Today is World Food Day. There are 967 million people living below the hunger line.
In one of DFID’s splendid new blogs, Howard Taylor, Head of DFID Ethiopia , emphasizes the need for greater agricultural production:
In the long-term, development assistance needs to prioritise agricultural growth and productivty, if we’re to make sure that in years to come everyone, no matter where they live, has enough to eat. In a nutshell, that’s what World Food Day is all about.
Today is a good day to remember Amartya Sen’s book Poverty and Famines, which was written partly about the the Ethiopian famine of 1972-74, and for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. It begins with this profound observation:
Starvation is characteristic of some people not having enough to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough to eat. While the latter can be a cause of the former, it is but one of many possible causes.
This is a thought of enormous importance. For most of the 967 million people who are hungry, the problem is NOT that there is not enough food, it is that they are too poor to buy it.
We should be cautious about pursuing a policy focused on increasing food production. Our goal should be to increase the incomes and wealth of those who currently live in hunger and other forms of extreme poverty, so that they can exercise entitlement to the food and other things they need. Increasing agricultural productivity is one way to improve the incomes of the rural poor, but it is not necessarily the best way, and so it may not be the way of reducing hunger.
Update: more here.
I’ve posted about the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness on our aidinfo blog.
A friend in a donor agency (thanks CK!) passes on the following:
The wisdom of Buzkashi riders, passed on from generation to generation in Afghanistan, says that ‘when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount’. However, in the UN and NGO community a range of far more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:
- Changing riders;
- Appointing a committee to study the horse;
- Arranging to visit other countries to see how others ride dead horses;
- Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included;
- Reclassifying the dead horse as ‘living impaired’;
- Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse;
- Harnessing several dead horses together to increase the speed;
- Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance;
- Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance;
- Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead, and therefore contributes substantially more to the mission of the organization than do some other horses;
- Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses;
- Preparing a workshop with paid attendants on the subject of Experience gaining in riding dead horses in post war setting;
- Preparing a second workshop on environmental hazards caused by horse shit, and the advantage on using dead horses since they do not shit therefore are of no hazard to the environment.
I’m very excited to have made an inaugural post on the new aidinfo blog. This is the website for the work we are doing to increase the transparency of foreign aid.
This RSS feed gives you an update of what is changing on the site – add it to your favourite feedreader today.
I’m impressed by the idea of the Welbodi Partnership, a charity supporting the Ministry of Health and Sanitation in Sierra Leone:
The Welbodi Partnership was established to support the provision of paediatric care in Sierra Leone, where child health statistics are the worst in the world.
The cool thing – as Tristan points out – is that:
they work directly with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation to improve the hospital, instead of running their own hospital, as many NGOs like to do. This way, they deliver services and build capacity in the country’s health system.
There are far too many NGOs who, for respectable reasons, set up parallel services. The result is duplication and waste, and foreign-funded NGOs often deplete capacity from already hard-pressed government systems. The Welbody partnership approach seems to combine the best of both worlds.
Does anyone know of other NGOs taking this approach?
Giving Back – The volunteers descend on Ghana
I found a travel blog website and zoned in on Ghana and the stories of this year’s volunteer troups. The diaries and accounts read just like a book. A book I’ve read so many times. The positive attitude reigns – despite being pick pocketed in a trotro, being food poisoned at the dump of a hotel, having local groups only participate in the great programs if they are paid to join in.
Rather sadly, there is something in this jaundiced look at volunteers from rich countries working in poor countries.
The one thing that most poor countries have in abundance is cheap, unskilled labour; so it is not clear how cheap, unskilled volunteer labour from abroad is going to help.
The main benefit of volunteering programmes appears to be for the volunteer: they get a life-enriching experience. They might also return home with a lifelong interest in development issues and internationalism.
Every day, about a 120 children come to get lunch at Beza le Hiwot, a day-centre at near the Merkato in Addis Ababa.
Their food is provided by Our Father’s Kitchen, set up a year ago by Yasser and Manal Bagersh who own a couple of restaurants here in Addis. Their kitchens provide food every day for these children, most of whom are living with HIV.
It costs 217.20 birr (about $20) a month to feed a child every day. A decent meal is an essential part of staying healthy for a child living with AIDS – the drugs make you sick on an empty stomach – and the simple provision of this meal enables these children to go to school. With this simple investment, Yasser and Manal are transforming the lives of these children.
They want to expand the programme and they are launching a pledge campaign. Yasser is setting up a website for people to donate; until then you can pick up a sponsorship form at The Lime Tree Cafe or email ourfatherskitchen@yahoo.com.
I’m in Tanzania accompanying my partner to the gathering of all the Marie Stopes Country Directors and honchos from headquarters.
These people are seriously impressive. People like me write policy papers, attend conferences, and have opinions about how things work, or should work. These people, by contrast, set up and run clinics – navigating their way through the challenges of logistics, bureaucracy, people management and marketing. They have all lived in some of the most challenging places on the planet, and all set about their work with an enthusiasm and optimism which is as infectious as it is inspiring. Real heroes.
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