The famine in Niger and the fragile peace process in Burundi prove that a stronger UN must be part of any broader plan for African development, writes Gamal Nkrumah Niger, a huge impoverished West African country with a desperately poor road network, has hit the international headlines with famine stalking its nine million strong population. Humanitarian relief agencies are under-funded, and the people of Niger are in desperate need of food. Farming, ironically, is the mainstay of the economy, but the agricultural sector is in shambles. Huge reserves of uranium barely keep the economy afloat. The country takes its name from the river that stretches out from its source in the mountains of Guinea and straddles the better part of the West African region until it flows into the Atlantic Ocean in Nigeria's Niger Delta. Millet and sorghum are the two main subsistence crops in the region. But cash crops like cotton and groundnuts are grown in the relatively well-watered areas. Niger's agricultural potential is massive but fulfilling it is hampered by the backward nature of production. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan paid Niger a visit to inspect the situation for himself. He visited Zinder, Niger's second largest city, in the heart of the worst affected areas of the Sahel -- a vast belt of arid scrubland on the edge of the Sahara Desert, stretching from Senegal in West Africa to Sudan in the east. Annan pronounced the situation grave, but stopped short of the scathing critique of the Niger authorities that humanitarian relief agencies had been unleashing since the outbreak of the famine in the country last month. Annan warned that several other African countries were caught in the throes of famine. "There is no silver bullet, but there is much we can do," Annan stressed in an article in Britain's Financial Times. "A similar scenario of severe hunger and widespread food insecurity could still engulf some 20 million people in other areas of the Sahel, southern Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and southern Africa," he concluded. "Debt relief, increased aid and measures to make the international and regional trade systems more favourable to the poor can all help encourage local agricultural production." Horrific scenes of skeletal children mired in poverty swamped the international media networks and prompted criticisms by Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) -- the French Doctors without Borders. About 90 per cent of the country's nine million live in rural areas, many surviving as subsistence farmers. An MSF statement was released on the eve of Annan's visit to hunger-stricken Niger and pandemonium broke loose. The famine, the statement concluded, reflects badly on how the UN conducts its business. The humanitarian group warned that "the UN was slow to react to the current epidemic of acute malnutrition in Niger, and its response continues to be inadequate." The Niger authorities reacted angrily to accusations of negligence and incompetence levelled by relief agencies, with Niger President Mamadou Tandja defensively vindicating his country' fraught and turbulent conditions. Tandja blamed humanitarian relief agencies for exaggerating the crisis, claiming that they were trying to foment trouble. He said that his country was experiencing a "slight cereals deficit". The World Food Programme (WFP), which has extended supplementary feeding programmes in areas with severe food shortages in Africa and elsewhere, has vigorously denied that the scale of the famine had been exaggerated. But Annan refused to point accusing fingers at anyone in particular pledging instead to "take steps for the longer term to ensure food security". Annan called for "measures to ensure that what happened this year does not happen in the future." Indeed, the UN increased appeals for aid, raising a target level for Niger to $75 million. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Hama Amadou launched an "anguished appeal" much to the consternation of the president. According to UN estimates, some 3.6 million people in Niger face starvation and another 1.6 million in the West African countries of Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania are also threatened. Hardest hit and most vulnerable are children under five years in the worst affected areas. An estimated 50,000 children in Niger alone are "in danger of dying". The tragedy of famine in Niger, and the African continent as a whole, takes place against the backdrop of efforts to make Africa wealthier and more developed. Rich in natural resources, Africa's people are needy and underdeveloped. There can be no compromise in the battle against African poverty. "At no time in human history have the fates of every woman, man and child been so intertwined across the globe. We are united both by moral imperatives and by objective interests," Annan pointed out in the recently released report on strengthening the UN entitled In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All. Among the most vital issues of concern for the poor across the globe -- and in Africa in particular -- is improved access to food, healthcare, education, recreation and housing. Africa, as the famine tragically highlights, is a continent in dire need of sustainable development and sustained prosperity. Africa's list of priorities appears not to interest the United State in the least , however. The clash could escalate in the near future as world leaders gather in New York for the 60th anniversary UN summit scheduled for 14-16 September. Topping the agenda at the upcoming summit is UN reform. But, implicit in any concept of reform must be how best to deliver sustained prosperity to the world's poor: reform of "the internal structures and culture of the UN" as Annan put it in the In Larger Freedom report. The world's richest nation, the US, has expressed strong objections to the spirit and letter of In Larger Freedom. Annan explained that the current UN structure "was built for a different era". He extrapolated that "not all our current practices are adapted to the needs of today." Yet Washington, it appears, strongly objects to any shift in focus from military to economic security; for example, facilitating the introduction of a "non-discriminatory [international] trading and financial system" as envisioned by the Millennium Development Goals. Many voices in Washington have expressed blanket criticism of aid intervention in Africa. The UN Millennium Development Goals, agreed by all UN member states in 2000, include greater access for producers in poor parts of the world to the markets of rich countries. Under the UN plan, rich countries are urged to contribute 0.7 per cent of their gross domestic product to aid. The US, in sharp contrast, wants to roll back proposed UN commitments on fighting poverty and African underdevelopment. Indeed, the US is bent on sabotaging plans to strengthen the UN. This is a most dangerous omen. The US has come up with a 32-page US blueprint for UN reform to counter the report drafted by Annan and approved by other Western powers including Britain, Washington's closest European ally. John Bolton, US President George W Bush's handpicked ambassador to the UN, demanded no less than 750 amendments effectively curtailing the UN plan. Earlier this year, the UN was called upon to help victims of the famine in the war-ravaged East African nation of Burundi. Like in Niger, the UN stepped up the distribution of food aid there. Famine ravaged Kirundu province in northeastern Burundi and the lives of more than half a million people were at stake. Burundi, a tiny country of 27,800 square kilometres, and its neighbour Rwanda, 26,000 square kilometres, are two of the most densely- populated countries in Africa. The pressures on land are tremendous, soil erosion a chronic problem with disastrous consequences. Rwanda with nine million people and Burundi with eight million have a similar ethnic composition -- 85 per cent majority ethnic Hutu and 15 per cent minority Tutsi. Both countries were traditionally ruled by the minority Tutsi who to this day dominate military establishments of the two states. The two countries are desperately poor: Rwanda has a per capita income of $220, Burundi $90. Small wonder, then, that war erupted in both countries. This week, former armed- opposition leader Pierre Nkurunziza was inaugurated as president of Burundi. He is a Hutu former university lecturer. Nkurunziza assumes office under the terms of a power-sharing government set up in 2001. Most armed opposition groups agreed to the ceasefire brokered by South Africa, but the UN, too, played a prominent part. The first Hutu head of state since the country gained independence from Belgium in 1960 was Melchior Ndadaye. Within months of assuming office Ndadaye was assassinated. His brutal killing led to the eruption of the Burundi civil war that left 300,000 people -- mostly civilians -- dead. In 1994 parliament elected another Hutu, Cyprien Ntaryamira, as president. Ntaryamira was in turn killed when armed insurrectionists shot down the plane he was in with Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana as it hovered over the Rwandan capital Kigali. Another Hutu, Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, was appointed president in October 1994, and his subsequent demise sparked yet another wave of ethnic violence. Today politics is largely divided along ethnic lines: the predominantly Tutsi Union for National Progress (Uprona) versus its main rival, the overwhelmingly Hutu Front for Democracy in Burundi (Frodebu). Famine, and a reduced role for the UN, will only hinder attempts to consolidate Burundi's fragile peace process.
