The United Nations has launched a $500 million emergency fund to support work on humanitarian disasters. In a graphic depiction, the UK International Development Secretary Hilary Benn has told the BBC that the "world's reaction to disasters as similar to that of a fire brigade having to go round with a collecting tin to raise funds before it can put out fires."
But while this the availability of such a fund would allow the UN to respond more rapidly to emergencies, the need for collecting tins would be minimized if houses were build with fire-tolerant material. Take famine as an example. Africa's ramshackle agricultural systems are readily set aflame by routine famines.
Nearly half of the African countries are in need of food aid. It is evident from the magnitude and extent of the famine that food aid can only serve as a temporary solution with limited long-term impacts. What is needed therefore is to start the process of making the transition from famine relief to long-term agricultural renewal. This will require increased use of scientific and technological knowledge in agricultural production.
African economies historically have been associated with natural resources and raw materials. But contrary to this dominant image, African countries still suffer from chronic food shortages and recurrent famines. Such episodes often have been treated as ephemeral and requiring short-term responses through food aid. But their intensity and frequency have been rising, suggesting the existence of major challenges to the sustainability transition. These challenges also present major opportunities.
First, there is growing recognition that promoting African agricultural sustainability must be tackled in the wider context of economic modernization programs and not simply through local interventions. Secondly, such modernization will require considerable investment in the continent's capacity to utilize and generate new scientific and technical knowledge.
More fundamentally, it is important to frame agricultural sustainability in the context of local "innovation systems" and rejects the classical view of considering agriculture as a separate sector requiring unique policy interventions that are decoupled from the wider process of economic learning.
This is not to deny the centrality of agriculture in African economies. To the contrary, agriculture is a central locus for economic learning, requires the intensive use of new technical knowledge. This view has far-reaching implications for the structure and functioning of African governments as well as the nature of international development partnerships.
As the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, recently put it is report by the London-based Smith Institute, the "task now is to equip the poorest, through investment, with the capacity to compete, so companies can take advantage of trade with the rest of the world. But building capacity...must also be about investment in people and their education, skills and entrepreneurial potential."
