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Understanding the Causes of African Famine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Nicole Ball
Nicole Ball
Affiliation:
Ithaca, New York – recently Research Fellow, Institute for the Study of International Organisation, University of Sussex, Brighton
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Extract

In his article on ‘Political and Economic Origins of African Hunger’ in this Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 4, December 1975, Michael Lofchie argues persuasively in favour of considering economic and political processes, rather than natural phenomena, as the major determinants of famine in Africa. He correctly demonstrates that the majority of analysts, be they academics or governmentai and relief officials, continue to view the question of famine in a limited and unsatisfactory manner.

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , September 1976 , pp. 517 - 522
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

page 517 note 1 Suret-Canale, Jean, Afrique noire, Vol. II, L'Ere colonials, 1900–1945 (Paris, 1964)Google Scholar, translated by Gottheiner, Till as French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900–1945 (New York and London, 1971)Google Scholar.

page 518 note 1 Cissoko, Sékéné-Mody, ‘Famines et épidémies à Tombouctou et dans le Boucle du Niger du XVIe au XVIIIe siècles’, in Bulletin de l'Institut fondamental d'Afrique noire (Dakar), XX, 3, 07 1968Google Scholar.

page 518 note 2 Hiwet, Addis, Ethiopia: from autocracy to revolution, Occasional Paper No. I, Review of African Political Economy (London), 1975, especially pp. 17–18Google Scholar.

page 518 note 3 Suret-Canale, 1971 trans. op. cit. pp. 185 and 238.

page 518 note 4 Comité Information Sahel, Qui se nourrit a de la famine en Afrique? le dossier politique de la faim au Sahel (Paris, 1974), p. 23. The Comité a group of French research workers, from different disciplines, who have combined on an ad hoc basis to consider the causes and likely consequences of the most recent Sahel famine.

page 519 note 1 Ibid. pp. 7 and 16–17.

page 519 note 2 For example, Cliffe, Lionel, ‘Capitalism or Feudalism? the famine in Ethiopia’, in Review of African Political Economy, I, 1974Google Scholar; Copans, Jean et al. , Sécheresses et famines du Sahel, Vols. I and II (Paris, 1975)Google Scholar; Bondestam, Lars, ‘People and Capitalism in the North-Eastern Lowlands of Ethiopia’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), XII, 3, 09 1974Google Scholar; Baker, Randall, ‘The Need for Long Term Strategies in Areas of Pastoral Nomadism’, in Dalby, David and Church, R. J. Harrison (eds.), Drought in Africa (London, 1973)Google Scholar. The Institut africain de développement économique et de planification in Dakar is involved in similar studies. The Government of Somalia is analysing drought by means of this sort of socioeconomic and political framework.

page 520 note 1 A more complete description of this process can be found in Ball, Nicole, ‘The Myth of the Natural Disaster’, in The Ecologist (London), v, 10, 12 1975Google Scholar.

page 521 note 1 Comité Information Sahel, op. cit. especially pp. 22–6 and 90–4.

page 521 note 2 Arguments along these lines can be found in Jeremy Swift, ‘Disaster and a Sahelian Nomad Economy’, in Dalby and Church (eds.), op. cit; Baker, op. cit.; and Caldwell, J. C., The Sahelian Drought and Its Demographic Implications (Washington, 1975), pp. 39–42Google Scholar.

page 522 note 1 David Dalby, ‘Reports by Session Chairmen: III–The Human Factor’, in Dalby and Church (eds.), op. cit. p. 20.

page 522 note 2 Hiwet, op. cit. p. 17. Similar accounts for the Boucle du Niger can be found in Cissoko, loc. cit.