The book crisis: Africa’s other famine

Extract

For the past three years the media of the Western World have been full of news about the great famine in Africa. The horrific pictures of the starving in Ethiopia or Mali have resulted in large sums of money being collected from the pockets of the well-fed rich of the first world for redistribution to the starving poor of the third. Bob Geldof’s Live Aid Concert was not only the most spectacular concert of any kind ever sponsored: it was the most successful one-off fund-raising event ever staged. So much money was raised that Geldof and his colleagues responsible for administering it could not spend it all immediately on supplies for famine relief and began to consider using some of the funds at their disposal for long-term developmental and research projects that would help avert future famines of the kind which still, alas, continue to plague some parts of the African continent.