Africa, Disillusioned With Western Aid, Looks To the East

ROME — Africa is looking eastward – to China and India – for help in solving its chronic agricultural problems.

Disillusionment with Western technological help has impelled this shift, according to food experts here. They say Africans feel that Western advice:
– Has not helped them become self-sufficient in food.
– Has often been aimed at obtaining profit for Western exporters instead of helping local inhabitants.
– Has often been aimed at obtaining profit for Western exporters instead of helping local inhabitants

“The Asian record in agriculture is impressive,” says one food agency official. “[Africans] want to look there instead” because “Europe is old hat.”

African officials are studying the steps Asian nations have taken in recent decades to invigorate their agricultural sectors and eradicate hunger. In late April, African food experts met in Rome with their counterparts from India and China to discuss solutions to the African famine and debt crisis. The meetings were sponsored by China, India, and some United Nations agencies.

“Both African and Asia have faced national disasters and share a history of suffering,” says Zhou Wei, of China, an economic affairs officer at the World Food Council (WFC). “Their cultures are very different. But they also have common institutional structures that I think make it very easy for them to understand each other.”

“We want to learn how a little bit of earth can produce a lot more,” says Daniel Yoman, Ivory Coast delegate to the Food and Agricultural Organization.

Drought-stricken, landlocked Niger, says its FAO representative, Bawa Sahadou, is interested in finding out “how peasants are educated in agriculture and how scientists are developing heat-resistant, dry-land crops.”

Niger has recently undergone a “revolution” in its agricultural sector, Mr. Sahadou says. Peasants have begun to play key roles in managing the purchase, transportation, and reserve stocking of crops. Profits that previously accrued to state agencies now stay with local farm cooperatives.

“Asian farmers feel [they are] a part of a national process that is responsive to them,” says WFC officer Thomas Stephens. Favorable price policies, credit systems, and training programs in Asia have motivated farmers to increase production levels, experts say.

But Faisal Mohammed, a UN expert on “grassroots” development cautions against adopting Asia’s “top-heavy” government-directed organizations as a model for Africa. Such organizations are “based on the misconception that people are not capable of undertaking their own enterprises,” he says.

Small farmers’ “capacity for financial efficiency,” Mr. Mohammed adds, “should not be underestimated.” In Asian countries, we… find that large farmers are major defaulters. In Africa, the money should go to the people who will successfully undertake income-generating activities.”

Christian Science Monitor International Edition
15 May 1986