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THEWORLDTODAY.ORG DECEMBER 2007 PAGE 8 political and clan-based polarisation – could destabilise the whole country, as it did in the early 1990s. The conflict may already be spreading. In late October, at least seven people were killed in exchanges between government forces and clan militia in Merka, just outside Mogadishu. Militias loyal to former Courts leader, Yussuf Siyad Indha’adde, are reportedly regrouping nearby. During the past few weeks, clashes between insurgents and government and Ethiopian troops also broke out in Beletweyne, a strategic town on the main road to Ethiopia. Ethiopian troops responding to ambushes by reportedly killing and injuring people with indiscriminate rocket-fire. Two once stable regions – Somaliland and Puntland – may also be drawn in. In mid October, Somaliland’s forces captured the contested town of Las Anod, and now Puntland is reorganising its militias to recapture the town. The mayhem in Mogadishu is also fuelling regional instability. Although Ethiopia uses the rhetoric of international terrorism to justify its action in Somalia, its intervention was largely provoked by regional concerns, especially continued tensions with Eritrea, which reportedly provided support to the Courts as well as to armed Ethiopian opposition groups. Ethiopia’s presence in Somalia is also contributing to conflict in its own eastern Somali region, where a longstanding rebel movement, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, seized the opportunity of the military being stretched next door to increase attacks, including on a Chinese oil site. Ethiopian troops responded with a brutal counter-insurgency campaign against civilians. SHORT-SIGHTED In October, Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi resigned amid accusations of corruption and poor working relations with Yussuf. Many Somalis see Yussuf’s choice of a successor as a critical test of the government’s future and ability to bridge the deepening clan tensions, but the west must also do more. Ethiopia’s primary western allies – the United States, Britain and the European Union – have responded with silent diplomacy and apparent support for Ethiopian policies. This is short-sighted. Ethiopia faces difficult challenges at home, in Somalia and the region. But human rights abuses and war crimes are the wrong way to deal with them. Such conduct is creating a mounting toll of victims and risks sending more young people into the arms of the radicals. If western policymakers want to stabilise the Horn, they should apply pressure on Addis Ababa to end its own human rights abuses and ensure accountability. They should support independent human rights investigations into crimes in Somalia and Ethiopia’s Somali region and demand that Ethiopia and the government end attacks on civilians and make it possible to deliver humanitarian aid to displaced people. They must also send the message, privately, publicly and consistently, that Ethiopia and other players will never achieve sustainable peace and security by flouting the rule of law and international human rights. | INDEPENDENT THINKING ON INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS FOOD PRODUCTION IN MALAWI Wheel From emergency food aid to maize exporter in just eighteen months, is Malawi marking out a new African miracle? Government seed and fertiliser subsidies have certainly been highly controversial and the jury is still out on whether the success is sustainable. eIGHTEENMONTHSAGO, FIVE million people in Malawi, or just under forty percent of its population, were receiving emergency food and other humanitarian aid. The combination of poor and erratic rains with the inability of millions of smallholder farmers to buy seed and fertiliser had resulted in a maize harvest in 2005 that, at 1.2 million metric tons, provided just over half estimated national requirements. The resulting food crisis was made worse by inefficient distribution of what was available and the high cost of imports. This led to record levels of acute malnutrition, on top of the country’s already high chronic rates. Deaths from HIV and AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis went up, as did social tensions, gender based violence and petty crime as families and communities struggled to survive.
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from Michael Keating with Laura Collins in Malawi THEWORLDTODAY.ORG DECEMBER 2007 PAGE 9 of Fortune Today, Malawi is exporting maize to its neighbours, including four hundred thousand metric tons to Zimbabwe. At 2.6 million metric tons, last year’s harvest was excellent; this year’s, at an estimated 3.1 million metric tons, has been nothing less than spectacular. While hundreds of thousands of people still need help, usually because they are too poor to buy food, overall numbers of those in need have dropped, and humanitarian indicators improved. As one observer put it; ‘something is missing in Malawi these days: anxiety. The sense of tension and strain that underlay nearly every conversation and interaction in the past few years is absent’. More prosaically, according to the International Monetary Fund, real gross domestic product (GDP) growth was almost eight percent last year and will be about 7.5 percent this year, in large part because of the harvests. The country may be entering the longest sustained period of economic growth for thirty years. What explains this extraordinary turnaround? Does this experience hold lessons for other countries in the region? Is Malawi in effect answering former United Nations Secretary-General KofiAnnan’s 2004 call for a ‘uniquely African green revolution’, whereby, using existing science and technology, agriculture can become the engine for the continent’s economic growth? Of all the places for a revolution to start, Malawi is not the most obvious. Though rapidly urbanising, it remains a predominantly rural country with high population growth rates and one of the lowest GDPs in the world. Malawi is ranked 165 out of the 173 countries in the UN’s Human Development Index. Two thirds of the population is below the poverty line and 22 percent chronically poor. Like most of sub-Saharan Africa, Malawi is grappling with declining per capita food production, decreasing soil fertility, a deteriorating natural environment and high vulnerability to external shocks including climate change. Its economy remains heavily dependant on agriculture, which is largely confined to low productivity cultivation, dominated by maize and tobacco. Almost all farming households grow maize, the staple food crop during a single rainy season, which traditionally occurs from November to April, though its dates and duration are increasingly unpredictable. SUBSIDY SCHEME The immediate cause of the turnaround was a 2005 decision by government to invest in an agricultural goods subsidy scheme. This arose from fierce political debates in and out of parliament. Opposition leaders vied to outbid President Bingu wa Mutharika in terms of resources they claimed they would allocate to schemes to help poor farmers. Resisting populist calls that it should be deep and universal, the government put in place a targeted couponbased programme designed to allow most, but not all, of the country’s farmers to buy fertiliser at about one third of its normal price. The government’s decision to back a medium term scheme that accounted for a whopping 43 percent of the annual budget of the Ministry of Agriculture was greeted with trepidation by the country’s donor partners. Collectively, they contribute about forty percent of the national budget and eighty percent of the development budget and therefore have a major vested interest. With very limited resources, what was the evidence, they asked, to show that agricultural subsidies are the best investment in economic growth? How could the country afford them and how could the cost be sustained? How would the scheme be implemented, given weak governmental capacity, the powerful pull of patronage networks and a history of corrupt practice? And what would a scheme exclusively implemented by government do to fledgling input and output markets and the already embattled private sector? Agricultural subsidies are an ideological flashpoint in policy discussions about development in poor countries. Strong reservations were MARIE-CLAIRE MUIR

