Fighting poverty: Getting value for money from foreign aid

WHEN a country is full of food, and exporting it, there can be no famine,” smoulders Hector Malone in George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman. It was “starvation” that killed 1m people and sent another million to pack their bags and emigrate. Not famine.

Shaw was writing about the years 1845-48, but his words strike as much relevance in 2013.

Just as in “Black ’47”, when up to 4,000 vessels steamed and sailed from Irish ports laden with grain and livestock for Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, and London, there is enough food for everyone to eat today. We live in a world of plenty, one where the number of high net-worth individuals grew by 5% in 2012.