Category: Poverty

Drip irrigation is an effective tool for increasing agricultural productivity and thereby helping people to escape from poverty and food insecurity. This has been recognised by the award of this year’s World Food Prize to Israeli scientist Daniel Hillel, who has developed micro-irrigation techniques which replace inefficient flooding with methods of minimising water usage by determining and supplying the precise amount required.

The concept of drip irrigation itself has been around for more than a century, but it is only in the recent past that the use of drip irrigation techniques have started to become widespread. The recent popularity is due to a business innovation by Netafim, an Israeli company, which discovered a way of overcoming the natural reluctance of farmers to try any innovation which had a relatively high upfront cost, even if it promised substantial returns.

What Netafim did was to offer to install the IrriWise Crop Management System at its own expense, and take payment from the subsequent increase in crop yields. Netafim’s mission changed from “making the best drip irrigation equipment for customers” to “helping the world grow more with less”. Netafim now has a share of around one third of the global micro-irrigation equipment market.

Monday 12th November was the fourth annual World Pneumonia Day, an event drawing attention to the disease which killed 1.3 million children in 2011 and was responsible for nearly one fifth of all deaths of children under the age of five. Although highly effective antibiotics are available at a relatively low cost, less than one third of children with suspected pneumonia receive treatment with antibiotics.

The ideal form of treatment is an amoxicillin tablet that dissolved in liquid. A number of agencies are now trying to ensure that amoxicillin tablets are readily available in the countries which have the highest numbers of child pneumonia deaths, including India (400,000 deaths), Nigeria (130,000), Democratic Republic of Congo (88,000), Pakistan (67,000), Ethiopia (41,000), Uganda (22,000), Niger (20,000), Bangladesh (19,000), Tanzania (18,000) and Kenya (18,000).

The symptoms of malaria and pneumonia are often similar, so it is important that health care workers be given training to distinguish between the two and apply the right type of medical treatment. UN ICEF and its partner agencies aim to train, equip and empower frontline health workers to diagnose, treat and refer cases of child pneumonia.

Africa is a fertile continent, possessing sufficient arable land to provide food for all of its inhabitants, with plenty left over for export. However, many African farmers persist with low-yield subsistence farming techniques, so that when droughts or floods occur there is insufficient food to go around, and urgent calls go out to the international community for famine relief. The whole cycle is predictable. Why do farmers not use more efficient techniques to grow more food?

The answer is the same as what motivates business people all around the world: market forces. If a farmer can grow and sell extra food at a profit, he or she will be motivated to do so. If, on the other hand, the costs of farming inputs such as fertilisers and labour, and the cost of transporting the crops to market, outweigh the price at which the crops can be sold, the farmer will be motivated to avoid producing excess food.

The Daily Monitor tells the story of potato farmers in Uganda. Transport infrastructure is so poor that transport and middlemen costs account for 70% of the sale price of the potatoes. This means there is a significant risk of the farmer losing money on each year’s crops. It is hoped that a new potato processing plant in the south west of the country will change the economics and make potato farming economically viable.

There is a slight relationship between climate and conflict in East Africa, according to the results of a study conducted by the US National Academy of Sciences. When temperatures are higher than normal, there is a 30% increase in the probability of violence occurring in the affected area, whereas when rainfall is higher than normal there is a 30% decrease in the probability of violence occurring in the affected area.

Intuitively the study’s findings make sense. When there is a drought, there is increased competition for food and resources, leading to higher incidences of cattle rustling and conflict. When the rains a plentiful, the competition for resources diminishes, and flooding makes it more difficult to engage in conflict. However, climate factors play a far less significant role in the incidence of conflict than socioeconomic, political and geographic factors.

The research team used data relating to more than 16,000 violent conflicts that occurred between 1990 and 2009 in Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda. The effect of climate variability on conflict risk differed from country to country, and the results did not provide any support for the apocalyptic predictions of “climate wars” that some have been making.

Africa should not be needing more aid, according to Ugandan economist and former ambassador William Naggaga, writing in the Daily Monitor. It should have graduated to a middle income continent long ago, and some African countries should be in the “first world” by now. He contrasts the results of the aid provided to Europe after the second world war with the results achieved by aid in Africa over the past 50 years.

Sixteen Western European nations received $13 billion over a period of five years, and all of those countries experience rapid economic growth. Africa has received more than $1,000 billion in various types of aid over 50 years, but remains the poorest continent. In Europe, democratic governance structures were largely intact, and recipient countries were experienced in managing public funds accountably. The money was not stolen, and the aid lasted only for a short time.

In Africa, conditions for successful use of aid have not been so favourable. Donors are motivated by guilt and pity rather than by commercial considerations, so they are less inclined to ensure beneficial outcomes, and they tend to be willing to overlook misuse of funds. As a result the impact of much of the aid is either minimal or negative.

