A sad game of snakes and ladders

The scourge of war always brings with it the scourge of hunger.
The world seems to have forgotten this basic truth and the growing number of conflicts, together with the effects of the pandemic and those of climate change, have made us lose the 2020-30 decade in the fight against poverty. There are now 56 active conflicts in the world, the highest number ever recorded since the end of the Second World War.
Many are found especially in the most vulnerable countries of sub-Saharan Africa, from the Horn of Africa to Sudan to Libya, to get to the jihadist terrorism in West Africa, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo torn apart by conflicts over rare earths. The latest data from the World Bank taken from the report Poverty, Prosperity and the Planet say that the global goal of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030 - equivalent to a per capita income of 2.15 dollars a day - is increasingly out of reach. At the current rate, it would take over three decades to reach the goal. In the meantime, let's not forget that almost 700 million people in the world - 8.5 percent of the global population - survive on less than that amount. We are in a phase of global economic stagnation while many vulnerable countries, in Africa but not only, see their debt grow and, after being exploited by Western countries, have turned to the Chinese and Arab countries who, however, have not proven to be much more generous.

What does this general decline mean in concrete terms? That, while geopolitical enthusiasts are having fun with the new African risk by redrawing alliances, for tens of millions of people we have returned to square one, like in the game of the goose. More poverty means fewer children in school because families cannot afford to send them to study and give up their contribution in the fields or at the stalls of a market or at home to look after their little brothers and sisters. More poverty means less care, the return of epidemics that seemed to have been defeated. More poverty means less trade and business and more subsistence economy.
It means more internal migration from rural areas to cities, in inhuman favelas where the most brutal poverty generates enormous suffering. The other most mediatic wars also drain humanitarian aid from Africa and its conflicts and the skyrocketing costs of fertilizers and fuels in agriculture-based economies cause food prices to double. The result is that two-thirds of extreme poverty concerns the sub-Saharan population. International funding for climate change mitigation is also lacking: in these countries it is 5-10 times lower than the level considered essential.
And yet, despite the headwind that has been blowing since 2020, hope has not abandoned the African continent, rich in resources, young people and ideas. The Secretary General of the United Nations has interpreted this spirit by defining it as a "continent of hope" that faces challenges deeply rooted in its history and exacerbated by conflicts, climate change and persistent poverty.

Italians are not so indifferent to the fate of Africa.
An Ipsos survey for Amref says that for the majority of public opinion, Africa is a crucial hub and those who support this are especially those over sixty.
Who are convinced that economic and humanitarian aid should be intensified and above all that Italy should commit to training the ruling class of the African countries themselves in order to give them solid expertise to guide the continent towards sustainable development.
Here too, civil society and public opinion demonstrate that they are ahead of the politics that persists in not listening.
 

Paolo Lambruschi
NP November 2024