(7 of 8)
One of Africa's neediest cases is Mozambique, the former Portuguese colony on the Indian Ocean that is almost as poor as Ethiopia. Mozambique has been embroiled in civil war from the moment it became independent in 1975. Its economic infrastructure has been destroyed by rebels, and the U.N. estimates that 6 million people face starvation in the west and north, where reliefworkers are afraid to go. Says a Mozambican army officer who recently toured some of the worst-hit areas: "I talked to people who had barely enough flesh to cover their skeletons. Their bones made noises under the skin."
In Angola, where the Soviet-backed government is battling South African- supported rebels, the famine is mostly man-made. In some disputed areas, there are acres of ripe grain that cannot be harvested because the fields are laced with finger-size mines. Relief convoys find few passable roads and are in constant danger of attack from rebels. Though statistics are hard to come by, those who suffer most in Angola seem to be the young. The U.N. Office of Emergency Operations reported in 1986 that up to 45% of the children in Huambo province, where guerrilla activity is common, suffered from malnutrition.
Another nation in agony is Malawi, which is suffering from both disastrous crop failures and an influx of 300,000 refugees from neighboring Mozambique. "Unless massive food supplies are brought in urgently," says a Western aid official, thousands will die.
Even when the rains come, they can be a cruel gift. Heavy downpours swept over parts of southern Africa two weeks ago, breaking a harsh drought. But they also destroyed some of the more delicate plants that had survived the dry spell, and the soggy ground will hamper distribution of maize meal recently shipped into the area by the U.N.
Will Africa, fabulously rich in natural resources, ever end the cycle of war, disease and overpopulation that helps to keep it poor and famished? Most African governments, including those much less radical than Ethiopia, continue to be wedded to quasi-socialist, postcolonial economic policies that reduce agricultural productivity, even as populations soar and create a voracious demand for more food. "In contemporary Africa, both rural starvation and rising levels of urban employment are the outcome of a set of agricultural policies designed to subsidize the cost of living of urban consumers at the expense of rural producers," says Michael Lofchie, an Africa expert at UCLA. Since 75% of Africa's people still live in rural areas, such a policy is a prescription for deepening poverty.
Only now have some governments, encouraged by the U.S. and Western Europe, acknowledged that farmers have to be given financial incentives to produce more. With the continent $200 billion in debt to the West, the lending nations have not hesitated to twist arms. The E.C. and the World Bank are currently withholding $250 million in development aid for Ethiopia until its leaders agree to raise artificially low prices for agricultural products and allow farmers to sell more of their products on the open market. "For humanitarian aid, there are no conditions," says an E.C. spokesman. "For structural aid, there are conditions."