Tufts participates in World Food Day

Africa should be "the world's wake-up call," Dr. Urban Jonsson, UNICEF's Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa, told about 30 Tufts students and faculty members via teleconference last Thursday. The teleconference was part of Tufts 20th annual World Food Day which aimed this year to increase campus awareness about issues facing Africa.

This year's World Food Day was titled "Collaboration or Calamity: Africa in Peril." It focused on the struggle of Sub-Saharan Africa and how to assist the continent in its fight against hunger, poor nutrition, poverty, and HIV/AIDS.

Jonsson's main message in his televised interview from Washington DC was that Africa is in worse trouble today than ever. The emergence of HIV and AIDS has lead to a diminished ability to cope with future crises effectively.

The results, Jonsson said, will be crippling. "First there will be the infection wave. Second, the death wave, and third, the orphan wave," he predicted.

According to Jonsson, studies have shown a positive correlation between nutrition and learning, and he stressed that calorie intake is not the same as nutrient consumption. In addition, due to the high death rate of adults due to disease, many African households are led by children.

Little of the money sent to African countries actually reaches the people due to what is known as the "top-down approach" - similar to trickle-down economics.

The solution must come from the younger generations, said Jonsson. Programs should also be driven by the community, known as a "horizontal change" or a "grass roots process."

The event was designed to alert the community to the challenges facing Africa that do not otherwise get much attention. "We're trying to raise the profile of the continent on and across campus. It's an effort to increase global citizenship," history professor Jeanne Marie Penvenne said. She has been in charge of the Tufts Africa Forum for the past three years.

"The point of this is raising the issue of the crises in general and bringing awareness to food security on campus," she said. "In the United States, we're in food up to our hip boots, but that's not the case around the rest of the world."

Senior Rachel Tulchin, who helped Penvenne organize the broadcast, said the most important goal of the afternoon was to increase understanding. "This is to make people aware of issues, to work together, and to take a stand," she said.

Penvenne called Jonsson's speech "a very rich presentation.

Following the presentation, participants debated the issue of governmental accountability and the role of the relatively recent gain of political sovereignty in African countries. Another topic of discussion was the differences between West and East Africa, geographically and culturally.

Participants pointed out the disparity between the media attention given to starving children in Africa and the Super Bowl.

Tulchin is optimistic that the event will have a positive outcome. "I hope undergrads take initiative and acknowledge that there are larger, global issues out there," she said.

The Tufts Africa Forum and the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy sponsored the satellite broadcast. Tufts was able to air the feed in the basement conference room of the Tisch Library. In previous years, World Food Day teleconferences have been broadcast to the Friedman School. Last year's the teleconference with Ray Suarez, a senior correspondent with the Jim Lehrer News Hour on PBS, focused on issues of hunger and poverty in rural areas.