| | | | | | | | | | | | Opinion Piece: | | | To Fight World Hunger, Bring Business to the Table
| | | | By John Weakliam, Chief Executive of Vita | | | |
While Ireland has a well earned reputation as a leader in providing aid and as a champion of the world’s hungry, questions are being asked about the effectiveness of current methods of tackling global hunger.
John Weakliam, chief executive of Vita, advocates for a new approach which enables communities in Africa to adopt initiatives which support sustainable living. He further calls on Irish business to help change how hunger is tackled and says that business has much to gain in the process.
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For more than forty years, the West has applied only fractions of the money spent on food aid towards helping African families grow more food and sustain themselves. They preach the philosophy of “teach a man to fish and he’ll feed himself for a lifetime”, but they fail to put it into practice. In my experience of working in sub-Saharan Africa for thirteen years, most money reaches its target. The problem is that the nature of that aid does not promote sustainable development. The traditional approach of hand outs and top down service delivery serves merely to contain the problem of ongoing hunger, making the community aid-dependent, perhaps distorting the local market, and probably just postponing the day when another drought or disaster strikes.
Effective development in Africa is a complex and long term process. While well intended it is not as simple as putting a container of food or a tractor on a ship and sending it off to Africa, or charging off to build things. Neither should development be depicted using emotional messages and stark images which demean the dignity of Africa. There is a disconnect between the messages and fundraising of many overseas charities and the informed and disciplined programme management needed for sustainable solutions to hunger. This disconnect has undermined the noble mission of many organisations which now badly need help.
Africa has established ownership of its own development and expects aid to be aligned to its needs and to deliver results. Many African governments have an enlightened approach to development built on sound business principles – seek a return on capital investment, lead people towards self sufficiency, teach them to fish! The Africans are right and in such a context humanitarian aid must be accompanied by programmes to build sustainable livelihoods.
Like good business, good development requires a sound business plan with clear objectives, measurable results and sound management. A lean organisation with a defined core competence and efficient outsourcing can be of immense value as a partner in Africa. The key is to tap into Africa’s enormous wellspring of energy, talent and aspiration for a better life. In the same way that the starving Irish of the Great Famine were so wrongly portrayed, African families suffer the same out-dated stereotyping. African farmers know what they need, with educated and skilled government extension workers and research centres adding to that knowledge.
| | |  | | | | Eritrean mother Tsigereda (photo) encapsulates the change that can be enabled. Tsigereda was forced to walk miles daily to fetch fuel wood while smoke affected her health and she abandoned her vegetable garden. When she built a fuel saving stove and planted the moringa tree Tsigereda could then gather fuel wood locally, add micro-nutrients to her diet from the moringa and finally reactivate her vegetable garden. Now her family eat better, attend school and have a small income. And she did it all herself! |
| | Vita was established as an Irish relief agency under our original name of Refugee Trust in 1989. In the past ten years Vita has evolved into an agriculture development agency focused on building sustainable livelihoods for women and families in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Kenya. Vita’s new approach is encapsulated in one project in which 15,000 Eritrean women constructed fuel-saving stoves in their homes from local fabricated materials at a cost of €40 each, and then planted edible moringa trees introduced to Eritrea by Vita outside their homes. Moringa tree products are now advertised on national television showing that good community development can drive entrepreneurship. The fuel-efficient stoves not only tackle hunger but also reduce carbon emission providing a carbon offset trading option. The business element was crucial to enable the stoves and trees to be self-sustaining and to have a strategic impact across Eritrea, and Vita scored a grade of A for impact from the European Union for the stoves and moringa trees project.
Vita’s sustainable living initiatives have benefited hugely from the expert input and resources provided by Irish organisations and business executives. Senior executives from Teagasc and Coillte have brought know-how to enhance innovative agriculture, such as seed multiplication, drip irrigation and edible trees. Richard McQuillen, founding MD of Xilinx Ireland and Sun Micro has worked with Vita for the past two years introducing performance management systems, professional staff recruitment, training and development and inter-agency collaboration and partnership. In addition Irish Aid has provided not only multi-annual funding but support for organisational development and aid effectiveness, still Vita is looking to learn and gain through engagement with the business sector. |
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| | | The moral imperative for Ireland’s championing of the world’s hungry is clear, because we are contributing to their hunger. Our huge energy consumption adds to climate change and droughts, diminishing the food on African plates and inflating the price of their cooking fuel. Our market distortions then hike the prices that hungry countries have to pay to import food. Years of ill-considered aid have created a culture of dependency, which Vita is tackling in Ethiopia using a community led approach whereby villages collectively initiate self-development without any hand outs.
Irish companies can contribute to solving these problems. For example their initiatives could include: | | | | Support sustainable living initiatives in Africa which promote private enterprise as part of corporate social responsibility policy. | | Engage in a two way motivational learning partnership with a charity, providing learning on business disciplines such as marketing, financial or HR, while employees are exposed to how development programmes operate and change lives | | Link with an area in Africa to support in fighting hunger and climate change, involve management and staff, arrange visits and on-line exchange, to promote understanding of the links between Irish and Africa lifestyles | | Technical expertise to support research and learning in building sustainable living in Africa in such areas as improved stoves, edible trees and farming |
| | | | In doing so, Irish business can help to transform Africa. We know that such investment of innovation, energy and management will have a long term impact helping African communities adopt a sustainable living approach and put an end to their hunger | | | | Click here for more information about partnering with Vita... | | | | Or contact John Weakliam, CEO of Vita at: | | john.weakliam@vita.ie | | (01) 882 0633 | | | | Vita acknowledges the generous support of: |  |
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