One of the problems that developing countries face is dealing with rubbish. Although typical households in developing countries consume less than typical households in developed countries, and therefore produce less garbage, developing countries often have less sophisticated processes for handling waste, so that waste accumulates instead of being recycled or otherwise processed in a sustainable manner.

Moreover, second-hand goods and cheap counterfeit goods often find their ways into markets in developing countries. When these goods are electronic goods such as computers and telephones, they can create significant waste disposal problems. Recently the Communication Commission of Kenya has required mobile phone operators to cut services to counterfeit mobile phones, leaving the National Environment Management Authority with the problem of disposing of 3 million counterfeit mobile phones.

When Kenya switches to digital broadcasting, there will be large quantities of superseded analogue television sets needing to be disposed of. The country currently generates more than 3,000 tonnes of electronic waste products, and this quantity continues to grow. Hazardous substances contained in electronic waste products often include mercury, sulphur, cadmium, lead, and beryllium oxide.

The most critical resource for many of Africa’s poor is food. If everyone in Africa is to have enough to eat, farms need to produce enough food, and there need to be efficient ways to get the food from the farmers to the consumers. The good news is that the arable land in Africa is more than enough to produce enough food to feed everyone with plenty to spare, using modern farming techniques. The bad news is that rural infrastructure is not good enough to get the food from the farmers to the consumers.

The vast majority of African farmers are small-scale producers, and many of them lack the storage, processing and transport facilities (including road infrastructure) that they need to ensure the food they produce reaches the market in a financially viable way. Inadequate transport infrastructure often also means that farmers do not have affordable access to necessary inputs such as good quality seeds and fertiliser.

Poor quality roads mean that transport is very slow, with frequent repairs to trucks required. When the rains come, roads may become impassable. The delays and expenses thus caused may cost significantly more than the value of the food being produced by the farmers. In many parts of Africa, food security problems can easily be solved once roads, water supply, electrification and storage facilities have been built to an adequate standard.

One of the interesting effects of Kenya’s incursion into Somalia to combat al Shabaab forces appears to be a significant reduction in the illicit flow of money across the border. A report of the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics for the quarter ended June 30th indicates that “unexplained foreign exchange flows” have dropped to their lowest level for some time. The disturbance in such unexplained cash flows seems to have been caused by Kenya’s military action.

It has for some time been argued that much of the money that Somalis have been splashing round in Nairobi has been coming from the proceeds of piracy in Somalia. The amount of unexplained cash, some $2 billion, seems too high to come from piracy alone, but it does seem credible that some of the money may have come from piracy. In any event, the money has caused inflated property prices in Nairobi, and this has had an effect on the economy as a whole.

Excess money invested in property has led to higher property prices, which has led to higher rental prices and higher costs of living for Kenyans. If the Kenyan military intervention in Somalia has indeed had a long-term effect of cutting illicit money networks, then perhaps a fall in property prices and associated cost of living prices can now be expected. However, illicit money networks have a way of re-establishing themselves.

Continuing insecurity is one of the reasons why the Democratic Republic of Congo remains the poorest country in the world, and substantial United Nations peacekeeping efforts seem to be ineffective. The country’s army is supposed to be suppressing rebellions, and has received extensive training from military experts provided by other countries, but because of corruption and incompetence the army is not achieving its objectives.

Around 700 poorly armed and trained rebels prevailed for more than five months against the might of the government army backed by a UN force of 18,000 troops. The government army and UN forces have failed to engage the rebels or to defend civilian areas where inter-ethnic violence has been occurring. The cost of maintaining UN troops in the country is around $1.4 billion, with the bill being paid from the foreign aid budgets of donor countries.

Insecurity has been present in the Eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo ever since the Rwandan genocide of 1994 spilled over the border. The genocide in Rwanda ended when the Rwandan Patriotic Front gained control of the country, but the Interahamwe militia which had been doing the killing largely escaped over the border. Some of the continuing insecurity is alleged to have been funded by Rwanda.

The economics of sugar in Kenya provides an illustration of the challenges facing agriculture in the country. Kenya has good natural conditions for growing sugar cane, and low labour costs, yet the price of sugar in the country is around twice that on international markets. One of the reasons is poor productivity. An average of around 60 tonnes of sugarcane is harvested per hectare in Kenya, compared with 113 tonnes in Zambia.

One of the reasons for low productivity is the small sizes of Kenyan farms, which are growing smaller in order to accommodate more landowners. As a result, farmers are unable to take advantage of economies of scale, and their income is not sufficient to afford inputs required for the most efficient forms of farming. Because Kenyan farmers are entirely reliant on rainfall, there is a significant risk associated with crop failure due to unseasonal weather.

Kenya currently produces 500,000 tonnes of sugar per year, but demand in the country is for 800,000 tonnes, and growing. Kenyan sugar producers are currently protected by government trade barriers, but they are due to be removed within 2 years, exposing the sector to lower-priced competition from imports. Some sugar factories are poorly managed and will need to improve significantly if they are to survive.