Improving the Discourse on Africa's Hunger Crisis - The Role of the Media
Introduction
In a world where the concept of space is constantly changing, (Scholte, 2005, p. 59) one issue in one corner of the globe affects other parts. That is the case for Hunger. This paper analyses Hunger in Africa as seen by the media in the United States of America and the United Kingdom. The paper evaluates two news reports on Hunger within the four main paradigms of International politics (realism, liberalism, international political economy (IPE) and constructivism). The paper will then identify some of the common biases and trends inherent in the reports. Much of the analysis will rely heavily on statistics, data and theories forming the basis for argumentation. The concluding part of the paper will argue for a multi-approach to analyzing problems within International Relations. This paper holds the view that problems cannot be understood sufficiently by relying on a single paradigm. It is by adopting this multi-paradigm approach that the media can improve on its report of Hunger. For the purposes of this paper, Hunger, malnutrition and acute malnutrition are treated as synonyms.
Who is Hungry?
The World Food Programme (WFP) describes hunger as the situation that arises when a person lives on below 2,100 kilo calories (kcal) that is needed averagely to lead a healthy life (WFP, 2016). FAO, IFAD & WFP, 2015 estimate that some 795 million people in the world are hungry. However, since the 1990s there has been steady decline in the number of hungry people from 18.6 percent in 1990–92 to 10.9 percent in 2014–16 (FAO, IFAD & WFP, 2015). Southern Asia has the highest number of Hungry people (281 million) but sub-Saharan Africa has a higher hunger prevalence, one in every four people, or 23.2 percent (FAO, IFAD & WFP, 2015). Globally, one in every nine people is hungry.
The Hunger Map compiled between 2014 and 2016 indicates the distribution of hungry people around the globe. As stated earlier, Asia has the highest number of hungry people however Africa presents an interesting mix of hunger severity coupled with the lack of sufficient data in many countries. For those countries, it is impossible to tell what the hunger situation might be. Hunger arises from several factors including Poverty, Climate and Weather, War and Displacement, Unstable markets and Food wastage (WFP, 2016). Malnutrition and Hunger is responsible for nearly half (45%) of deaths in children under five. This translates into 3.1 million children each year (WFP, 2016). For a problem that affects one in nine people around the world, and accounts for half of the death of children under five, this paper hold the view that it is a global problem. This position is affirmed in the fact that reduction of hunger has been at the center of many global efforts. First was the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) goal number 1: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty and quite recently the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) goal number 2: No hunger.
This paper argues that hunger is at the nexus of many other global problems and thus fighting hunger will reduce these other problems. FAO, IFAD, WFP, 2002, p. 10 points out “…hunger and malnutrition (including micro nutrient deficiencies) are in turn major causes of poverty. They affect the ability of individuals to escape poverty in several ways by reducing the capacity for physical activity”. Most hungry people live in rural areas in Asia and Africa, (WFP, 2016). When hunger becomes unbearable, many migrate to cities leading to slums and shanty towns in developing countries. If aspirations are still not met in these big cities, hungry people look for countries that have better social welfare schemes (Lyman, 2015). Based on the evidence this paper argues that addressing issues to do with hunger will inadvertently solve many global problems.
Hunger within International Relations
Within the context of International Relations, hunger is approached in the light of the four main paradigms. It must be said that not all scholars agree on these four main paradigms however this paper associates itself with the four categorizations discussed by (Nye & Welch, 2011). Realism is a paradigm that sees the central problem of international relations as war and the use of force with the central actors being states (Nye & Welch, 2011, p. 4). For realists, all other functions must be targeted at ensuring the survival of the state. Anything that threatens the state in the view of the realist must be addressed using force or war. Not being satisfied with this anarchic way of seeing things, scholars with opposing views developed Liberalism. Liberalists see a global society that functions alongside states and sets an important part of the context for state action (Nye & Welch, 2011, p. 5). Liberalists don’t see the state as being the only factor in International relations, they recognize the role played by non-state actors such as International non-governmental organizations. They believe that war is not the only solution, states can cooperate and solve common problems. The third paradigm, Marxist International Political Economy focuses on the economic structure of capitalist states.
For adherents of the Marxism IPE perspective, problems within International politics are problems of economics; the disparity between the world’s haves and have-nots. Marxism IPE looks at the world as a place of economic imbalance with everything revolving around wealth and resource distribution but constructivists disagree. Constructivism is a paradigm that “emphasizes the importance of ideas and culture in shaping both the reality and the discourse of international politics. They stress the ultimate subjectivity of interests and their links to changing indemnities” (Nye & Welch, 2011, p. 7).
