They slash and burn virgin forests and savanna grasslands, often replacing them with cash crops that leech life-giving nutrients such as potassium and nitrogen from the soil. Rapid population growth in burgeoning urban slums such as Lagos and Kinshasa has increased the pressure on the overtaxed soil. Erosion and floods are often the result. The land is lashing back. We cannot begin to make real progress in the battle against poverty and malnutrition in Africa until the problem of degraded soil is addressed.
Researchers see few easy solutions.
As long as civil wars and political upheaval are rife, with foreign aid money going first toward peacekeeping missions and refugee disasters, agriculture development will continue to be neglected. With the kind of governments and political problems Africa has been left with, there seems little possibility of food security ever being achieved. Others pin hopes on improving cooperation between scientists, Western donors, African governments and farmers. African researchers in countries such as Ghana and Kenya are developing ways of replenishing nutrients by using phosphorus fertilizer and native legume plants that return nitrogen to the soil. In Ivory Coast, agronomists are locked in a fight against time to provide alternatives to farmers who are obliterating the country's rain forests in a voracious search for rich virgin land.