Tough Love

The CS Monitor castigates the world community today for ignoring Africa's warfare and hunger problems, which receive far less press and far less money than other hot spots. Their facts are correct: African problems, especially those of hunger and drought, receive scant coverage in the world press. Compare what we've heard about this year's droughts (basically nothing) with coverage of the tsunami. Compare coverage - and action - on Congo's civil war with the same thing in Yugoslavia. Africa loses out, again and again.

Jan Egeland, the UN Relief Coordinator and the Monitor's quote source, and the Monitor's editors blame insufficient compassion and perseverence vis-a-vis the world's poorest continent. But is that really fair? Has the world helped other deeply impoverished nations (Bangladesh, say, or Haiti?) out of poverty? Have governments intervened to solve most other internal conflicts, that of the Kurds, for instance, or of the Chechens? Congo, in fact, has the UN's largest peacekeeping force anywhere, and Africa receives more U.S. aid than any other region.

The reality is that, for good reason, the world community addresses solvable problems, as well as close-to-home problems. The latter accounts for our fixation with Israel's conflicts, as well as the quick response to anything on the European continent. However, the tsunami aid was not ill-placed, because it could be reasonably expected to solve the problem, not merely to postpone it. Already, most of the tsunami-affected economies and communities are back on their feet and self-supporting. The aid was a short-term fix to a short-term problem.

Africa, by contrast, is plagued by long-term problems demanding long-term solutions. A positive development of the last few years has been the willingness of the African Union and ECOWAS to commit troops to peacekeeping operations. Africa is on its way to creating an atmosphere of political problem-solving, as more democratic governments understand that their neighbors are important partners, not just competitors for a limited pool of foreign aid.

The same Africa-based problem solving needs to be applied to the realm of drought and food distribution. The spread of the Sahara is an unstoppable force, not a short-term disaster. The Sahel nations and their neighbors need to find ways to address the economic and survival issues related to it. One bright spot here is the peace agreement in southern Sudan. This water-rich region is lauded as one of the best agricultural zones on Earth, and can be developed as the breadbasket for the region. However, this requires that the region's governments quit harboring each others' rebels and allowing/encouraging (as in Darfur) internecine warfare.

Africa, and only Africa, can solve Africa's problems.