Former African Granaries, Algeria to Zimbabwe

Today is Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's 85th birthday.  To read about his "obscenely" lavish party, read Martin Fletcher's report in the Times of London.

You've seen the TV footage of the misery reigning in the country where he holds the reins of power; here is what (Obama advisor) Samantha Power wrote in The Atlantic in December 2003, "How to Kill a Country."

A onetime net exporter of maize, cotton, beef, tobacco, roses, and sugarcane now exports only its educated professionals, who are fleeing by the tens of thousands. Although Zimbabwe has some of the richest farmland in Africa, children with distended bellies have begun arriving at school looking like miniature pregnant women.

Imagine - the above was written when Zimbabwe's inflation rate was reaching an "unprecedented" 700 percent.  In other words, in the golden days of 3 digit inflation, before today's 6.5 quindecillion percent (I confess I didn't know of this measure) inflation and cholera epidemic.  Wait a minute - inflation may have reached 10 sextillion percent.  Hard to keep track.

How does a country go from being a "net exporter" of food to a situation where 7 million of its citizens require international food aid?  "Governance" practiced as "power grab" is the point of departure.  Then you dispossess the heretofore productive farmers of their land, to the point where they seek refuge in Nigeria, which welcomes their agricultural know-how.

Normally I wouldn't put Zimbabwe and Algeria in the same post, except if I were listing African countries in alphabetical order.  But the latter was also a breadbasket, and you don't even have to go as far back as the days when it was "the granary of the Roman Empire" (above left, map of the Roman Province of "Africa," from a site dedicated to subjects Roman, UNRV.com).

In the early '90s when we lived in Oran, Algeria's second city and major port, the American Consulate overlooked the harbor, where the grain facility was located (photo at right, Wikipedia).  When it was built by the French, its purpose was to export Algeria's considerable wheat production.  When we lived there, some thirty years after Algerian independence, it served to import huge quantities of foreign grain.  Here's what an upbeat (for grain farmers) Canadian Government site says about the Algerian market:

Algeria is the largest importer of agricultural goods in Africa, making it an attractive market, holding immense potential. Agricultural imports provide for most of the consumption needs due to unfavorable harvest conditions often resulting from drought. In 2007 Algeria imported $4.8 billion in foodstuffs from all countries; of these, $1.8 billion (38%) were grains, $1.1 billion (22%) dairy and $348 million (8%) was sugar. Algeria's largest import in 2007 was wheat at $940 million.

Don't get me wrong: whatever problems Algeria has, and they are legion (canceled elections leading to terrorism, huge youth unemployment, wealth and power concentrated in the hands of the ruling class), it is not a Zimbabwe.  But through a combination of hubristic industrialization and its leadership equating "agriculture" with "French colonialism," it threw away its indigenous source of sustenance.

Algeria, Zimbabwe - Africa's list of granaries and breadbaskets, past, present, and future is mainly a matter of good governance.  But talk to African economists, and you'll hear that American and European farm subsidies hurt African farmers.  In the new world of recession and retrenchment, let's see where the "trade not aid" argument takes us.

But don't count on those white Zimbabwean farmers in Nigeria returning "home."  That home exists no more.