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FOCUS ON FOOD SECURITY
CAREERS IN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
STUDENTS IN ACTION
LEARN MORE
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FOCUS ON FOOD SECURITY
Photo credit: World Food Programme
This issue of Shape the World focuses on food security. When more than 13 million people in the Horn of Africa are at risk of starvation, it’s important to understand why this is happening in order to find lasting solutions.
Some attribute Africa’s famine to “the worst drought in six decades.” But famine is about much more than the weather and a failed harvest.
Famine may be triggered by drought, which occurs naturally in semi-arid and arid regions of the world. But its root causes are much more complex and man-made.
In Somalia, decades of war, government mismanagement, corruption, and the near-total absence of investment in health, infrastructure and agriculture. . . all this has given rise to famine.
Medécins Sans Frontières (MSF), [www.msf.ca] a non-governmental humanitarian relief agency working in Somalia for the last two decades, describes the famine-stricken country as “a theatre for a brutal war.” On one side is a corrupt “transitional” government, backed by Western governments and supported by African Union troops, and on the other side armed opposition factions, such as the Islamist militant group Al-Shabaab.
In this context, simply raising more funds and shipping food to Somalia isn’t enough. Political intervention by governments is needed, says MSF, to ensure that food aid is not blocked or stolen by armed groups.
The longer-term challenge is eradicating what Somali-born rapper K’Naan calls “the indignity of famine.”
The Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya is home to 450,000 refugees, the majority of them from Somalia. The United Nations estimates that around 75,000 people have arrived there since June 2011, fleeing famine in the south of Somalia. The entire population of Dadaab is relying on food aid from the United Nations World Food Programme.
Photo credit: United Nations High Commission for Refugees
Restoring food security to those most vulnerable to famine requires global cooperation for peace and sustainable development. This requires:
Helping small farmers build rural infrastructure and develop reliable markets
Investment in education, health services and businesses serving poor people
Building accountable governments; and
Partnerships between state, private sector and civil society actors.
“This last point is crucial,” says INDEV professor Bruce Frayne http://www.environment.uwaterloo.ca/seed/faculty-staff/frayne/. “No amount of humanitarian assistance will protect the Horn of Africa from the spectre of famine until state and civil society institutions become effective development actors.” Professor Frayne’s forthcoming book published by Earthscan is entitled Climate Change, Assets and Food Security in Southern African Cities.
CAREERS IN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Global health economist
The University of Waterloo’s Sue Horton (centre) uses her training as an economist to design health and nutrition policies that improve people’s lives in developing countries. She is currently the CIGI (Centre for International Governance and Innovation http://www.cigionline.org) chair in global health economics.
As a Harvard graduate student of economics, Sue worked as an assistant to Dr. Mohiuddin Alamgir, who was writing a book on the 1974 famine in Bangladesh. Later she worked as a research assistant on a World Bank health project in Nepal.
“I got as far as London,” Sue writes. “And then – as these things happen – the project was postponed for six months. I decided I didn’t want to wait. My advisor got me a research assistant position at the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research and I ended up spending six months in Bangladesh and Nepal, learning Bengali in the process. Since then I’ve worked in over 20 developing countries with agencies including the World Bank, Canada’s International Development Research Centre [www.idrc.ca] and the Micronutrient Initiative [www.micronutrient.org].”
Sue’s policy work promoting micronutrient supplements to combat child malnutrition was ranked number one by the 2008 Copenhagen Consensus [www.copenhagenconsensus.org]. Micronutrients are vital components of good nutrition and human health. Yet a third of the global population don’t get enough, preventing them from reaching their intellectual and physical potential.
“There are lots of great opportunities for careers combining health and international development,” says Professor Horton. Students need to have good writing skills as well as some courses in statistics and epidemiology – not everyone’s favourite but vital for this field. Language skills are another essential, whether that’s Spanish or one of the many African or South Asian languages.”
Food security analyst
Food security analysts work with agencies such as the World Food Program [www.wfp.org] using advanced technologies, including Geographical Information Systems (GIS), to combine survey data with geographical information to identify the root causes of food security and vulnerability. This information is then used to design appropriate interventions, such as food distributions, school feeding programs, support to re-establish livelihoods or food vouchers to vulnerable people.
STUDENTS IN ACTION
INDEV has partnered with the World University Service of Canada [http://www.wusc.ca] to provide students with eight months of hands-on experience in international development. In Burkina Faso and Malawi, for example, fourth year INDEV students are working with local organizations to improve food security in drought-prone regions. Read student blogs here http://envblogs.uwaterloo.ca/blogs/indev/
LEARN MORE
Listen to K’Naan, Somali-born singer/songwriter talk about his recent trip back to Somalia on CNN http://knaanmusic.ning.com/ and CBC http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/07/20/f-africa-famine-topix.html
http://www.wfp.org Download a FREE copy of the World Food Program’s State of Food Insecurity in the World 2011 or WFP’s map showing its Horn of Africa operations.
Learn what people are doing to bolster the productivity of small farmers. Checkout the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa http://www.agra-alliance.org/
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May 2010 - Focus on Sustainable Cities
January 2010 - Education for Global Progress
