Sir, The Make Poverty History campaign is based on the assumption that the majority of Africans would benefit from a Western-style export economy. Such an economy is highly profitable for the large international trading corporations owned by African or European elites, but not so good for the 70 per cent of Africans who still live on the land. In the name of debt relief, fair trade and development these people will continue to be uprooted.

Land-based, relatively self-sufficient communities, who by their very nature do not generate many financial transactions, are considered poor and backward. To the extent that they are allowed to stay on the land they are encouraged to produce mono-crops for export, rather than a range of products for local needs.

Does it really make sense for Africa to use her land and water to provide the West with flowers, coffee, cotton, etc? These products utilise the land and resources that have sustained rural communities for centuries. Even if fair trade projects seek to provide a better price for producers, they are still serving distant markets reliant on the whims of Western consumers, vulnerable to a glut in the market and currency fluctuations.

The majority of Africans would benefit from strengthening local economies to provide for the needs of their own people.

TRACY WORCESTER
infouk@isec.org.uk

From Miss Joanne Philpott

Sir, Illiterate people are powerless to progress from a hand-to-mouth existence. I believe the provision of free school meals to schoolchildren in rural Africa could transform the continent.

The vast majority of the incomes of resource-poor households is typically spent on food. The provision of free school meals would, in effect, enable school attendance to be a means of income generation. The child would no longer need to go in search of firewood to sell in the local market in order to eat. He or she would simply attend school.

Free school meals would encourage parents to send their children to schools, boosting literacy rates as well as knowledge on such pertinent issues as nutrition, sanitation, child care, child-spacing, improved agricultural practices and animal husbandry.

In the UK we had free milk until the late 1970s. To this day children from poor families receive free food at school. One decade of free school meals could transform Africa.

JOANNE PHILPOTT
(Aid worker)
Falmouth, Cornwall

From Mr Mike Cosgrove

Sir, Having picked up one of my sons from the last train home from Live 8, his first open-air concert, I propose that a quid pro quo for a gap year spent in Africa with an organisation such as Voluntary Service Overseas might be a refund of university fees. In that way enthusiasm from both young people and government could be harnessed.

MIKE COSGROVE
Faversham, Kent

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