Sir, – Right now, 20 million citizens from Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia are facing severe hunger due to cumulative effects of different shocks, notably climate change, internal conflicts, the war in Ukraine’s detrimental impact on food and fuel accessibility, the socioeconomic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, and destructive desert locusts.
This comes in the context of an unfair debt crisis that means governments in east Africa are also faced with unimaginable choices. Countries in east Africa are spending on average 36 per cent of tax revenue on repaying debt, which means governments have less money to invest in public services, such as health, education, emergency preparedness and response. This unfair and unjust debt burden has to be addressed.
Unbelievably, across the globe, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is advising governments to introduce more austerity measures, despite evidence that this harms or undermines economic recovery, pushing more people into poverty. This is particularly devastating for east Africa. Ireland can use its influence at the IMF to counter the austerity policies and cuts to public spending currently being imposed across Africa.
The continent of Africa loses over $50 billion annually to illicit financial flows. Drivers of illicit financial flows include harmful tax practices by multinational corporations, overly generous tax incentives, corruption, and criminal activities. Ireland must ensure that its own tax system does not allow multinational corporations and others to avoid paying tax in Africa. A new and more robust spillover analysis of our tax system is required, as well as addressing known tax avoidance mechanism.
This crisis in debt is compounded by the climate crisis, with east Africa experiencing one of the most severe droughts in memory.
Countries, like those in East Africa, with low levels of carbon emissions, are on the frontline of climate change and are facing unprecedented levels of hunger. Underpinning this is the reality that the current food system is degrading our soil, leaving us more vulnerable to climate change and damaging the planet. Chemical fertilisers, a key component of industrialised farming systems, require large amounts of fossil fuels for their production and contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.
We need policies that invest in smallholder farmers and a large-scale adoption of agro-ecology.
Ireland must act now, not just with much needed funding for those currently on the brink of starvation, but by looking at our policies and practices more broadly to see where we can use our influence to seek this transformation. – Yours, etc,
KAROL BALFE,
Action Aid Ireland,
Dublin 1.