BYAMUKAMA: Family size, education, organized production, key to solving poverty in Africa

This is the concluding part of Byamukama's exposition on poverty in Africa

Every year six million children die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday.Source: World Bank Stats

By Emmanuel Byamukama, Ames, Iowa.
Published: May 23, 2010 6:52 PM CDT

Though not a major cause of poverty, high number of children in a family is another point to ponder on. Moreover, these children are not spaced apart. That means they will demand care and needs more or less at the same time. On average, a family in my village has between 6-10 people in a household! However much the parents work hard, much of the effort will go into producing enough food to feed the family. Why large families? Well, traditionally, people have grown up knowing, “the more children, the more you are rich”. This would be in form of bride price (dowery when girls are married off) or in form of security, when a father has many sons.

But also they argue that if you have one or two kids, should one die out of the many diseases that can claim a life in developing countries, then you are left with zero. On the hand, even when parents desire to do some birth control, e.g. child spacing, or even having few children, it becomes impossible to use the birth control methods, mainly because its not something they perceive as a problem, they have never heard of it or even conceive it in their minds, leave alone the affordability and availability.

Who is to blame for all this poverty? Well, there is always someone to blame for our faults! But a time comes when you can’t blame your parents for your behavior and failure! I think for long, there has been a blame game for problems of developing countries to colonialists. I don’t want to go that way too much, but may be its time we owned our problems and start from there! I think that the way our system works is what is at fault here! We don’t seem to recognize our problems, the root causes of poverty. We don’t seem to learn from developed countries, what makes them rich and prosperous. Our biggest challenge is that we have not developed our own appropriate technology!

Our problem has been importing technology that is not suited for our culture, environment, terrain, education, later alone our needs. Luckily, some of these technologies are good for us, we don’t have to re-invent the wheel, however, we need to adapt the technology for our environment.A good example in Uganda is mobile phones.

Now, communication is important, but in Uganda, a poor youth who is farming on the land, has a mobile phone, which does not help him make connections or talk with customers, but only chats with friends on air time that is expensive! Given our terrain, and tropical conditions, we need to heavily invest in appropriate technology that will meet the needs of our people.

Is there anything that can be done to help? Yes, plenty. Education. This is where I agree with one of the presenters. When people get educated, not only do they learn how to read and write, but they get to know the world around them and learn to make choices. A vivid example of how education can help is to note that current leadership in Uganda wins elections in rural areas but not in urban areas. Because the urban people are educated and can make an educated choice when it comes to elections! Moreover, educated class is likely to have fewer children that they can afford to provide quality life.

How about in the area of agriculture since it’s the largest employer? In order to balance demand and supply, there is a need to improve on value addition and processing. This is where aid would most be beneficial. During harvesting and shortly after harvesting, there is flooding of the market with goods. Because of the perishability of these goods, very soon they will be out of market. If the system can be stabilized by removing from the market part of produce into e.g., canning, food processors, this would help a great deal. Research and investment should be done in the area of agroprocessing.

What else? Production could be organized and coordinated so that there is comparative advantage. Areas that are best suited for some crops could be encouraged and assured of market. For example we can have areas that produce beans and others that produce ground nuts, millet, sorghum etc.

Anything else? Government could encourage production by removing taxes on agricultural inputs like fertilizers, insecticides, seeds, to spur production.

External market is another big potential. This could encourage large scale production and improved quality. Much of the produce in rural areas is organic. No chemicals used whatsoever. This could be a boost for organic produces if only the can be a link and trade restrictions removed.

Bottom line? Now that we depend on agriculture, we need to have organized production, invest in agro-industries that will create jobs and add value to agricultural produce, invest in agricultural research and development in areas of high value crops, appropriate technology, value addition and markets. Once there is significant income going into households, they will afford basic needs, demand better services (education, health care, etc), which in turn will support other sectors.

I think eventually, we will get there. As more people become aware of the problems, and as problems become more eminent, we will have no choice but to change the way we act. People will be demanding governments for favorable policies and good governance, governments will reject foreign influences and loans or grants that have, in my opinion, done more harm than good, and governments will work for their people instead of against their people or else they won’t be elected again.

This pretty much is what happened in developed countries! It took an industrial revolution (appropriate technology), great leadership of their governments, and time. No wonder the grants, numerous NGOs (900 NGOs in Uganda) and all the good will for nearly 40 years in Uganda have not made a great impact (or may be things could be worse). It has to be inside out, we must realize the root causes of poverty is learn to fish not be given fish or hope to be given fish!

Emmanuel Byamukama is originally from the Eastern African country of Uganda.