I think you’re right, they see starvation in Africa as having a useful purpose.
However, I think it goes beyond even that. The real Greenies hate humanity in general and everything they do is directed at returning us to the dark ages, with their famine and disease, hoping that this will exterminate the human race altogether. While they may be considered “extreme environmentalists,” there are more of them than you think, and they have gotten a lot of power. IIRC, one of Bambi’s advisors referred to humanity as a “cancer on the face of the earth.” And I’m sure the NGO’s are stuffed with them.
Africa is just the first step.
Livius, I agree a high-profile sector of the environmentalist movement places the environment above the human race. If humans must die, “so let it be written, so let it be done.” They have been in dangerous positions of authority since the popularity of Paul Ehrlich in the 1970s, and now his co-author John Holdren is Obama’s science czar. We are in deep trouble.