Niger: starved by neoliberal dogma. posted by Richard Seymour

The BBC this morning once more wears its tear-ducts firmly on its sleeve. Niger is desperate, starving, in need. What is more, these are the deserving poor - this is not a crisis brought on by government corruption or war. It is simply a result of a terrible crop failure and a blast of locusts. And yet, not one of the millions facing starvation in Niger need be in that position. This isn't just because of the usual reasons( we spend enough on arms globally to end poverty in Africa for good, many times over, aid is a low priority for Western states etc). There has been a harvest failure. There have been locusts. But some of the locusts walked on two legs.

As early as April this year, there were protests in Niger against the government's decision to increase tax to 19% on staple goods such as milk and flour, which forced the government to reduce them slightly. The food that is available now is too costly. Medicin Sans Frontieres explain :

Johanne Sekkenes, the mission head of MSF which is mounting the biggest emergency exercise in its history in Niger, says the current emergency could have been avoided. 'This is not a famine, in the Somalian way,' she said. 'The harvest was bad in 2004 and the millet granaries are empty. Yet there is food on the markets. The trouble is that the price of the food is beyond anyone's reach.

'Given this situation, it was criminal of the UN this year to tackle the emergency in a gingerly way, putting 'moderately priced' cereals on the market. The UN should have immediately organised free food distribution.'

Ms Sekkenes said the International Monetary Fund and the European Union had pressed Niger too hard to implement a structural adjustment programme. 'No sooner had the government been re-elected [this year] than it was obliged to introduce 19 per cent VAT on basic foodstuffs. At the same time, as part of the policy, emergency grain reserves were abolished.'

Further:

Some aid specialists blamed the International Monetary Fund and the European Union. Their economic programmes have contributed to sharp rises in the prices of staples such as sorghum and millet. Others said the Niamey government had downplayed the emergency to protect local food traders who are resistant to free aid because it undermines markets.

Or, as The Guardian wrote yesterday, "Plenty of food, yet the poor are starving":

The starvation in Niger is not the inevitable consequence of poverty, or simply the fault of locusts or drought. It is also the result of a belief that the free market can solve the problems of one of the world's poorest countries.

The price of grain has skyrocketed; a 100kg bag of millet, the staple grain, costs around 8,000 to 12,000 West African francs (around ?13) last year but now costs more than 22,000 francs (?25). According to Washington-based analysts the Famine Early Warning System Network (Fewsnet), drought and pests have only had a "modest impact" on grain production in Niger.

So the main causes of the famine in this case are not natural but man-made. The reason for the tax rise, says the Niger government, was that it helped meet the conditions an IMF-imposed 'reform' programme. The President was re-elected in December 2004, and the recently appointed Finance minister committed himself immediately to enforcing the IMF's structural adjustment programme, warning the unions and social movements of the necessary "sacrifices" ahead. Similarly, the G8 'debt relief' programme for Highly Indebted Poor Countries also stipulates that recipients must remove subsidies for food, reduce subsidies for food production and increase the intake of tax, all as part of a programme for 'free market reform'. Until recently 44% of the government's revenue went to repaying debt, and the tax raises were anticipated to account for a $14 million increase in government revenue.

Everyone from ABC News to the New York Times is describing how the Niger government is blameless in this crisis, how it raised the alarm back in November, and how the "international community" has simply failed to respond. Aid, they cry, and much more of it. The humanitarian in every neoliberal demands no less. One assumes that this is because they can't see that Niger's government did anything wrong in fulfilling IMF and G8 stipulations. But it is wrong to imagine that Western aid is anything but a useful plug for a gap which it has helped create. UK aid policy has, as Mark Curtis points out , the crucial function of opening up markets for British business. Eventually, the root causes - dear me, yes - of these endemic crises must be dealt with. And part of that task will be answered when Western narcissism and its attendant discourse of philanthropy is finally dispensed with, and a consensus emerges that our governments and banks owe Africa a debt, not the other way round: a debt which they are by no means close to discharging. This is about justice, not charity.