All the six EAC countries have been affected by drought and bad harvest, with South Sudan the worst hit.

The famine that was declared in South Sudan by the UN, was the first time in the region for six years.

Next, Kenya and Uganda teetered on the brink, with emergencies declared.

There are many reasons why we are plagued by food crises. Climate change, rains that are AWOL, soils worn out by erosion and age, incompetent and corrupt governments, crappy agricultural technology, and as in South Sudan, the madness of war.

While all these are true, there is an elephant in the room we are afraid to broach – the added possibility that the average modern-day African just cannot farm.

A time sometimes comes when structurally the life of something ends or its shape permanently alters, like the decline of religion in Western Europe. That came with a sharp drop in the enrolment in seminaries, especially of white Europeans.

Part of the response has been the recruitment of priests, especially from Africa, and some churches have been turned into pubs.

In reality, good farmers in Africa are now like opera singers. You can’t turn around in a Kampala, Nairobi, Dar or Kigali street without running into an failed, aspiring, or successful rap musician. But you won’t find an opera singer.

Farming today is very hard work. If you are a peasant, it is a terrible way to live.

The chaps who enjoy it most are the ones with money, who can have a farm house on the hill, and look out into the quiet night as they grill goat or pork with a chilled beer in the evening on their porches.

These are the farmers who can build silos to stock their surplus produce when the rains are good, or because they can irrigate, and make a fortune selling for exorbitant prices when there is a drought, or army worms or locusts wreak havoc on the season’s crop.

Therefore, the first thing we need to do is have an open food market in East Africa, and follow Ethiopia’s example and open up commodities exchanges.

The EAC governments’ backward view towards food has denied enterprising farmers the certainty of a market of nearly 140 million, which would have set off a crazy wave of investments in food that would not be shaken by the worst droughts. It has hobbled incentives for innovation in agriculture.

A true regional food market, and the entry of big enterprises, should aim to turn most peasants into outgrowers, with a guaranteed wage, and little risk.

The other thing that needs to change is our attitude towards water. There must be merciless punishment for people who invade wetlands and interfere with water resources. Laws must be passed compelling people to harvest rainwater.

Everything that uses water, including cattle, must pay a “water tax” of some sort.

Farmers should be banned from recycling seeds beyond a certain period. There are stories of maize seeds in parts of Kenya, for example, that have been in the family for over 30 years!

Whatever works. This image of Africans as a people who are likely to starve to death whenever the rains fail, just needs to go away.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is publisher of data visualiser Africapaedia and Rogue Chiefs. Twitter@cobbo3