Over the years Africa has been facing the threat of two deadly diseases, poverty and hunger. This is despite interventions and eradication programmes put in place by developed countries and international aid agencies.
In a recent report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation,UN-FAO, it was estimated that 239 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were hungry/undernourished in 2010. The however, put the number of people who were at the thrones of hunger worldwide as 925 million. The report said Africa is the continent with the second largest number of hungry people, Nigeria has alarming figure due to the much larger population. Sub-Saharan Africa actually had the largest proportion of its population undernourished at an estimated 30 per cent in 2010.
The 2012 United Nations report says 47 per cent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa lived on $1.25 a day or less in 2008. In a recent world business report on CNN, Africa is rated among the seven poor countries in the world with low business activity. Hunger and starvation in the African continent is blamed on lack of technology, bad governance and corruption. A lot of people on the continent do not have enough income to cater for their welfare. Many children are malnourished because the parents cannot afford a balanced diet.
The environment is the major contributing factor of hunger in Africa. Africa faces serious environmental challenges such as soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and drought. These have increased poverty and hunger. Many of these challenges have been caused by humans; the environment can be said to be overexploited. Deforestation, for example, has been caused by humans seeking new places to live, farm, or obtain firewood. Drought and desertification in Africa have been caused to some extent by global warming.
Taking Nigeria as an example, insurgency and over reliance on imported goods for her agricultural produce such as rice, maize and the likes have helped to aggravate her poverty crisis. The country is indeed facing serious poverty and hunger despite her vast resources. Recent statistics revealed that poverty and hunger are increasing on a daily basis despite successive governments and non-governmental organisations alleviation programmes. Nigeria also faces natural disasters such as flooding in southwest, drought in the north and erosion in the south east.
According to experts, soil or land pollution is one of the ugly situations that lead to nation’s hunger crisis. They argued that when a land is polluted, the soil is contaminated and that will prevent the natural growth and balance in the land whether it is used for cultivation, habitation, or wildlife preservation. Some soil pollutions such as the creation of landfills are deliberate, while others are accidental and can have widespread effects.
It is most unfortunate that despite the efforts of the environmental boards across the continent to see that the environment is free from land contamination, there are still some industrial activities that are not in conformity with the said efforts. Report has it that the heavy use of inorganic pesticides and household dumping have led to poor growth and reduced crop yields, loss of wildlife habitat, water pollution, soil erosion, and desertification
It is regrettable, that since 2011 government at all level has hugely spent money to flood victims, the money that would have been channeled to more serious economic activities to facilitate growth and development. The recent flood disaster in Nigeria however, not only drained the nation’s resources but washed away many farmlands thereby causing economic hardship, untold poverty and hunger in the land.
It is appalling that most of the projects considered necessary for combating these environmental challenges such as constructing of more dams in the northern parts where there is drought so that people from the region could stick to irrigation farming for survival were not sustained. For instance, after the 1972 and 1974 drought in the Sahel a construction of dam was considered to channel the flood away from the danger zone. The administration of Alhaji Shehu Shagari awarded the contract to Julius Berger but the contract was terminated in 1984 after the administration was overthrown by the military. The contract was re-awarded in 1992 by the General Ibrahim Babangida but was again terminated by General Sani Abacha in 1994. A judicial committee of inquiry was set up to investigate the dam project.
In 2002, money voted for the project was suddenly withdrawn. In 2008 Governor Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State awarded a contract to the Dangote Group to restart the abandoned dam project. The dam would have provided irrigation for agriculture such as sugar cane crops, while controlled releases would avoid downstream impact. The project was opposed by Yobe and Borno State government which argued that the dam will prevent the seasonal floods that their farmers depend upon for farming, and will cause the water table to drop and too much water would be lost to evaporation.
The dam project was later abandoned due to complain by floodplain farmers and fishermen who use water efficiently more than those who rely on irrigation. They said the dams in the Tiga and Challawa on the Hadejia River had reduced downstream water flow.
For the Nigerian government to join the rest of the African continent in solving hunger and alleviate poverty there must a programme geared towards promoting food security. Again environmentalists should also be involved in every aspect of environmental assessment to ensure that the impacts of environmental changes both on human lives and agricultural products are reduced, if not totally mitigated.