Africa’s Food Shortage Triggered by the West

Although the COP 27 environmental summit failed to make significant progress, Africa is facing its worst food crisis ever due to a combination of climate-related issues such as droughts and floods, armed conflicts, and skyrocketing grain import prices.

A staggering 278 million Africans, or one in five, are currently suffering from hunger. The number of East Africans facing this dire situation has increased by 60% in 2021 alone, while the number in West Africa has gone up by 40%.

Despite Africa only contributing 3% of the emissions causing the climate crisis, it is the region that suffers the most from its effects, according to Joe Bavier, Abdi Sheikh, Michael Ovaska, and Aditi Bhandari from Reuters. The biggest polluters on a per capita basis are Western countries, particularly the U.S. and Canada, who have shifted the burden of their environmental destruction onto some of the world’s poorest people.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and its Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) state that violent conflict is the leading cause of acute hunger in Africa and other regions.

Since the 1980s, the United States has been involved in 12 wars on the African continent by providing arms transfers, military training, and proxy or direct invasions. These wars include countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Libya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Angola, Ethiopia, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Congo-Brazzaville, and Nigeria. The U.S. has also given military assistance to 51 out of 54 African countries.

As a result of these conflicts, farmers find it difficult to produce enough food to sustain the population. There is a clear correlation between ongoing conflicts in Africa, food scarcity, drought, and climate change.

According to William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy in Washington D.C. and co-author of the 2000 report Deadly Legacy: U.S. Arms to Africa and the Congo War, the U.S. provided $1.5 billion in arms and training to Africa during the Cold War years (1950–89), which has contributed to the current round of conflicts in the region.

Washington aimed to exploit the mineral wealth of the Congo by using proxy troops from Rwanda and Uganda. Although these two countries withdrew their forces in 2003, they continued to loot the Congo’s minerals through their puppet militias.

According to Glen Ford, editor of the Black Agenda Report, a leading website on U.S. policy towards Africa, “The U.S. has financed and given overall direction to the worst genocide since World War II.” Since 1996, over six million people have lost their lives in Congo’s eastern provinces, where the governments of Rwanda and Uganda are the direct perpetrators. These governments are agents of U.S. foreign policy and operate with impunity under the imperial umbrella.

The World Food Programme (WFP) reports that the Congo is one of the largest hunger crises globally, with armed conflict and widespread displacement continuing for the past 25 years, fueling each other. Between January and June 2023, 26.4 million people could become acutely food insecure.

In Libya, the U.S. collaborated with Canada and other NATO members to attack the country in 2011, resulting in the destruction of the richest country in Africa and spreading wars and insurgencies to several African states.

In Mali, Islamic fundamentalists attacked the government in 2012, starting a civil war that continues to this day, armed with weapons from Muammar Gaddafi’s looted arsenal (after NATO overthrew him) and NATO’s extensive distribution of weaponry to Gaddafi’s opponents.