Poverty and Food Insecurity in Africa: The Voice of the Voiceless

By Dr. Divine Tarla

Poverty and Food Insecurity in Africa: The Voice of the Voiceless is an insightful book on the true financial state of Africa and how it has affected the food security of Africans. The author, Dr. Tarla, grew up in the North-West Province of Cameroon with parents who were experienced farmers. He had personal knowledge of how his father's business prospered and how they lived comfortably until economic troubles and food poverty struck all of Africa.

This book provides a thorough discussion of the ideas of food security, food insecurity, and food sovereignty. It also covers the production limiting factors and the three pillars of food security in Africa: availability, access, stability, and utilization. Biofuel, water, and oil have a significant impact on food production costs. If these three resources are properly managed, the price of food might even go down. Another method of addressing food insecurity is to properly use genetic engineering in plant cultivation. Africa must look within itself and take specific steps to exploit its resources to combat poverty and food insecurity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798890615916

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

1.1 A lesson from President Harry S. Truman

1.2 Cultural misinterpretation

Poverty

2.1 Definitions

2.2 Key solutions to poverty

2.2.1 The role of innovation in poverty alleviation / Examples of market-creating innovations

2.2.2 Remittance

2.2.3 Fair trade

2.2.4 Marriages

2.2.5 Consider the informal sector

2.3 How should foreigners help?

2.4 Case of Haiti

Food Insecurity

3.1 History of famines

3.1.1 Egyptian famine

3.1.2 The Great Famine

3.1.3 Bengal famine

3.2 My experience

3.3 What is food security?

3.4 Functionality of foods and dietary patterns

3.5 Food security and the right to food

3.6 Common misconceptions about the right to food

3.7 Food shortage

3.8 Food shortage or distribution problem?

3.9 Production limiting factors

3.10 Key players in food security

3.11 Reasons for food shortages in Africa

3.12 How do Africans cope?

3.13 The prospects of biogenetics in food security

Our Contributions

4.1 Cereal cultivation

4.2 Taro

4.3 Cultural considerations for breeders

4.4 No pains, no gains

4.5 It takes a village

Conclusions

Bibliography

Other Books by the Editor

About the Author

Poverty and Food Insecurity in Africa

The Voice of the Voiceless

Dr. Divine Tarla

Fulbright Visiting Scholar Alumnus

Kansas State University

In collaboration with

Prof. Emeritus Larry E. Erickson

Department of Chemical Engineering, Kansas State University

and

Prof. Ganga M. Hettiarachchi

Department of Agronomy, Kansas State University

Copyright © 2024 Dr. Divine Tarla

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2024

ISBN 979-8-89061-590-9 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89061-591-6 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

To Sarah Nyugap

Mama, we remember our misery, drudgery, and backbreaking farming in Ngwaya.

Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.

—Chinua Achebe

List of Figures

Figure 1. A man tethers goats in Tabenken village ........................1

Figure 2. A typical village in the Western Highlands of Cameroon with houses and crops under domesticated fruit trees ..................................................3

Figure 3. Harvesting coffee in Mungo ..........................................3

Figure 4. A typical herd of cattle that enters a farmer’s cropland at once ............................................................4

Figure 5. A whole community transported using a small taxi typical of farmers going to the farms out of major cities in Cameroon ..........................................5

Figure 6. A young man drinks water from a roadside pipe. ...........7

Figure 7. Per capita income of some African countries ..................8

Figure 8. Young men plough the farm with common hoes ...........9

Figure 9. Corruption scenery......................................................10

Figure 10. The student representative of the University of Dschang, Mr. Geoffrey Guemuh, presents me to the Minister of High Education, Mr. Jean Marie Atangana Mebara, in 2001. ...............................14

Figure 11. Commuters on a typical road path in the forest ...........32

Figure 12. A cross-cultural prayer group in Manhattan, Kansas ....32

Figure 13. Traveling on Bamenda-Enugu International Road in 2012, a major obstacle to progress ..................33

Figure 14. A typical Cameroonian family ploughing their field ....42

Figure 15. A cattle herd ready to damage cropland. ......................43

Figure 16. Root and tuber crop displayed during the agropastoral show of December 2018 in Bamenda .......44

