The wider East African region is experiencing one of its worst droughts in 60 years, affecting 11 million people. In parts of Ethiopia and Somalia, many have already died from the resulting famine. This is not “news” because by October/November last year the UN and dozens of humanitarian organisations working in the Horn of Africa, were warning that disaster was coming.
And, like a Swiss train, the famine has arrived bang on time.

The question is, why are some of our governments, whose primary responsibility it is to protect people from these ravages, rarely energised enough to prevent it?

The first obvious thing is that the elite and political class never go hungry in these famines, so they will agitate more when the price of fuel at the pumps skyrockets, than at the sight of hundreds of their fellow citizens dying of hunger.

But, then again, that is a cheap populist class-war shot at Africa’s middle class.

The ugly fact is probably that our governments, or at least our establishments, need famines. Independent peasants living happily off their land and selling their produce in the local market can be hard-headed and proud.

A famine usually hits these peasants hardest, breaks their backs, forces them to throw away their pride, and to beg for handouts and food relief. Famine is a very effective disempowerment tool that shifts power into the hands of ruling elites.

With world food prices rising everywhere, the cost of putting food on the table is causing trouble for governments. High food prices were among the factors that led to the ousting of Tunisian strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s dictator Hosni Mubarak. They were also what convulsed Uganda earlier this year, with the Walk to Work campaigns.

Sharp increases in food prices will lead to political trouble most times — except if they increase during a famine. When your countrymen and women are dying because they have nothing to eat, you are unlikely to protest because your food bill has gone up by 100 per cent.

These prices usually rarely fall back to pre-famine levels. They either remain high, or dip only marginally. For those looking to make a profit, the margins that come from “normal” changes in food prices brought about by increased costs of production, are ordinary.

Among the few things that can deliver the steep rises that result in windfall profits are severe droughts and famines. And it is not only local food sharks who make a killing.

International food suppliers also profit, because when 10,000 people perish you are more likely to shame the international community into ponying up the money to buy millions of tonnes of relief maize at a high price, than if only 10 died.

For those of us who can still go to bed on a full stomach, the conclusions are uncomfortable. One reason the people who produce the food that we buy at the new high prices are able to invest is probably because of the profits they make from soaring prices of food during severe famines.

Maybe we are able to eat because of the people we see dying of hunger on our TV news every evening.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group’s executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: [email protected]