The "Perfect Famine" is the kind of famine that happens when everything that can go wrong does go wrong, either because of natural disasters or because of the activities of man. That's what is happening in the southern African country of Malawi, where bad weather, poor governance, and probably profiteering have combined to create a desperate situation.

Nurse Sister Modesta visits a village where she has heard that some of the families are running out of food. She knows the most vulnerable are the very young and the very old. "This one, he says he's a father of five children and he's unable to look after them because even him himself has nothing to eat, even to feed the children. He felt bad because of the wife and the children. They have nothing." They are living off maize husk which is usually only given to animals and chickens.

With a little rain the fields would be green and fertile. Farmers Charles Chawanthat explains: "Two, three, four, five years back the rain was good and we were, we were yielding much. Having no much crops in our area, the result is famine and hunger wherever."

Collins Magalasi of the Malawian Economic Justice Network says that it is a real problem. "The figure that we are hearing now are exceeding over one thousand now of people who have died simply because they didn't have anything to eat. So the question of hunger in Malawi is real. We had, of course, drought just before planting started. But then a few months later we had flooding and this flooding covered seven districts of the country, which happened to be the most productive districts."

But weather is only the first cause of the food shortage in Malawi. It's also man-made. Local NGOs say the government followed the advice of some Western donors to liberalise markets and let fertiliser prices soar to levels many farmers just couldn't afford. Worse still, last year - before it became obvious how bad the harvest was going to be - the government of Malawi sold off most of the country's National Grain Reserve.

Robert Jamieson, Editor of the Lilongwe Chronicle: "I think the problem is mainly a political one, one of strategic planning - or lack of strategic planning. We are meant to have strategic grain reserves in this country. Every year we develop it and we keep stocks to allow us to go through our lean months. Unfortunately those stocks were sold off and were not replenished - if they were replenished I don't think we'd be in the same position that we're in today."

EU Commissioner Poul Nielson is also critical: "We did not advise the government to sell the grain from that reserve and it looks a little short-sighted - to put it mildly - to have done it." Some big aid donors to Malawi are also concerned about allegations of dishonesty and tampering with the constitution. The Danes have even pulled out altogether, closing down their embassy. Some donors like the EU have made future aid conditional on assurances of good governance.

Professor Paul Krugman of Princeton University believes this is quite reasonable: "If you're going to say that we require that there be some indication that stuff is really going to be use to vaccinate children and not to buy furniture for the minister's palace, fine - I don't really think that's a hard issue. I think it's not that hard, given what we now know, to direct most of the aid in a way that actually does some good."

Veteran economist J K Galbraith believes that bad governance can justify international intervention. "When a country is destroying its own people, - starving them, denying them any of the fruits of development or progress - one has to examine the concepts of sovereignty; the defence of sovereignty, which can be useful, good in allowing people to have their rights to govern themselves, but can also be a defence for dictators and rascals... if a population is suffering, then there's a justification for intervention."

Some on the US Right, like Fred Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, believe in rigorous non-intervention: "The worst thing you can do is to allow a person to ignore the folly of their ways, because then they'll just be foolish in the future."

Malawians themselves like Collins Magalasi don't like being dependent on aid. "My wish is to see Malawi move out of this pathetic poverty. I just have a vision that maybe one day, one time we might have a country that is: 1) free of poverty; 2) with leaders - technicians that are accountable to Malawians, not accountable to outsiders; and 3) a country that is self-sustaining."

In the meantime, people are dying, and Sister Modesta says that food has just got to come from somewhere. "Since this hunger started I have never seen a truck from the government leaving maize. If nothing is coming these people are going to die. That's why everybody's scared."

TRANSCRIPT Read the full transcript of The Perfect Famine