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THEWORLDTODAY.ORG DECEMBER 2007

PAGE 8

political and clan-based polarisation – could destabilise the whole country, as it did in the early 1990s. The conflict may already be spreading. In late October, at least seven people were killed in exchanges between government forces and clan militia in Merka, just outside Mogadishu. Militias loyal to former Courts leader, Yussuf Siyad Indha’adde, are reportedly regrouping nearby. During the past few weeks, clashes between insurgents and government and Ethiopian troops also broke out in Beletweyne, a strategic town on the main road to Ethiopia. Ethiopian troops responding to ambushes by reportedly killing and injuring people with indiscriminate rocket-fire. Two once stable regions – Somaliland and Puntland – may also be drawn in. In mid October, Somaliland’s forces captured the contested town of Las Anod, and now Puntland is reorganising its militias to recapture the town. The mayhem in Mogadishu is also fuelling regional instability. Although Ethiopia uses the rhetoric of international terrorism to justify its action in Somalia, its intervention was largely provoked by regional concerns, especially continued tensions with Eritrea, which reportedly provided support to the Courts as well as to armed Ethiopian opposition groups. Ethiopia’s presence in Somalia is also contributing to conflict in its own eastern Somali region, where a longstanding rebel movement, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, seized the opportunity of the military being stretched next door to increase attacks, including on a Chinese oil site. Ethiopian troops responded with a brutal counter-insurgency campaign against civilians.

SHORT-SIGHTED In October, Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi resigned amid accusations of corruption and poor working relations with Yussuf. Many Somalis see Yussuf’s choice of a successor as a critical test of the government’s future and ability to bridge the deepening clan tensions, but the west must also do more. Ethiopia’s primary western allies – the United States, Britain and the European Union – have responded with silent diplomacy and apparent support for Ethiopian policies. This is short-sighted. Ethiopia faces difficult challenges at home, in Somalia and the region. But human rights abuses and war crimes are the wrong way to deal with them. Such conduct is creating a mounting toll of victims and risks sending more young people into the arms of the radicals. If western policymakers want to stabilise the Horn, they should apply pressure on Addis Ababa to end its own human rights abuses and ensure accountability. They should support independent human rights investigations into crimes in Somalia and Ethiopia’s Somali region and demand that Ethiopia and the government end attacks on civilians and make it possible to deliver humanitarian aid to displaced people. They must also send the message, privately, publicly and consistently, that Ethiopia and other players will never achieve sustainable peace and security by flouting the rule of law and international human rights.

| INDEPENDENT THINKING ON INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

FOOD PRODUCTION IN MALAWI

Wheel

From emergency food aid to maize exporter in just eighteen months, is Malawi marking out a new African miracle? Government seed and fertiliser subsidies have certainly been highly controversial and the jury is still out on whether the success is sustainable.

eIGHTEENMONTHSAGO, FIVE million people in Malawi, or just under forty percent of its population, were receiving emergency food and other humanitarian aid. The combination of poor and erratic rains with the inability of millions of smallholder farmers to buy seed and fertiliser had resulted in a maize harvest in 2005 that, at 1.2 million metric tons, provided just over half estimated national requirements. The resulting food crisis was made worse by inefficient distribution of what was available and the high cost of imports. This led to record levels of acute malnutrition, on top of the country’s already high chronic rates. Deaths from HIV and AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis went up, as did social tensions, gender based violence and petty crime as families and communities struggled to survive.

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