ABSTRACT

When I raised money for Oxfam at school I first heard the proverb: ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’; it seemed a profound statement on the need for development and self-reliance, not handouts. But I have come to see it as an eloquent parody of all that is wrong with so much that passes for ‘development’. It begs important questions and is based on dubious assumptions.