Food Prices Anger: How Equipped is the African Farmer?
Published on 8th February 2011
A news item pointed out that authoritarian regimes are stockpiling food to fight off public anger (The Telegraph; accessed January 31, 2011). This is a clear departure from the traditional stockpiles of batons, teargas, bullets and armored vehicles to fight off riots. Increased food prices; cost of living and suppressed anger due to systemic injustices ignite passions among people to seek to demolish systems that reinforce exclusion from affordable livelihoods. Recent developments in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen indicate that teargas; bullets and threats of death cannot stop the public from scaling walls of palaces to overthrow governments.