The four paradigms discussed above see Hunger differently. For Realists, so long as Hunger does not threaten the security and power of the state, it probably may not be a problem. However, realists would pay attention when conflict between states arising out of food insecurity begins to brew (FAO, IFAD, WFP, 2002, p. 10). If hunger occurs within a region where leaders hold strong realist views, the unfortunate state is likely to be abandoned to deal with its own problem so long as the interests of the others is not threatened. Arguing from the liberalist perspective, hunger can be dealt with through cooperation of states. A liberalist world view is what gives rise to organizations like the Food and Agricultural organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP). A leader with a liberalist perspective of international relations understands that because there is constant trade and economic interdependence, one state’s problem could affect others thus would advocate cooperation in addressing Hunger. As discussed earlier, Marxist IPE sees the world in terms of a conflict of the world’s haves and have-nots. Hunger is likely to be described as a product of a capitalist world that encourages wealth accumulation at the expense of the poor working class. A leader with a Marxist IPE world view is likely to propose the redistribution of income as the solution to Hunger. By redistributing income, the Marxist IPE hopes to restore some economic balance so that the poor can have additional resource to purchase food. But typically, the constructivists would disagree with this approach. Not all hunger is borne of the same cause they would argue.
It is imperative that in addressing the problem, norms, attitudes, culture and values are taken into consideration. Constructivists would argue that “Recent global comparisons show a strong correlation between hunger and gender inequalities. Countries ranking highest on the index of global hunger are also those where such inequalities are more severe (von Grebmer et al. 2009)” (FAO , 2013, p. 1). In such countries, many women and girls are hungry because cultural norms exclude them owning property such as land. It goes to say that they cannot own farms and by extension money to buy food. Such women and girls are entirely at the mercy of their male counterparts for survival. Within the constructivist perspective, understanding these cultural norms and values would provide better options in dealing with hunger. Despite the various positions expressed above, this paper holds the view that problems are not often explained fully by one paradigm, in that same light hunger cannot be solved using only one approach. The solution lies in combining several perspectives.
Hunger within a Global Context
Whether it is to galvanize support for starving families due to conflict or unfavorable weather patterns, the media has a role to play in addressing Hunger in Africa. Media portrayal of hunger will either lead to action or inaction. This section of the paper identifies two reports on hunger in Africa in the US and UK media. The paper will then identify some of the trends and biases inherent in these reports.
On May 29, 2008, the Washington Post reported on Hunger in sub-Saharan Africa. The news report titled “Food Relief for Africa 'Insufficient,' GAO Says” was written by Anthony Faiola. The report criticizes efforts by the United States and International relief agencies in their quest to reduce hunger in sub-Saharan Africa. The story is based on an inquiry commissioned by the Government Accountability Office of the US government. The story strongly condemns efforts as fragmented and misdirected while stressing that the Bush administration’s ‘End hunger in Africa’ initiative launched in 2002 did not have any financial backing. Finally, the report concludes by saying that hunger in Africa is getting worse as grain prices soar on the international market.
The story is written from the liberalist perspective. From the first paragraph, it touches on the role of cooperation in solving the hunger crisis. The US is leading a team of international players to aid in the fight against hunger. This is consistent with the key concepts of liberalism which is collaboration between state and non-state actors. Evidence of this can be found when the story says “the portion of foreign development assistance to Africa earmarked for agriculture fell from a peak of 15 percent in the early 1980s to around 4 percent in 2006.” Although hunger is a problem in international politics, the story emphasizes the common interests of states in fighting the problem and so when that effort doesn’t yield the needed the results, the report contends that it is “jeopardizing United Nations' goals aimed at halving the total proportion of the world's population that is undernourished by 2015.” In this report, the donor partners have made a lot of investments in the fight against hunger. This is consistent with instruments of power used within the liberalist perspective. The treatment of the entire sub-Saharan region as one is however problematic. In 2007 the Global Hunger Index listed Eritrea, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo and sub-Saharan African countries as the most under-nourished countries but explained that “Underdevelopment, wars, and bad governance are largely responsible for these countries’ high GHI scores” (Welt Hunger Hilfe, International Food Policy Research Institute & Concern, 2007). This paper holds the view that investments are good but throwing money at the problem is not always the best solution. As (Moyo, 2009, p. 27) argues “it is virtually impossible to draw on Africa’s aid led development experience and argue that aid has worked.” Players would need to evaluate each country independently and determine what the country needs. Again, the concept of aid is prevalent in the report but the report is bereft of the views and opinions of Africa’s elected officials charged with development on the continent (Moyo, 2009, p. 27).
