neradicable. This perception, however, may be unnecessarily fatalistic. The purpose of this research is to examine the causes of repeated famine in Africa and to suggest ways in which Africa can escape this cycle of poverty. The focus of this study will be on Sub-Saharan Africa, the region most severely plagued by economic underdevelopment and famine.
Sub-Saharan Africa is comprised of all African countries except the Northern African countries along the Mediterranean coast and South Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa countries share many common social, political and economic characteristics, including a similar colonial history to dualistic economies with a heavy reliance on traditional and low-productivity agriculture. Not only are two-thirds of the poorest countries in the world in this region of Africa, but also two-thirds of the African economies rank as the very poorest. Of the 36 countries identified by the United Nations as least developed, 24 are Sub-Saharan African countries (Pickett, 1990, pp. 2-4).
Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa is an historic fact. There was no golden age of prosperity before the Europeans colonized the region. Pre-colonial poverty in Africa was caused largely by erratic rainfall and on poor soil conditions. None of this denies that Africans developed agricultural technologies; long fallow rotation systems (better known as "shifting cultivation") was created in Africa to deal with the poor soil conditions and uncertain rainfall. But the fact remains that for many Africans hunger was an annual occurrence and life was short.
Neo-colonialism unleashed two more factors contributing to poverty and famine. The first was the slave trade and the social and economic wastelands it created. The dislocations caused by the slave trade disrupted African societies and even depopulated major areas of the continent. (Nigeria's middle belt still is underpopulated a century later.) The second was the rise in th...