Figure 17. A woman prepares food in the kitchen ........................45

Figure 18. Crop yields between 1960 and 2014 across the world ...57

Figure 19. Wheat fields in Oku, Cameroon ..................................66

Figure 20. Farmers harvesting wheat in Oku, Cameroon ..............67

Figure 21. Taro plot in Honolulu, Hawaii ....................................69

Figure 22. Two women enjoying bundles of cornstalks .................70

Figure 23. A young lady harvesting huckleberry ...........................74

Figure 24. Intraregional trade .......................................................76

Figure 25. A young woman weeds her corn farm with a small basket tied to her waist for keeping her knife and collecting small harvests (like potatoes or wild vegetables or insects) during the process. ..................................................................76

Acknowledgments

We were born in abundance, but the economic crisis hit Africa when I was a teenager. God has helped us through poverty and food insecurity, and we take it as a priceless privilege to share our struggles and our love for our fellow human beings who still have less opportunity than we. For more than three decades, we were fed and given financial, spiritual, and academic mentorship by different institutions at different times, enabling us to go from destitute to nonpoor.

My mother had a dilemma—encouraged me to go to secondary school or remain at home and help her with farmwork—and the late Mr. Fabien Mayuka had a vision that I should go to school so I could be useful in solving food-insecurity issues beyond my family. I want to first thank Papa James Nyugap, who took it upon himself to pay for all my university tuition and for his dedication to prayers and fasting for the entire family. When I completed my postgraduate studies, Mama Sarah thought we could grow common beans in Ngwaya, but destiny took us into research.

For close to two decades, Professor Dominic Fontem has been a mentor and father. In 2016, I was awarded the Fulbright Visiting Scholar grant, which took me to Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. Since September 1 of that year, Professors Larry E. Erickson and Ganga M. Hettiarachchi were of great assistance in school and in boosting my morale when it was low.

Terry Cole, Bob Reader, Benjamin Claar, and Connie Satzler became a part of my life when I entered Kansas. As Bob will put it, We are doing this because we love God. I owe much to Connie for recommending me to Acton Institute, from which I received a travel grant to participate in Acton University 2023, where I learned to connect good intentions with sound economics.

In Africa, we will call angels or destiny helpers, and I have had three of them for the longest time in my life. The first person is Dr. Ernestilia Ngeh, professor of African oral literatures and cultures at the University of Bamenda, Cameroon. Dr. Ngeh and I were the pioneer batch of Government Secondary School Ndu from five between 1991 and 1996. From 1994 to 1996, the school appointed us to be school prefects in charge of hygiene and sanitation, a period where we spent 90 percent of our time together.

The second is my brother, classmate, neighbor, business partner, and boss, Mr. Geoffrey Guemuh, private sector engagement officer at Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation in Cotonou, Benin. He might not have been cited too much in this document, but our intimacy dates back to 1999, when he entered the Faculty of Agronomy and Agricultural Sciences through the special competitive entrance. As it is said, action speaks louder than words. Mr. Guemuh came to the United States in December, and we had three days of blizzards on the days he planned to visit me, and I defied the travel advisory to bring him home because he traveled over 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometers), and we could not be separated by the 400 miles distance between Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Bismarck, North Dakota.

Last but not least is Daddy Francis Tarla, erstwhile director of Wildlife School of Garoua. From 2002, when we first met, till today, many people know that he is my father, and others mistake him for an elder brother due to our last names.

The initial manuscripts were sent out to many people who knew these stories, including but not limited to Greg Runyon and Paul Nather, pastors of Antioch Center in Mandan, North Dakota, and Century Baptist in Bismarck, North Dakota, respectively. I would like to appreciate Lori Wrangler and Beni Wilson for doing the editing.

A big thank-you to my wife and daughter for always being on my side.

Foreword

Poverty and Food Insecurity in Africa: The Voice of the Voiceless is an insightful book on the true financial state of Africa and how it has affected the food security of Africans. The author, Dr. Tarla, grew up in the North West Province of Cameroon with parents who were experienced farmers. He had personal knowledge of how his father’s business prospered and how they lived comfortably until economic troubles and food poverty struck all of