Debt & Future Development

Debt is an issue that has been a persistent for many countries and their growth. Since the pandemic many nations have faced even harder hardship in the development of their economies. A region in particular that has been impacted by this significantly is Sub-Saharan Africa. Unlike other places the debt to gdp ratio of countries in the region are fairly small. However, limits to borrowing and high interest costs put large burdens on their economies.

Countries often have to pick and choose what and how they solve issues. Often issues like climate change are not an immediate priority for nations that struggle to get electricity or clean water to households. Debt burdens have taken an larger amount of government spending for most countries.

For example recently at COP29 developed countries pledged $1.3 trillion dollars annually by 2035 to help finance developing nations clean energy infrastructure. While there has also been $300 billion pledged towards public finances the vast majority of funding comes from private means. These pledges however don't necessarily mean low interest and may cause debt servicing spending for developing countries to worsen overtime. That is, if these finances are used at all.

What exactly does that mean? And how exactly does this relate for Food Affordability? These are questions you might be asking yourself. These are important things to think about when considering other policies is seeing how countries are approaching these issues when it comes to funding future programs.

The majority of developing countries struggling to deal with food insecurity had low credit scores. If we use the pledges given for clean energy as an example we see that for many developing nations the finances they would be provided would eitherwise by unaffordable or would greatly hinder the development of their economies.

Being put in a situation where you need to choose between feeding your population and being put into more debt is a hard situation to be in. Unlike in the example in which countries can choose to invest in other forms of energy production, that isn't really possible in this scenario. Another issue is that funding and interest in these programs from other nations can be low. For the vast majority of developed countries the food security of another nation especially one on another continent from them isn't necessarily an issue.

Even for relatively basic development many developing countries are being forced into debt which they may or may not be able to repay. Not because they don't necessarily want to. But because the investments may not result in any form of significant economic gain which would be required for these high interest loans.This is especially becoming problematic in Africa where many countries are currently struggling to make repayments. As a result for many countries progress is stalling and in many cases reversing for some issues.

By the year 2050 the population of Africa is expected to double to 2.5 billion. Without improvements to food systems 350 million Africans are expected to be undernourished. As it stands currently the number of people sufferring from these conditions is increasing though it was decreasing until fairly recently. This is likely because of the historic underreporting of undernutrition. As more data has become available over the years and the methods for which the data is collected improves it isn't too suprising to see. So we can assume that overall, undernutrition rates were likely significantly higher and have been gradually decreasing to some degree. However funding has remained a constant issue in regards to this.

In this series we looked at ways governments have gone about addressing thes issues and the potential solutions which governments could use to address issues in regards to food insecurity and undernutrition. But the problems at their core are hard to solve for. The lack of available finances and funding to allow for the development of agriculture often aren't there or are unaffordable for countries. At the African Union's 4th Climate Summit, African Nations called out to the world for help in addressing the issue of inadequate funding.

The changes needed for future generations are often happening too slowly if they happening at all. African countries are hesitant to invest in agriculture due to the costs involved and the uncertain outcomes that will come with many issues like climate change. In the countries of South Asia we see how dealing with hunger can solve many of the issues related to health outcomes such as child mortality and how exactly they dealt with it. It's still possible to prevent the deaths of tens if not hundreds of millions of people. But funding for these issues often does not exist at the scale required to make these changes.

It's uncertain what the future can hold. But if nothing is done to help improve the conditions in many developing countries. With an increasing population and an unchanged or even possible a worsened landscape, many countries will run into issues that they will not be able to recover from without help. COP29 tells us a lot about the current financial landscape in the world in regards to the developing world, it is far from enough and large parts of the developed world are largely uninterested towards progressing it any further. But there is still time for change and move away from the current trajectory we're following.