Word: ethiopia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Africa's neediest cases is Mozambique, the former Portuguese colony on the Indian Ocean that is almost as poor as Ethiopia. Mozambique has been embroiled in civil war from the moment it became independent in 1975. Its economic infrastructure has been destroyed by rebels, and the U.N. estimates that 6 million people face starvation in the west and north, where reliefworkers are afraid to go. Says a Mozambican army officer who recently toured some of the worst-hit areas: "I talked to people who had barely enough flesh to cover their skeletons. Their bones made noises under the skin...
Will Africa, fabulously rich in natural resources, ever end the cycle of war, disease and overpopulation that helps to keep it poor and famished? Most African governments, including those much less radical than Ethiopia, continue to be wedded to quasi-socialist, postcolonial economic policies that reduce agricultural productivity, even as populations soar and create a voracious demand for more food. "In contemporary Africa, both rural starvation and rising levels of urban employment are the outcome of a set of agricultural policies designed to subsidize the cost of living of urban consumers at the expense of rural producers," says Michael Lofchie...
...Western Europe, acknowledged that farmers have to be given financial incentives to produce more. With the continent $200 billion in debt to the West, the lending nations have not hesitated to twist arms. The E.C. and the World Bank are currently withholding $250 million in development aid for Ethiopia until its leaders agree to raise artificially low prices for agricultural products and allow farmers to sell more of their products on the open market. "For humanitarian aid, there are no conditions," says an E.C. spokesman. "For structural aid, there are conditions...
...Ethiopia, says Jay F. Morris, deputy U.S. AID administrator, "the problem is fundamental. They are taking a bad ecological situation and making it worse. By forcing farmers who do grow more than they consume to sell to the state at prices below the cost of production, they are not providing the incentive to produce the maximum that the land, however poor, would yield." Ethiopia's food production now totals 6.8 million tons a year, with little prospect for future growth; Western experts say the country will require an estimated 2 million tons of imported food in 1990. It almost seems...
Meanwhile, the people of Ethiopia seem rich only in patience. As the sun climbs in the sky, those awaiting food donations outside Wukro quietly sit on their haunches. One man, Gebre Yohanes Haile, 50, has brought along his chief resource: his ox. His family is sick with hunger, and so only he and the animal made the journey. Thus he will receive just one ration: twelve kilos of wheat, two of beans and two of oil. He will sell his ox for $200, and then pay $150 for 100 kilos of grain, twice the usual cost. "We have food...