Different Strokes for Africa

The editorial in The New York Times Sunday, May 13 on “Hunger and Food Stamps” in the US, has, even without saying it, still said a lot about the problem of hunger in Africa and elsewhere in the South. It is cheerily clear in the editorial that although the ranks of the objective conditions of poverty-stricken households and individuals who reside in them in the US are anything but shrinking, no one can justifiably argue that all hopes of bringing the right efforts to bear on finding solutions to problem of hunger are lost. The institutional structures required to tackle both poverty and hunger abound in the US. The task, as the editorial makes clear lies in getting those institutions and their structures to rise up and play the roles for which they were established.

From Angola to Zimbabwe, no one can say anything similar about poverty and hunger in Africa. In reality, Africans face a double bind on poverty and hunger. The state and the autocrats who preside over them are out of control as they rampage all facets of society, throttling society and exacerbating poverty and hunger. The irony about that is that in its infinite strength—say weakness—the African state exists as a shameless bulwark that ravages the remnants of Africa’s age-old traditional institutions and structures that provide safety nets for the poor and hungry on the continent. Almost everywhere in Africa, the state keeps stretching its hands out to lenders and multilateral agencies abroad to receive anti-poverty aids but quickly retreats to barricade itself from society. The state readily bolsters its military and security forces and ignores the rest of society. It hardly forgets to bully society and its vulnerable members though.

Orthodox narratives on poverty and hunger in Africa are tied stories. But as diplomats in African embassies and missions here in the US read the Times’ editorial during breakfast this morning, one would hope that it tickles something in those of them who still have the wisdom and conscience. It’s understandable that those of them who feel that tickle might lack the courage to raise a cable home on the subject of the editorial. At the same time, the editorial must serve as yet another reminder to them and the rest that the state and leaders they serve are manifestations of irrelevance on the continent.