africa needs a green revolution

Africa’s peasants are migrating to the cities in huge numbers because it is becoming increasingly difficult to survive on their farms. Meanwhile, very few are finding productive jobs in the cities and most are getting poorer. Africa’s dependance on concessionary food import is growing and these trends can have catastrophic consequences for the continent’s poor people. Current situation in Africa bears some striking similarities in Asia in the early 1960s. Faced with worsening food shortages and slow agricultural growth, Asian governments started spending 10-15% of their total budget on agriculture each year because they realised that rapid agricultural growth was a key step along the path to industrialisation. They invested on agricultural research, irrigation, rural roads and power.  Many of these interventions were targeted to small farms, who enthusiastically adopted the new technologies and typically outperformed larger farms. These policies inspired a green revolution that helped transform Asia. Africa, in contrast, has failed to do the same. For over 40 years African governments have spent less than half the share spent in Asia, and little has been done  for agricultural development. Africa has only exploited a fraction of its irrigation potential and the density of rural roads is very low. Farmers rely almost exclusively on rain-fed farming and face exceptionally high transport and marketing costs. Instead, yields could dramatically increase if farmers had access to improved technologies and markets and if goverments provided more supportive policies for agriculture. An African green revolution would generate many productive jobs in agriculture and provide a leg up out of poverty for many. This would help creating allied industries and lowering food prices, and, finally, would prevent migration of millions of peasants off the land. Two risks, however, should be taken into account: a) the spread of green revolution agriculture may affect both agricultural biodiversity and wild biodiversity; b) the consumption of the chemicals and pesticides used to kill pests by humans in some cases may be increasing the likelihood of cancer.
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women's poverty, HIV infection, and cancer

Women bear a disproportionate burden of the world’s poverty. Statistics indicate that they are more likely than men to be poor and at risk of hunger. This is certainly due to  the systematic discrimination they face in education, health care, employment and control of assets.  According to some estimates, women represent 70 percent of the world’s poor.  

More than 30 million people are today living with HIV and, globally, women now account for half of all infections. Yet women increasingly make up the majority in sub-Saharan Africa where young women ages 15–24 are up to six times more likely to be HIV-positive than young men of the same age.

Why does it happen? According to the UN women website,  “gender inequality and violations of women’s rights make women and girls particularly susceptible, leaving them with less control than men over their bodies and their lives. Women and girls often have less information about HIV and fewer resources to take preventive measures. They face barriers to the negotiation of safer sex, including economic dependency and unequal power relations”.

What about women’s poverty and cancer incidence and mortality? I have already reported the higher incidence and the higher mortality of carcinoma of the cervix uteri in the developing world as compared to the high-income western world which is mainly due to the lack of primary or secondary prevention. Every day in Africa many women die of this totally preventable cancer which is related to human papilloma virus (HPV) infection.  Most of them even ignored the disease they were suffering from. Other than the lack of medical care and health facilities in the countries they live in, gender inequality and violations of women’s rights do play a major role in this tragedy too.