Production Practices and Quality Assessment of Food Crops. Vol. 1

Improvement of Grain Legume Production in Semi-Arid Kenya 165
Table 2. African countries facing food insecurity and contributing factors.
Country Contributing factor
Angola Civil strife, population displacement
Burundi Civil strife and insecurity
DRC Civil strife, internal displaced persons (IDPs) and refugee
Eritrea IDPs and returnees
Ethiopia Drought, large number of vulnerable people, IDPs
Guinea-Bissau Civil strife, population displacement
Kenya Weather adversaries in parts of the country
Liberia Impact of civil strife, shortage of farm inputs
Mauritania Localised deficits
Rwanda Insecurity in parts of the country
Somalia Drought and civil strife
Sudan Civil strife in the south
Tanzania Food shortages in several regions
Uganda Civil strife in parts of the country, IDPs and refugees
Source: After Joubert et al. (1999).
The real causes of hunger therefore are poverty, inequality and lack of access
to food and land. With the rapid population growth, there is increasing cultivation
of available land, which has important implications for ecosystem sustainability
and biodiversity. In many areas, farmers are moving into lands less productive
and more fragile and soil fertility is declining appreciably. For many years agricultural
production in Africa has been increasing largely due to the movement of
populations into new lands. There are still many countries (e.g., Nigeria,
Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda), where there remains a
very large reservoir of high potential agricultural land; however, many other countries
(e.g., Kenya, Rwanda, Malawi) have reached the extensive limit and are
experiencing a reduction in the size of land holdings, increasing landlessness and
increasing soil degradation. In many countries, however, domestic food production
regularly falls short of national food requirements. Thus, annual food imports
have become necessary to complement domestic production. With increasing competition
in the allocation of hard currency for various alternative imports (e.g. energy)
and persistent food production shortfalls, an increasing number of people will
become more vulnerable to malnutrition and starvation unless domestic production
is increased. For example, Eicher (1990, 1999) stated that by the year 2010,
the number of chronically undernourished people in Africa would be 300 million,
compared to 200 million during the period 1988 to 1990. This scenario is made
worse considering that opportunities for extensive land cultivation and off-farm
employment are limited against a background of low levels of technology adoption
by farmers. Food for the urban poor depends upon jobs, income and low prices,
while food for most of the rural poor depends upon their own labour and productivity
of their often limited or fragile land resources.