Let us pray for Africa

Kevin Carter, a South African photojournalist won Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for a photo he took during Sudan famine. The picture depicts a famine stricken child scrawling towards a United Nation food camp, located a kilometre away and a vulture waiting for the child to die.

The picture shocked the entire world. But it was the beginning of the end of Kevin, the photographer and the humanist.

He sat under a tree and cried and chain-smocked. Three months later he committed suicide. In his suicide note he says, I am depressed…without phone…. Money for tent…. Money for child support…. Money for debts... money!!!!

14 years ago Kevin Carter exposed the murky side of an either prospering world. He might have had a vision in his mind that it would serve as an eye opener for the world leaders to act on a war footing.

But see what happened.

These world Netas become gourmets at ‘save Africa’ discussion platform. They discuss the development of Africa at five star resorts, having course after course of sumptuousness feast, wine and deserts, leaving poor Africans in total dismay.

It was revealed in the Sunday Times report the other day. Look at the amount spent for the G-8 summit: At the G-8 summit Japanese organisers proudly displayed to the press the menus for a sumptuous eight-course banquet laid on last night and a five-course lunch a few hours earlier.

The evening feast of 19 separate dishes included diced fatty flesh of tuna fish and milk-fed lamb with aromatic herbs. The very next day after working up an appetite discussing soaring food prices, the leaders learnt to have enjoyed a £200 dinner of giant crab, £50-a-kilogram langoustine and sweet clover ice cream, prepared by Michel Bras, a Michelin three-star French chef.

It is all in keeping with a summit that has cost a total of 60 billion yen (£283 million) - enough to have bought 100 million mosquito nets to save Africans from catching malaria - and that frequently seems at odds with the Japanese hosts’ professed theme of ecology and environmentalism

The International Media Centre, which will be dismantled after the summit, was purpose-built at a cost of £24 million: a total of £8 million a day. (Courtesy: Sunday Times)

It has been a long while world leaders have been indulging in farcical exercise of holding discussions and summits. But where is the result? The action remains a distant dream for an African, who still, it seems, have to scrawl a long way to find his bread.

When we discuss the rising fuel price, poor countries in Africa worried about the serious impact of soaring food and energy. Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations said the other day that the number of hungry people increased by about 50 million in 2007 as a result of high food price.

According to International Food Policy Research Institute, the number of hungry children in Africa will increase by 3.3 million by 2025, if current policy and investment trends continue. In a book ‘Stuffed and Starved, written by Raj patel, it says that there are one billion overweight people, while 850 million live in hunger and about the millions who are fighting back.

And it is clear that no change has been reported on African scenario, despite numerous meetings held over the years.

It is high time to act, if not, the hungry stomachs in Africa will be doubled in the near future, which apparently start questioning the world leaders.

World leaders, one incident you please bear in your mind: Some time ago, around 300 people were arrested in some of the worst violence for years in normally calm, landlocked Burkina, prompting government to suspend custom duties on staple food imports for three months.

Don’t forget that ‘a hungry man is an angry man.’