Feeding Africa: Key is better farms, not food aid
Guardian - July 15, 2008

Hussein Ibrahim walked solemnly past tidy rows of bright green cabbages, vines bursting with tomatoes and trees weighed down with plump avocados.

This modern, thriving farm - a rarity in drought-ravaged Ethiopia - filled Hussein with envy. Like so many other farmers across the Horn of Africa, he has no hope for his own crops this year.

"We are behind all the other people in the world," said Hussein, who tends his land in southern Ethiopia the way his ancestors did hundreds of years ago - with rain, if it comes; and oxen, as long as they're healthy.

To break out of endless cycles of drought, poverty and hunger, experts say, Africa desperately needs to modernize its age-old farming techniques. But the vast sums in foreign aid to Africa go toward feeding the hungry, and very little is left for improving farming so that Africans will cease to depend on handouts. Read More.