A second report by the Guardian UK is titled “50 million Africans face hunger after crops fail again”. It says that as the El Nino weather condition worsens up to 50 million Africans will need food by Christmas. Per the report, the El Nino weather pattern was two years old leaving several farms scorched. “In Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe has appealed for foreign aid to buy food and Malawi is expected to declare in the next few weeks that more than 8 million people, half the population, will need food aid by November. Maize prices have risen by 60% across much of the region within a few months” (Vidal, 2016). The report concludes by pointing out that the British government has contributed about 150 million pounds for aid to El Nino affected countries. The issue of hunger within this report is approached from the liberalist perspective. Evidence of this can be found to the paper’s allusion to the efforts being made by the United Nations. Just as (Nye & Welch, 2011, p. 5) argues, within the liberalist perspective, international non-state actors like the United Nations act to “mitigate the harsher aspects of anarchy.” The interdependence of states is evident because “Malawi, Mozambique, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Madagascar, Angola and Swaziland have declared national emergencies or disasters, as have seven of South Africa’s nine provinces” (Vidal, 2016). It proves that when environmental problems such as the El Nino hit, states cannot deal with it alone. They will need to put their common interests ahead of the supposed conflict in international relations. Contrary to the earlier report, the voice of African leaders is heard. The paper holds the view that because many of the players are heard in the report, the report becomes more balanced journalistically. This paper argues that although the two reports are written from liberalist perspective, their approach is different. One report lacks independence because of its reliance on government sources just as (Herman & Chomsky, 1988) point out that in news reporting, “Editorial distortion is aggravated by the news media’s dependence upon private and governmental news sources”. This implies that the more the media depends on government sources, the more likely it is for the media to lose its editorial independence. In the subsequent section of the paper, this paper will explore ways by which reporting can be improved.
Improving Hunger Reporting
This section of the paper discusses ways by which the media can improve on Hunger reporting. This paper argues that with a deep understanding of the theories of Agenda setting and Framing, Journalists can use media power to engender a positive response from those responsible.
For centuries, there have been many inquiries into the effect the media can have on shaping perceptions, beliefs and attitudes. “The early hypodermic needle and magic-bullet models of the 1920s and 1930s were quickly replaced by a paradigm based on the much more theoretically and methodologically sophisticated ideas by Lazarsfeld” (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1948) in (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007, p. 10) In the 1990s’ negotiation models’ (McQuail, 2000) were developed. “Approaches like priming and framing were based on the idea that mass media had potentially strong attitudinal effects, but that these effects also depended heavily on predispositions, schema, and other characteristics of the audience that influenced how they processed messages in the mass media” (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007, p. 11).
The development over the years point to varying view point on the exact nature of media effect on audience. However, what is not in doubt is the ability of the media to affect audience. The media achieves this through several strategies explained hereon as Agenda setting, Framing and Priming (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007, p. 11). “Agenda setting refers to the idea that there is a strong correlation between the emphasis that mass media place on certain issues and the importance attributed to these issues by mass audiences (McCombs & Shaw, 1972)” in (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007, p. 11). Priming on the other hand refers to ‘‘changes in the standards that people use to make political evaluations’’ (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987, p. 63). “Priming occurs when news content suggests to news audiences that they ought to use specific issues as benchmarks for evaluating the performance of leaders and governments” (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007, p. 11). Framing is quite different. It focuses on the view that how the media characterizes an issue can influence the way it is understood. “Framing is often traced back to roots in both psychology and sociology (Pan & Kosicki, 1993)”. Frames are important tools for breaking down complex matters (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007, p. 11).
This view is also shared by de Franco (2012) when she says that the media influenced the context of the decision making toward Kosovo and Afghanistan. However, Cottle (2009) argues regarding the 1992 Somalia humanitarian crisis that the media only started to pay attention to Somalia only after the Bush administration had decided to deploy troops. This position by Cottle (2009) is consistent with the view by Herman & Chomsky (1988) who argue that the US media is an “effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function”. The implication of this argument is that the media can be used to serve the purpose of the state.
Despite the criticisms against the media’s role in causing decisions to be made in humanitarian situations, de Franco (2012) maintains strongly that the power of 24-hour TV news networks does not come from the fact they broadcast news live but also they create a space where state, non-state and global actors see themselves and are seen by the world. “Also, 24-hour TV news networks create a new space for war and diplomacy, by presenting on the screen images of fighting and bombing coming from the field; images of official statements by military or political actors; and images of these same actors replying to journalists’ questions” (De Franco, 2012).
This paper argues that within this space the media has the power to cause decisions to be made given the right agenda setting. The Agenda setting theory refers to the ability of the news media to “influence the salience of topics on the public agenda” (Mccombs & Reynolds, 2009). The implication is that if hunger is given prominence and frequency, the audience is likely to view it as important. de Franco (2012) contends that the media have power over the agenda, derived from “the broadcasting of images and of discourses about images, and which causes the Agenda Building.”
