable to nature's vagaries. Food is always available for those who can afford it - starvation during hard times hits only the poorest. Natural events are simply the final push over the brink. Human institutions and policies determine who eats and who starves during hard times. The real culprits are an economy that fails to offer everyone opportunities, and a society that places economic efficiency over compassion.
3 More Aid Will Help the Hungry Most aid-interventions work directly against the hungry. Foreign aid can only reinforce, not change, the status quo. Where governments answer only to elites, aid not only fails to reach hungry people, it shores up the very forces working against them. Aid is used to promote exports at the expense of food production, etc. It creates a foreign - debt burden that forces most Third World countries to cut back on basic health, education and anti-poverty programmes.
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Some Common Food Security (Hunger)-Related Myths
and Realities (1)
MYTH MYTH REALITY
TYPE DESCRIPTION REALITY
4 There are too many people Birth rates are falling rapidly worldwide nowhere does population density explain hunger
5 Its a trade-off the environment or food Industrial agriculture is degrading soil and undercutting our food production sources. Environmentally sound alternatives can be more productive than destructive ones.
6 The Green Revolution is the answer The Green Revolution did increase productivity in the 1960s and 1970s. But technology cannot challenge inequality as the root cause of hunger
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Some Common Food Security (Hunger)-Related Myths
and Realities (2)
MYTH MYTH REALITY
TYPE DESCRIPTION REALITY
7 We need large farms Small farmers achieve four-to-five times more output per acre land reform can increase production
8 The free market can end hunger The market only works when poor people have money to buy food
9 Free trade is the answer In many poor countries exports of food crops have boomed, squeezing out food for local production, while hunger has continued
10 The victims are too hungry to fight for their rights Wherever people suffer needlessly they are also fighting for their rights. People in the rich world can help to remove the obstacles to those rights.
11 All we need is more aid Foreign aid reinforces the status quo and undercuts local food production in the recipient country.
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Specific myths associated with Africa

• Fundamental myths associated with Africa
• Africans are poor and hungry
• Suffering from several forms of diseases.
• Cannot do without borrowing or receiving aid from
  the North.
• Less developed,
• Under-developed
• Dark continent

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Specific myths associated with Africa (1)

• Intellectual inferiority and low intelligent
  quotient
• Laziness
• Lovers of money and sex
• Too many people in Africa
• Too hungry to focus on productivity

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Realities of Africas development

• The reality of development in Africa is, if not
  far, somewhat different from what most people in
  the West think.
• Although contemporary Africa is still
  characterised by numerous challenges, external
  observers either overestimate or underestimate
  the problems to serve reasons best known to them.
• Western countries have only promoted their
  interests in Africa and this constitutes a major
  challenge to eliminating poverty and food
  insecurity and promoting sustainable development.
• Some African observers have attributed these
  challenges to colonialism rather than a lack of a
  common African identity and attitudes and beliefs
  of the people that have often impacted
  intra-African cooperation.
• African societies were not based on urbanization
  and what the West terms as modernity.

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Realities of Africas development (1)

• Key Challenges
• Unfair global trade and economic system
• Change in African social systems
• Modernization and monetization of African society
• Emergence of destructive conflicts
• Cost of foreign aid

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Conclusion Redressing the development imbalance

• Challenges Africa is facing are complex and
  serious and should not be addressed in the same
  way they were created.
• The fight against poverty, underdevelopment and
  hunger has to be won and won quickly.
• Working together, we can end food insecurity,
  poverty and underdevelopment.
• Much more attention should be paid to supporting
  existing social practices that have widespread
  legitimacy rather than trying to import expensive
  solutions from the west to replace the African
  way.

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Conclusion Redressing the development imbalance
(1)

• Africa is the responsibility of everyone - those
  who have benefitted from the riches of this
  continent and Africans who live on the continent.
  
• There is also an urgent need to stop the
  international supply of arms and ammunition to
  Africa.
• Meaningful development in Africa is possible and
  sustainable only through the integration of the
  social, physical and spiritual worlds of local
  actors.

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Thank You
Make the World Fairer!!