In response to USA pledges $1,5 million in poverty eradication: I think most of us are familiar with the saying: “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for lifetime.” I am not saying donors must stop feeding starving people, but I am saying it is best they apply ways so they won’t have to continuously donate food. Sometimes these donations can be used to put political and economic pressure on our country. Zimbabwe may end up owing a donor country or organisation a favour. Among donor countries, sometimes aid is not considered a gift, but a loan in disguise that most poor countries will struggle to repay.
Pardon Makunike,Our Reader
The best way to help the people of Zimbabwe as of now, is to stimulate our economy. For example, if an investor opens a business in Zimbabwe, it would create jobs and these would permanently help pull poor out of poverty. Though this cannot happen to everyone overnight, but for the meantime, some of our people are hired in neighbouring countries and even abroad, where jobs are plentiful and they send money back home for the survival of dependants. At the same time a lot of sectors would appreciate an influx of legal workers such as mining and farming.
These donors must give towards agriculture in Zimbabwe to improve the quantities of food available. And not only donating to large-scale farming projects, but peasant farmers should also benefit as demonstrated by our government which leads by example even though most parts of the nation are hit by drought over and over again. In addition, to encourage international aid for our industrial development, infrastructure and our natural resources developing projects, of course, can create more jobs and improve our infrastructure. We must be careful to balance the scale, because it may be a condition of the investment that the projects will be wholly owned by foreign companies and that a proportion of the resources or profits will be sent abroad.
As much as our people benefit employment-wise, we must bear in mind that this will only benefit employers more than employees. Sometimes foreign aid can bring long-term problems as well as increasing the dependency of our nation, but let’s take into consideration the advantages.
As much as we appreciate aid, as it can rebuild livelihoods and housing after disasters, it may not reach the people in need. Corruption may lead to local politicians using aid for their own personal or political gain. Some people will be given food aid and others not and that’s when we will realise that people in need of food aid sometimes can afford to make their own food.
