Africa: portrait of a continent in crisis

FOR DECADES, Africa has been the forgotten continent--neglected by Westerners, ignored by economic historians, and patronized by politicians. Unfortunately for the development of the continent, policies of the Western governments towards Africa mainly have remained focused on just three nations: South Africa, Egypt, and Libya. A large number of other countries, which lie in between, have received very little or no international attention.

It seems that countries in Africa have to be ravaged by some natural disaster before they get the global public attention and receive desperately needed economic assistance. For example, millions of dollars in aid from Western governments and private donors poured into the Sudan and Ethiopia, two of Africa's poorest nations, in the late 1980s, but not until they experienced wide-scale famine, mass starvation, and thousands of deaths. Sadly for starving Africans, the heat of public opinion fades almost as swiftly as it begins. American and other forces surely will not remain in Somalia indefinitely.

Africa's problems are structural, deeply rooted in demographic realities and social institutions. Its most pressing concern today is overpopulation. The continent has more than 630,000,000 people and the world's fastest rate of population growth. If the latter continues, Africa will take less than 35 years to triple its population. Africa, which increases food supply by less than one percent annually, can not feed its entire population. Not surprisingly, the continent's dependence on food imports is growing more acute. This means countless Africans will starve each year without desperately needed foreign exchange to buy food from outside markets. "The suffering that was triggered in Ethiopa by severe drought is becoming built into the demographic graphic structure of the entire continent," warns the Population Institute, Washington D.C. The alarming rates of population explosion and the burden that such high growth places on the continent can be demonstrated clearly by the following country-by-country population updates:

* Botswana, with a 3.8% growth rate of population, will take a mere 20 years to double its population size. To make matters worse, 50% of the population is under 15, and they are yet to enter their reproductive years. This means Botswana will have a more serious overpopulation problem in the future.

* Congo's population is increasing at 3.5% annually. At this pace, Congo would double its population size in just 20 years.

* Ethiopia, the world's poorest nation and an international symbol of Africa's problem, has a three percent growth rate and will double its population in 23 years.

* Ghana, with a 3.3% growth rate, is expected to double its population within 21 years.

* Kenya, with a population growth rate as high as 4.2%, will take the shortest time--17 years--to double its people.

* Other countries--such as Malawi, Mali, the Sudan, Uganda, Zaire, and Zambia, which have more than a three percent average growth rate, also will have to live with overpopulation and all the economic and ecological difficulties that will place on them.

Africa's greatest single constraint to long-term growth and human welfare is its overpopulation. This not only will imperil development hopes, but also undermines the stability of the region. Even worse, this overpopulation is ravaging the environment, turning cropland into desert, robbing remaining arable land of its productive capacity, and converting the continent into a net grain-importing region.

Wood is the primary source of fuel. As the continent's population expands, demand multiplies faster than it can be replaced through new replanting, a fact with both economic and ecological consequences. It is becoming ever more difficult for Africans to get wood for fuel. In Tanzania and Gambia, for instance, households spend almost 300 working days annually to find and collect the scarce wood they need. In Ethiopia, the cost of fuelwood consumes 25% of the average household income. The growing demand for fuelwood is causing large-scale deforestation. Ninety years ago, Ethiopia had 50% of its land covered by trees and bushes; it is less than five percent today. Across the continent, 30 trees are cut down for every new one planted.

The frequent drought and insufficient rainfall sharply curtails farm output as well. One United Nations estimate points out that farm output for the continent, having grown by 2.5 % in 1989, remained virtually stagnant during 1990-91. Total production increased by less than half a percentage point, thereby turning Africa into a net food-importing continent and threatening it with yet another famine, as can be witnessed in Somalia. Civil strife and wars also have contributed to the decline in farm production and severely disrupted the distribution of food to deficit areas. Angola, Ethiopia, Liberia, Somalia, and the Sudan are frequently torn by civil wars and other social unrest.

The slow growth in farm output reduced agricultural exports, which, in turn, has led to a chronic crunch of foreign exchange reserves. Africa accumulated foreign debt during the 1970s, when foreign exchange from agricultural exports stopped growing and, in many cases, fell. This worsened the devastating poverty. In order to get desperately needed money, Africa resorts to foreign borrowings, which act as drags on its already declining economy because imports continue to compete with the debt service in the distribution of scarce foreign exchange. Total debt in sub-Saharan Africa now is higher than the aggregate Gross Domestic Product. In 1990, for instance, the debt service absorbed almost 25% of export earnings in that region.