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First published in May 2023

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Award-winning writer and radio documentary maker Asad Ismi has blamed the food collapse triggered by the West for causing the starvation of 278 million Africans. Ismi, also a radio documentary maker, put forward this accusation in the March-April 2023 issue of The Monitor, the bi-monthly magazine of the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives.

“One in five [Africans] are facing hunger. The number of East Africans in this predicament has gone up by 60 percent in 2021 alone and it has gone up by 40 percent in West Africa,” Ismi said.

The World Food Program (WFP), an entity under the United Nations, noted that violent conflict remains the primary driver of acute hunger. “Hunger and conflict fuel one another, with armed conflict and widespread displacement prevailing for the past 25 years,” it said.

The WFP pointed out that the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) faces one of the largest hunger crises in the world. Mali is also facing an unprecedented food crisis. From January to June this year, 26.4 million people could face acute food insecurity.

A WFP report stated that “from October to December 2021, nearly 1.2 million people were known to be in need of emergency food assistance – almost three times higher than the year before.”

The late Glen Ford, erstwhile editor of the Black Agenda Report, had concurred with this observation and noted that Western intervention was behind many of these conflicts.

The U.S. government has fueled wars on the continent through arms transfers and military training, as well as both proxy and direct invasions, since the 1980s. It has also given military assistance to 51 out of 54 African countries. Countries that have received such aid from the U.S. include the DRC, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Angola, Ethiopia, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Congo-Brazzaville and Nigeria.

“When there is conflict, it becomes practically impossible for farmers to produce the food needed to sustain the population. There is a clear correlation between the many conflicts ongoing in Africa, food scarcity, drought and climate change,” explained University of Michigan Afro-American and African studies professor Omolade Adunbi.

According to Ford, Washington has drenched Congo’s eastern provinces with the blood of more than six million people since 1996. The governments of Rwanda and Uganda, the direct perpetrators of the said “holocaust,” are in every sense of the word agents of U.S. foreign policy.

Western powers were also responsible for invading Libya in 2011, successfully overthrowing its leader Muammar Gaddafi. The attack destroyed the North African nation and spread violence to several African states.

Ismi denounces “climate change” mitigation efforts by the West

Ismi also blasted the West’s efforts to address “climate change.”

He cited a Reuters report that countries in Africa make up only three percent of the emissions responsible for the so-called “climate crisis.” In spite of this, Africa suffers more than any other region.

“Yet they have externalized the effects of their environmental destruction on people who are amongst the poorest in the world,” Ismi said, highlighting that 16 out of the 20 countries that are most vulnerable to the climate crisis are in the said continent.

Other experts also voiced out their thoughts on the matter.

Pan-African News Wire Editor Abayomi Azikiwe said “the climate crisis is another form of neo-colonialism.” Adunbi, meanwhile, blasted the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference as “a jamboree where promises that are never kept are made.” He added that the conference, also known as COP 27, is “more performative than anything.” (Related: UN climate change conference delegates to stay at five-star hotels and luxury resorts.)

Starvation.news has more stories about hunger in Africa.

Watch the video below where Irish MEP Mick Wallace said NATO is a war machine.

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