Green of Africa

The worst drought of the past 60 years which is taking place in east Africa has carried the image of Africa, which has been forgotten by people and has not found much coverage in the mainstream media, to the TV screens. Ok, what is this image of Africa? It is all about children with swollen bellies and skinny arms and legs, people waiting for food in long queues in the desert with pots in their hands and shanty tents…

05.09.2011 - Green of Africa

It is true we have always known Africa to be a place like this, or, we have always been presented with such a picture. And this image brought along slogans of “Save the children!”, “Help Africa!”, “Africa is dying!” While children are dying in Africa, people should not have remained silent and the rich north should not have forgotten the “third world.”

The picture is more or less so. Bells of hunger ring in Africa in certain periods and the rich north makes a favor to the third world. The G8 countries convene, the debts of Africa are deleted, development plans are made, food packages, doctors and volunteers flock to Africa with humanitarian feelings. Interestingly enough, although millions of dollars are sent to Africa, nothing changes. In the first days of the aid campaigns, the world gets united to help the continent. Everyone acts with the drive to “save African children,” the flour packages reach the Africans waiting in a queue and then silence comes…

Africa has suffered a lot. The colonization race of the western countries has made fertile African territories a backyard of the West. As the underground and aboveground resources of Africa were being taken to the West, African people were enslaved. These people were taken away from their homelands in order to serve for their “white masters,” and they were sold like a commercial good, they began journeys with no return. Millions of Africans were created in the United States and Africa who do not know where they came from and who are unfamiliar to their roots. Those staying in the continent first lived under colonial administration. As western colonizers were withdrawing from the continent at the beginning of the 20^th century, African countries have begun to declare their independence. Nigeria, Sudan, Liberia, Ghana, Malawi, Uganda and many others declared their independence one by one; however, the West which seemingly withdrew from the continent, left behind mostly dependent states and puppet administrators. While the wealth of the African countries were controlled by the multinational western companies, the African nation was turned into one which is unproductive and one which cannot even make use of their own resources.

The nation-state notion which was imposed on Africa has prepared the ground for civil wars which are still continuing in Africa where hundreds of ethnic tribes exist. Let’s remember, 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred by Hutus in Rwanda within 100 days in 1994. The distinction between Hutus and Tutsis were actually a superficial distinction as these people lived in peace together for long years. African history has also been the subject of many works of art and movies. The most popular movies are The Constant Gardener, Blood Diamond, Amistad, Hotel Rwanda. These movies are several of the movies which can be watched to have an idea what is taking place in Africa.

World-famous aid organizations have for years carried food to Africa. Softhearted white doctors offered medical examinations to African children; however, the image of Africa has not changed. The picture is still the same, there are still children with swollen bellies and skinny arms and legs on the TV screens. Is the West which has colonized Africa and made its people dependent on aid, creating a new imperialism with the aid-based politics? Recently, an article was just saying that the hospital the UN established in the region is in a poor condition, it lacks the necessary medical supplies and doctors at the hospital do not regularly show up at hospital. There seems to be oddness in this aid-based politics.

Even if we take food to Africa for a century, nothing will change. Hungry African children will look at us from the TV screens in certain periods of time again. And perhaps, we will get used to seeing them like that.

Yes, Africa is dying, it is suffering… Hungry and thirsty, it waits for us. A total of 29,000 children have lost their lives in Somalia due to hunger over the past several months and mothers are still desperate. They watch their babies to die in their hands.

There is still hope despite all these. The aid flowing to Africa should not be used for temporary solutions this time. As a matter of fact, leading relief institutions of the Islamic world are aware that carrying food to Africa is not the solution. Some aid organizations that currently take medical relief and food relief to Africa are carrying out permanent projects following the delivery of emergency relief. Taking food to Africa, treating people with diseases and then withdrawing from the region is not the solution.

For instance, the IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, which has been carrying out long-term projects in east Africa since 2005, has both taking emergency relief to the desperate people in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti and carrying out long-term projects in these countries. The IHH is opening water channels and water wells in order to produce solutions for the infrastructural problems. Opening of a water well means the access of all the families in that region to clean, drinking water. Let’s not forget that Africa is not a continent with few water resources contrary to the image which is presented to us. The African land is just waiting for meeting with the boring machine.

In order to help them make their living, the IHH is also providing African families with corn milling machines, tractors, generators, sesame oil extraction machine in addition to livestock. And many other projects which will contribute to change the image of Africa are being realized thanks to support from Turkish charity givers.

And there is a different picture, which most of us are perhaps unaware of…You cannot see the green of Africa on TV screens, can you? There is something which has attracted my attention in the photos coming from Ethiopia, Rwanda, Cameroon, South Africa, and Namibia. Africa is not only comprised of deserts. Some regions of this continent are as green and fertile as the Balkans and Turkey’s Black Sea region. Africa is not arid and finished off. Moreover, it is not black. The green Africa is waiting to become green again with its land, economy, people and culture!