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Helping Africa

SOME decades ago, Africa used to be called the Dark Continent. The reference had obvious connotation to the complexion of its people and their relative backwardness. Endowed with rich natural resources, the continent had been the target of colonisation for centuries. Even after gaining independence from their foreign rulers, most of the countries have remained as poor as they were a few centuries ago.

Steeped in poverty, illiteracy and ethnic strife, modern civilisation is still a distant dream for Africa’s unfortunate people. Life is a daily struggle for them. Natural disasters and man-made calamities — famine, drought and in recent years, HIV/Aids epidemics — add to their woes. Civil wars, internecine battles, authoritarian and autocratic rulers have all succeeded in keeping a part of the inhabited world away from all the development that is taking place in other countries. It’s a shame, indeed.

Crisis after crisis has crippled countries in southern and northern Africa. While the world was riveted to the killing and displacement of thousands of people in Darfur region of Sudan, the international community is turning a blind eye to similar horrors emerging in northern Uganda, and outbreaks erupting in Chad and Togo. This is the message the United Nations emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland has given to the Security Council on African crisis, revealed in an interview with New York Times on the eve of a closed-door Council briefing.

Tragedy-struck countries need large volumes of liberal aid is an understatement. Natural disasters, like the recent tsunami that hit many Asian countries, occur once in a while and their victims receive international relief on a war footing. But in Africa, crises are perennial and erupt so suddenly that there is hardly any time for aid agencies to respond and resolve them.

For example, thousands of refugees from Darfur have overburdened neighbouring Chad, and in Togo, a disputed election has created unrest in the country and a refugee problem for Benin and Ghana. Food shortages have hit southern and northern African states.