2021 may be year of famine
On
By Aare Afe Babalola, SAN, OFR, CON
PRIOR to colonisation, hunger and famine were alien to most African countries as there was widely-acknowledged food sustenance.
Each household practised one form of farming or the other and consequently, there was enough to feed the family while the excess was exchanged by barter through some other forms of payment. This boom in food production had the effect of boosting the economy and therefore, the concept of begging for alms was totalling unheard of. There was no poverty, famine, or the incidence of begging in Africa. Lord Macaulay, in his address to the British Parliament on February 2, 1835, aptly remarked thus: