Monday July 21,2003

Make trade fair

By Solomon Kebede

Look at a photo or TV screen, at these prostrate children, all bones, saggy skin, bulging eyes and belly, and you are overwhelmed at the misery. You know the children you are looking at are dead by the time you see them. Look at another scene, especially in the picturesque pages of the National Geographic, and you marvel at the smiles and vigor of the dancers or traders in an exotic landscape.

The African continent bears witness to hope and hopelessness, courage and despair. Circumstances are appalling, but somehow, people find ways to cope, to survive, and die, yet multiply. In the long sweep of history, this is the heart of the matter: down is not out.

Famines are man-made disasters. In the last months, hours of broadcasting and acres of newsprint have been devoted to unpicking the hourly fluctuations on the Dow Jones and the FTSE. Meanwhile, the price of coffee on world markets has almost halved. Many other commodity prices have collapsed too, with a consequent fall in income for their producers. Fifteen million of the world's poorest people are directly affected, as one fellow compatriot tells Jonathan Dimbleby in his Observer dispatch last week, contributing to a potentially catastrophic humanitarian disaster.

More than 12 million are currently at risk of starvation in Ethiopia, as a major relief appeal seeks to save some of these lives. But putting £10 in a collection tin will not be enough if we do not understand the deeper causes and the crucial role we play in perpetuating them.

Famines are not natural disasters or acts of God, but the product of human acts and omissions. Even two years of drought should not leave millions starving. That six million of those at risk are in Zimbabwe is testimony to the human cost of a political tyranny.

That dictatorship and war are major causes of famine is a case that can be made powerfully by Africa's democrats. But Western governments have at least an equal share of responsibility - indeed their hypocrisy on free trade contributes massively to Africa's endemic poverty and political instability.

Africa needs a fair chance to sell its produce. Yet President Bush has just pledged an additional $180 billion to support America's farmers over the next decade. The European Union, shamefully, wastes half of its budget on inefficient agricultural subsidies. We all lose out, in higher prices and higher taxes. But the cost in Africa can be measured in lives.

European leaders are backing 'urgent' emergency relief to Africa. But they should also do much more to ensure that the latest efforts to reform the Common Agricultural Policy deliver more than months of interminable haggling and another fudge. Europeans need to realize that every £1 million given to charity does little to counter the £70bn every year in subsidies, the rigged rules and the double standards by which we lock the world's poorest people out of the global economy.

Africa may need their charity now - and the West will generously support the appeal - but an equally important demand is that of simple justice on trade.

solomonkebede@yahoo.com