We reported in the World Disasters Report in 1996 on the refugees in Malawi camps who had an allocation of about 400 grams of food a day. If we had given them 350 grams as food and the equivalent of what it costs to move the other 50 grams in cash, they would have received in the equivalent of the 50 grams as much value as the 350 combined. You could have encouraged local markets, it would have been a very efficient transfer. I'm in favor of giving people a great deal more responsibility to sort out their own problems. Be realistic about what aid can achieve.
Aid is marginal, therefore it has to be catalytic, it has to empower people.
You do not empower people by doing it for them. You empower people by giving them the responsibility and standing well back and let them get on with it, and if they fall on their faces, they learn from that. In that sense, I'm hoping that we have a situation in the future where we have less white guys wandering off to hot countries, and perspiring a lot, and doing things for other people. We don 't need more movements of semi-skilled labor across the world. If we were so good at development, we would now have a range of strategies that were almost automatic.