Desertification

12 Pages 2879 Words

eople, many will suffer impaired health for the rest of their lives.
The international community brought in emergency aid, both in the form of food supplies and of technical assistance in rehabilitating drought victims. However, the drought hazard in Africa can be expected to continue, recurring at unpredictable intervals. It cannot be overcome by one-time massive injections of emergency aid. A long-range strategy must be developed which is capable of being realized under the given constraints of these impoverished regions through sustainable development of their fragile environment.
The droughts and famines that have swept over Africa in the past and which are likely to strike again are not sudden natural disasters. Nor are they simply caused by lack of rainfall. They are the end-results of a long deterioration in the ability of Africa to feed itself, a decline caused largely by mistakes and mismanagement - both inside and outside the continent.
As Lloyd Timberlake, author of Africa in Crisis, puts it, Africa has "taken too much from its...