Why you shouldn’t cry for famine-prone East Africa. In my 2005 Wall Street Journal article titled “Africa needs freer markets and fewer tyrants “ I argued that “Centralised state rule – incompetent at best – marked by corruption and sustained by aid, are the shackles that keep Africans poor. The only way to give food security to 200 million sub-Saharan Africans is to give them the tools, not to rely on yet more aid and government mismanagement,”. “Famine in Niger is no surprise – desert wastes, locusts and decades of Marxist rule keep it second-to-last on the world poverty list. Famine in the fertile climes of southern and eastern Africa, however, seems more shocking. The common thread among these countries is their economic profile: Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, Eritrea, Kenya, all lack economic freedom and property rights; all have economies mismanaged by the state and all depend on aid.