Alet Strijdom
Food sovereignty
Over the decades, many African countries became known for their poor citizens’ malnutrition problems.
One of these countries is Ethiopia, where hunger and food shortage is a day to day phenomenon. It has
become an icon of world hunger, with images of starving people flooding the world’s perception of
these countries, with all the right.
Most of these country’s, especially in Africa, problems start with overpopulation. Other factors have
come to be part of a vicious cycle, but it is overpopulation for the biggest part that causes this
devastation. Education, bad infrastructure, bad agricultural environment and lack of financial aid is all
factors that contribute to the problem of national hunger. Images of malnourished children are wide
spread over the world media, and we would sometimes wonder why people would keep on having
children in circumstances that bad, but who have to right to keep these people from having families and
trying to live normal lives? These people are thus suffering on a mental, physical and spiritual level.
Like all the other points mentioned above, education is a problem that causes this cycle to continue due
to people being uneducated about elements of overpopulation and proper methods of parenting, and
what circumstances are inhuman and unfair to be born into. On the other hand, people aren’t educated
to be able to produce food or grow a crop. Their knowledge is limited to their surroundings and
traditional methods of food gathering, which has been depleted a long time ago.
Major companies have attempted several projects with the aim of helping these people regain their lives
with no success. The soul reason for this is a scientific term called “tragedy of the commons” where the
people will consume as much as they are allowed, without thinking of sustainability and without
thinking of growing crops for the future. Despite the lack of skill and knowledge, these people will rather
consume the seeds and drink the water because it is such a need, than to try and raise a crop. A one
time seed contribution will be catastrophic because the people would take up a attitude of being served
and wouldn’t think it necessary to safe or reproduce seeds, because they are given to then for free. And
even if not, they wouldn’t have the capital to re-invest in their future crops.
The only solution to this problem according to me, is to start with villages ran by volunteers for a few
months, to lead and teach the people from a certain area about sustainable living and educate them in
agricultural aspects until they are able to be self sustainable.