Aid: Idea of self-help starts to gain momentum

The most overworked cliché of a decades-old development debate has been the Taoist saying that if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day, but if you teach him to fish you feed him for life. Frequently cited by leaders of the developed world to underline their commitment to helping the world’s poor help themselves, the dictum was nevertheless honoured more in the breach than the observance in a global aid system that relied heavily on handouts to the hungry in times of crisis.

Hunger pains

In his new book, Three Famines, Tom Keneally investigates mass starvations in Ireland in the mid-19th century and in Bengal and Ethiopia in the mid and late 20th century. Here he considers just how far hungry people will go to stay alive (..) The Red Cross and World Food Program estimate that the average healthy person needs 2010 calories of energy daily to do their normal tasks and resist disease. Yet one of the first coping mechanisms, from the cabins of Ireland to the huts of Bengal and the farmhouses and tuqals of Ethiopia, is to economise on the amount of food eaten, thus reducing the intake necessary for good health.