Year After Year, Grave After Grave - New York Times
The New York Times

October 11, 2005

Year After Year, Grave After Grave
By
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Gouré, Niger

Welcome to the most wretched country in the world.

Niger is dead last of the 177 nations ranked in the latest U.N. Human
Development Report, based on its heartbreaking rates of poverty, illiteracy
and mortality.
On a 650-mile drive across the country from the Niger capital, Niamey, to
this eastern city of Gouré, I stopped in village after village where
peasants
told of young children dying of starvation in the last few months. One man
named Haroun Mani had just buried three of his eight children.

"They didn't have enough to eat, and then they got diarrhea and weakened and
died," he explained. None had seen a doctor; in Niger, there is one doctor
for every 33,000 people.

Granted, it's difficult for Western readers who are dieting to comprehend
people who are starving. But Niger seems a good place to ponder the failings
of
a system of international aid that is often irrational and catastrophically
inept, leading to the deaths of those children, Suraj, 5, Barida, 3, and
Hawau,
2 - along with millions more across the continent.

A crucial mistake is our refusal to provide substantial agricultural
assistance to increase African food production. Instead, we ship tons of
food in emergency
aid after people have already started dying. It's like a policy of scrimping
on manhole covers because we're too busy rescuing people who fall into
manholes.

In Niger, it has been apparent since the beginning of this year that a food
crisis was coming, but the world ignored a U.N. emergency appeal for $3
million
in aid in February. Then in July, BBC television showed wrenching images of
children dying. Niger promptly received more aid in the last 10 days of July
than it had received in the previous eight months.

In fact, the situation is more complex than the television images suggest.
The reality is that people in Niger are always starving.

"There was a crisis last year, and there'll be a crisis next year," said
Claude Dunn, who runs the World Food Program office in Maradi. This year's
crisis
was especially bad, but year in, year out, 160,000 children under the age of
5 die in Niger - one child in four never reaches 5. In other words, every
single week this small country faces a 9/11-sized toll, composed entirely of
dead children. And yet no one is declaring: We are all Nigeriens.

One problem is that U.S. law generally requires our food aid to be purchased
in American markets and transported on American ships. The upshot is that
much
of the donation is wasted on shipping costs, the aid is delayed, and when it
arrives our grain risks depressing local prices and long-term production
incentives.
To his credit, President Bush has pushed to ease this requirement, but
members of Congress are blocking him, because they value farmers' votes more
than
African lives.

Above all, we need a major new international initiative to extend the green
revolution to Africa. Farmers in tropical Africa get only 1,500 pounds of
cereal
grain per acre, compared with 4,900 pounds in China. Pedro Sanchez, an
agricultural expert at Columbia University, has estimated that Africans
could triple
food production if they used modern seeds and methods.

In the village of Angaual Goge Haouna, where seven children died in the last
few months of starvation, villagers said they wanted more fertilizer above
all, as well as better seeds and help exploiting a nearby lake for
irrigation.

"I'm not only using the same techniques as my grandfather, I'm actually
using the same implements," said Momom Bukhary, a 63-year-old man. "And this
land
used to be far more productive than it is now. When I was young, the annual
harvest would last a full year, longer in good times. Now it only lasts
three
months, and then we run out of food."

A major reason is that the soil has been depleted of nutrients. But in
sub-Saharan Africa, farmers apply an average of 9 kilograms of fertilizer
per hectare,
compared with 206 kilos in industrialized countries.

In the news business, we don't lead with headlines like "Millions of
Children Dying in Africa," because that's not actually news. It's the
wallpaper.

Yet realities like that should inspire our priorities. And we're not even
using our aid money wisely. Unless we help start a green revolution in
Africa,
we'll be back in Niger year after year - and every village will be
surrounded by more tiny graves.

POsted by Miriam V.