Is world hunger the product of nature or politics

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Is world hunger the product of nature or politics?

"Are you ready to start a revolution?" "Are you ready to change history?" The words of Madonna, yelled across Hyde Park in London, and witnessed by an estimated 3 billion people across the globe. (Live 8, Saturday 2nd July 2005, Hyde Park, London). However, 4 months on since Live 8 and it almost feels as though the revolution has been put on hold. The white wrist bands seem to have disappeared, Bob Geldolf's furious, yet passionate rants no longer fill our television screens and the media now has fresh news stories to follow.

However, people are still dying of hunger, Sub-Saharan Africa is still spending $30 billion dollars a year repaying debts to the world's richest countries and international institutions, and Africa still only shares 2% of the world's trade, despite making up 12% of the world's population. (www.data.org/whyafrica/checkthefacts)

According to the UN World Food Programme, only 8% of people who die through hunger do so in dramatic high profile emergencies, such as those in Ethiopia in 1984 and Niger in 2005. More than 850 million chronically hungry people live in the world today, most of them