An answer to Africa?

Watched a particularly harrowing report about Niger last night. As a scientist, it frustrates me greatly that people seem to refuse to address the basic ecological iussue; that famine is inevitable in a desert area, and most of Africa is a desert. There are too many people and not enough food - any environment has a finite carrying capacity (the amount of biomass it can support.) Food aid is a temporary stopgap. There really is only one solution - freely available birth control and compulsory education on how to use it, so people can control the sizes of their families, keeping the population below the carrying capacity of their environment. Thoughts? No doubt there will be Catholic objections..... and of course there will be technical problems with implementation but if we can ship thousands of tonnes of grain there, I am sure we can get some condoms there. Am I being naive? Has this even been tried before?