This view by De Franco is mirrored in Europe’s awakening to the Syrian refugee crisis after photographs of Alan Kurdi lying face down on a beach in the Mediterranean Sea, near Bodrum, Turkey were published.
Similarly, Kevin Carter’s 1993 image of a vulture stalking a starving little girl during the Sudan famine brought more attention to the crisis.
Based on the arguments by the two scholars this paper argues that if the media gives prominence to hunger issues in Africa frequently coupled with the right images, decision makers are likely to see the issue as important and give it the needed attention.
Critics of the over reliance of the media on such images cite the compassion fatigue as one of the reasons why such images have lost their effect on people. Moeller (1999, p 2) in (Cottle, 2009) describes Compassion Fatigue as the “unacknowledged cause of much of the failure of international reporting today.
It is at the base of many of the complaints about the public’s short attention span, the media’s preoccupation with crisis coverage”. Although it must be said that the extent to which this phenomenon affects response to disasters has not been empirically tested, many argue that the persistent display of strife on television tends to numb the public and fails to elicit the response often expected. This sentiment is re-echoed by Moeller (1999, p 2) “…it seems as if all the media cover are those regions of the world trampled by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. At times, it seems as if the media careen from one trauma to another, in a breathless tour of poverty, disease and death.” This criticism notwithstanding this paper maintains that the media has power.
There have been arguments for a CNN effect on the way decision makers are compelled to respond to humanitarian emergencies. In understanding the CNN Effect, this paper analyses the writings of de Franco (2012) who explains two important scenarios in which the CNN Effect may occur. In the first, media covers suffering and atrocities leading to pressure from opinion leaders to do something. When the pressure becomes unbearable, governments are forced to act. In the second scenario, the media selects the news emphasizing on certain issues while neglecting others, this leads to formation of public opinion.
The public then mounts pressure on government to confront the issue, the media generated issue then enters the political agenda. The proper CNN Effect per de Franco (2012) occurs in the first scenario. Equipped with a deep understanding of the power to set the agenda and what the CNN effect can do for victims of hunger, the situation can be given the prominence it needs leading to an eventual solution. This paper however cautions that the media must not paint every situation with the same brush.
The media must adopt a constructivist approach when reporting on Hunger. The media must understand the norms, values and beliefs leading to Hunger. After there must be a deliberate liberalist approach to foster cooperation among those who can make a difference.
The Way Forward
Solving hunger does not lie in providing aid for all countries in Africa across board. As (Moyo, 2009) argues aid to Africa has not always led to reduction of poverty and improvement of living standards. There must be a concerted approach to dealing with the Hunger Crisis in Africa. (Sachs, 2008) in his book, Common Wealth explains that “the challenges of sustainable development, whether in heading off climate change, fighting extreme poverty, stabilizing populations or ensuring adequate water supplies for human use and crops, all must harness actions from a wide array of institutions.
No major problem can be solved by government or business sector or one community alone.” This paper associates itself with the views expressed by Jeffery Sachs and says that no one government adopting a realist approach can deal with hunger effectively. Neither can hunger be constrained within the IPE perspective. Africa’s hunger problem is a multi-layered issue that requires a combination of International relations paradigms (realism, liberalism, constructivism and IPE) to fully understand and solve.
This paper holds the view that academia has a huge role to play in providing empirical data backed research which will serve as the basis of media reports. (Sachs, 2008) posits that “only universities have within their walls the vast range of expert scientific knowledge that is vital for deep problem solving…” it goes to underscore the important role that universities have in solving hunger in Africa. Whether it is to introduce the local population to improved farming methods or seed varieties, there will need to be re-education of the population. Their norms, values and beliefs must be understood and reformed if need be. Then academic can use its research backed knowledge to formulate strategies which will be communicated by journalists by giving prominence to the solutions. In time, this paper believes that the population will adopt the innovation and improve on farming methods.
Where hunger arises out of conflict, a close collaboration between academia and the media will uncover the root cause of the conflicts, give the cause prominence using agenda setting and get parties to talk and solve the problem.
Conclusion
This paper due to limitation on word count couldn’t explore exhaustively all the approaches to improving hunger reporting. However, the paper has analysed two articles; one from the US and another from the UK. The paper has argued that the media has the power using its agenda setting, framing and priming strategies to shape the discourse on Hunger. This paper concludes by saying that global problems don’t always neatly into the paradigms of International Relations as such the paper has advocated a multi-perspective approach in dealing with Hunger. Finally, the paper has argued that a partnership between academia and the media has a lot of benefits that will aid in improving Hunger reports.
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