Keeping Hunger at Bay

TEN YEARS ago, when Ethiopia's last famine helped to replace Haile Selassie's regime with a Marxist government, experts said that future starvation waves would be predictable and therefore manageable. Although the experts were correct in the first assertion, they didn't realize that no one would listen to their prophesies, rendering the second meaningless. Warnings of impending doom that began to surface two years ago went virtually unheeded by western governments, the media, relief agencies and Ethiopian officials themselves until it was too late.

Now, in what has been labeled Africa's worst famine yet, 300,000 people have already starved to death in Ethiopia and an additional 1 million may perish before the storm begins to abate. Up to seven million currently risk starvation while still others will suffer from prolonged malnutrition. Domestic harvests scheduled to commence next month probably will yield only two thirds of the usual total and the next major harvest is not expected for another year. There's no guarantee that those harvests won't fail; specialists have estimated that a minimum of 600,000 metric tons of grain will be needed in Ethiopia for the next year, although many say that people could be starving for years.

The latest media blitz has brought the usual round of recriminations and half-baked relief efforts, but nothing in the current debate suggests that Africa and the West have come up with anything that will help Ethiopia and other afflicted countries in the long-term.

The Ethiopia famine this fall needs to be approached as part of a comprehensive assault on-poverty and famine throughout the continent.

ALTHOUGH drought is obviously an inexorable feature of the African climate, its effects are becoming increasingly devastating because of the deepening poverty, swelling population and land depletion that has swept the continent.

Primitive farming techniques have raped the land of its natural fertility while under increasing presure to produce food for a booming population, traditional fallow periods have all but disappeared, wearing out the soil.

Part of Africa's difficulty in general is a result of years of colonial exploitation. National boundaries were drawn by western nations vying for power and resources. Many claim that the existing technological and economic backwardness exists because the developed countries never really wanted an independent Africa--keeping the continent dependent was too profitable.

Blame cannot be placed only on the western, developed nations. A significant part of the damage has been self-inflicted, resulting from government mismanagement, corruption and civil strife. In 1982, a group of Oxford economists warned Ethiopia's Lt Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam that disaster was on the horizon for his nation. The group suggested immediate food rationing and concentrated emphasis on rural development. Instead, Mengistu channeled 46 percent of his GNP into military spending, purchasing at least $2.5 billion worth of arms from the Soviet Union. What's worse, the agricultural investment in which he deigned to engage aped Soviet-style state farms. In view of the fact that the Soviets can't even feed themselves but must rely on the United States to sell them grain, that plan just didn't make any sense.

African government in general spend more on armaments than agriculture, but civil war hasn't made the situation any better. Many of the starving in Ethiopia are in the northern areas controlled by anti-government guerrillas lighting for the independence of the Eritrea and Tigre provinces Both sides, but particularly the government, have used food as a weapon in the struggle for control. The government has kept a tight leash on food distribution so many refugees from the war area dominated by the guerrilla forces have been hard pressed to receive food.

Obviously there is a moral imperative to aid Africa. Rich nations cannot sit atop stockpiles of unused food while others starve. But to address the problem only when it has reached epic proportions is almost as unmoral as not addressing it at all. The ugliest fact of the matter is that relief aid aggravates fundamental problems in the structure of developing economies by undermining long-term self sufficiency.

Often, relief aid comes too late and helps preserve the existing social and political order, blocking changes necessary to prevent recurring disaster. The alternative is not, as some have suggested, leaving "tolerable" levels of poverty to spark development; Ethiopia is, in many respects, too weakened to respond to "pressures" of that grisly nature. Nor does the solution lie in Indira Gandhi-like methods of population control. Unless the need for large families to increase agricultural production is alleviated by more efficient methods, the root cause will persist.

The kinds of changes Ethiopia must under go are much clearer than the mechanisms for effecting those changes. The government certainly must spend money on agriculture development and try to balance food crops against cash crops raised for export more effectively.

Artificially low food prices must be raised to encourage farmers to grow more food. At the same time, the land must be restored and methods of production improved. But the existing methods for encouraging redistribution of domestic investment smack of imperialistic meddling.

Should the United States offer unconditional relief and help bolster Ethiopia's military to win them over from the Soviets, and their dicate how Mengistu should run the country? Or perhaps we should make additional aid contingent upon Mengistu getting his act together and running the country right. Irrespective of the fact that both of these proposals ride roughshod over the principle of state sovereignty and self determination, both would lead Ethiopia further into the depth of dependency.

SO WHAT is to be done'. In the short run, relief aid, along with development aid must continue. In the long run, the solution become muddled. It is time to move beyond assertions that the right to autonomy supercedes all else.

The fact of the matter is, for whatever reasons nations like Ethiopia need help with domestic development. At the risk that some independent international body should oversee the allocation of funds to developing.

The existence of an international agency with powers more widespread than existing United Nations groups would keep any one power from establishing dominance over the developing nation in question. The organization would allocate funds for investment in specific areas. In essence, it would fulfill the developmental functions of an imperialist power without seeking to control the country or drain it of its resources.

Drought will always come to Ethiopia. But if the country can reach a level of development where food production exceeds population growth, the threat of extinction will not be to Ethiopia but to famine itself.