Solving Hunger in Malawi

Folks, I just want to let you know what we're up against...

On March 26, I received a letter from the USAID Department exec. heading up the outpost in Malawi, Africa. For those who don't know where Malawi is, (and I sure didn't until I Google mapped it...) it's north of South Africa on the east side of Africa, just west of Madagascar Island.

Please read the PDF document of the letter I received. Basically, this guy said we have no chance in hell of getting any funding because we're too small, not rich, not smart and not organized. In other words, obtain funding from somewhere else, solve the world hunger crisis with your own money, and when you do find a solution, you'll still be too dumb to help us out here in Africa. I almost expected him to compare my lineage with the baboons residing in neighboring Madagascar. But thankfully, he spared me that one insult.

I did some checking on the status of the people of Malawi and found some interesting things.

1. There are over 12 million people residing in Malawi, even though it is relatively small in terms of geography. So it's very crowded.

2. About 5 million residents are on the brink of starvation at any point. That's about 40% of the nation.

3. In 2005, the World Monetary Fund came up with a brilliant game plan for Malawi, which the local government quickly adopted. It seems that most of the residents of Malawi were farmers at that point - it was their primary occupation, since jobs are scarce and there simply was no money. So people grew food to live on. The WMF decided that it was too costly for Malawi farmers to grow their own food, and it was cheaper to simply buy the excess food that South Africa was producing. So they quit subsidizing farmers in Malawi and told everyone to simply buy their food from South Africa.

Well, lo and behold, now that the Malawi farmers weren't growing food, they had nothing to sell, so they had no money to buy food. The big difference now is that they simply aren't getting any food at all, except for humanitarian aid.

Then along comes World Hunger Team and offers them a permanent solution to growing food right there in Malawi, at very little cost. And the head of our government aid outpost - the guy responsible for dispensing millions of dollars in US funds to make a difference in the region - thinks that creating a sustainable way to grow food is a bad idea... go figure.

I'm somewhat expecting that the government's next response is to order home delivery of steak dinners from Morton's Steak House for 5 million people in Malawi. And repeat the order every day for the next 3 years. That's one way to use up the grant money and feed people.

Sorry, folks. I had to vent. It just seems that sometimes, ideas are not given any credence until you prove them out. And nobody wants to invest in good ideas, only proven solutions that somebody else has funded in the first place. Who knows, maybe someone will fund us just because our idea makes good sense. We can hope!