Professor John Staatz was drawn to MSU more than 25 years ago, but not just by the greenery of the campus or the growing student body.
Even then, MSU faculty members were working to decrease hunger in Africa, a project the agricultural economics professor said kept him tied to East Lansing - and to the faraway continent of Africa.
“It was one reason I came here,” he said. “I stayed on because of this.”
Last year, MSU President M. Peter McPherson convinced colleagues from universities across the country to hire a lobbyist to help increase aid to Africa.
“We did get the numbers up some,” he said. “That seemed like it really wasn’t enough. We still have the specific problem as to Africa, where the problem is the greatest.”
To make an even greater effort, McPherson will join the president of Mali, former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole and former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton at a conference June 26-27 in Washington, D.C., to unveil a long-term plan to fight hunger in Africa.
But the conference comes after years of McPherson’s personal experience with the issue. After graduating from MSU in 1963, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru. He led the U.S. Agency for International Development during Africa’s Great Famine and was responsible for Bank of America’s work in Latin America and Canada.
McPherson’s group, the Partnership to Cut Hunger in Africa, included measures for everyone, from students to researchers to workers in its plan.
It will include a call for research for higher-yielding crops, improved communication methods to rural areas, more education at every level and ideas to improve problems standing in the way, like poor roads, laws and economic policies.
“It’s natural for us to have taken this leadership role,” McPherson said. “We’re generally regarded as having the best African studies program in the country.”
As the assistant director of the African Studies Center at MSU, Yacob Fisseha said McPherson’s efforts will help the people of Africa and students in East Lansing.
“It opens world views to what’s going on there,” he said. “In some countries hunger has improved, in some it has worsened. This gives (students) firsthand knowledge. What they know here in Michigan could be helpful in Africa.”
Bread for the World, a group working to help stamp out world hunger, estimates more than 200 million people in Africa are malnourished - a quarter of the 800 million who go unfed around the world.
By involving fellow agriculture and economy-oriented professors and students in the endeavor, Staatz hopes to decrease that number.
“That’s a big target,” he said. “In our research programs, graduate students play a really big role. It’s a great opportunity for them. It’s what land-grant universities should be doing.”
Despite the plan to be released, Staatz said there is no concrete way to solve the problem - but there is room for improvement and hope.
“I can’t give you a number to say this is what we need to solve hunger in Africa,” he said. “This is an initiative that’s aimed at getting the public and the Congress and the new administration more aware.”
Jenny Bond, a human nutrition professor who also works with the United Nations World Food Program, said the government can only take the solution to world hunger so far without the help of universities like MSU.
“We have technical knowledge and experience with application that can be very, very important in these areas,” she said. “We go as the authorities and tell people what to do, but we really work long-term to develop (ways for) people within a country to do that themselves.
“Food security is one part, but the only way you’re going to have it long-term is if you have sustainable projects through education.”
Jamie Gumbrecht can be reached at gumbrec1@msu.edu.
