Avoiding Famine in Southern Africa: Lessons from IFPRI Research

Credit: IFPRI/ Alison Slack

Today more than 10 million people in southern Africa are threatened with famine, with the crisis being particularly severe in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The immediate causes of the food shortage are drought, flooding, and low levels of crop planting. However, what has made these countries vulnerable to famine is inadequate development policies and, in some cases, poor governance. Therefore, in mitigating the crisis, policymakers should design measures that not only provide relief, but which also lay the foundations for development. Interventions must be carefully structured and sequenced to generate the greatest possible short- and long-term benefits. Described here are policies, based on IFPRI research in Africa, that might mitigate the crisis and enable development in the long run.

Immediate relief

When a famine is already underway, governments and aid agencies must make food available to the regions and people most affected as fast as possible, even if some regions are difficult to reach. Food should be distributed to people where they live and the formation of camps should be avoided as much as possible. Hunger-induced weakness may prevent people from travelling to food aid sites. In addition, relocation to camps undermines household stability, thus also impeding future development. Assistance should be aimed at the neediest; households differ in size, wealth, composition, and coping capacity, and food must be distributed according to these characteristics. Otherwise, large families, households headed by a female or an elderly person and those that have no additional coping mechanisms will suffer. To prevent discrimination, governments and aid organizations must use standardized, formal and transparent rules for distribution, to ensure that the most disadvantaged households receive the aid they need.

Governments also need to increase or maintain public and clinical health services during famine recovery. Most of the deaths that occur during a famine are due to disease not starvation. Undernutrition makes people more susceptible to disease, and existing health services are often unable to take on an added burden. In sum, immediate relief interventions should be designed to save lives and prevent instability as rapidly as possible, so that further measures, for true recovery and development, can be implemented.

Recovery

Once the crisis phase is over, or in areas where food shortage is not acute, the government could implement labour-intensive public works projects for the poor. These programmes offer short-term income to the poor and serve as a safety net. They also create assets by developing or improving public goods important for future food security, such as infrastructure and the natural resource base. In order to target poor people, wages should be set relatively low. Administrators could also set minimum quotas for female participants or limit the number of participants per household, to ensure that the benefits are distributed across poor households. During recovery, when food is still expensive, payment in public works programmes could be in the form of food. This would also work well in areas with poor infrastructure or far from markets. Cash wages are most appropriate in urban areas where food is available but incomes have declined.

Credit: World Bank/Curt Carnemark

However, food aid distribution will need to be continued for destitute households. Many households, especially those headed by females or the elderly, or in which working-age adults have AIDS, do not have an adult who can go out to work in public works schemes. A lack of food distribution or other programmes for these households, especially for their children, would lead to a significant decline in human and social capital for future development.

Governments could also encourage the commercial agriculture sector through incentives to implement employment schemes for the rural poor. If food prices are high, these large farmers could purchase staple grains from the public sector and provide them as wages for work. Greater private-sector participation in distributing food could also help alleviate local food shortages. For example, government food marketing systems, such as Malawi's ADMARC, could have private sellers supply government-purchased grain in areas that it does not serve. While the recovery measures discussed above are intermediary steps in famine mitigation, they can, if planned correctly, make critical contributions for achieving food security in the long-term.

Initiating development

Southern Africa's vulnerability to famine stems largely from low agricultural productivity, mainly owing to soil degradation and low fertilizer application. Once some stability has returned, short-term agricultural development measures are required, for example provision of basic agricultural inputs, such as fertilizer, seeds, or equipment. The inputs must be introduced at the right time in the year and appropriate for the agroecological conditions, farming practices, and the household's human and physical resources. New inputs or assets should be easy to use or require little training. The governments also need to provide incentives to small farmers to produce staple food crops. Otherwise, if small farmers believe that commercial crops will bring higher incomes, they may not plant staple crops. These policies, however, should not place an undue burden on the public sector.

Finally, there is a need to develop institutions to improve farmers' access to and use of new inputs and assets. Strengthening input markets would help to meet the demand of small farmers and create the basis for long-term development. Affordable credit programmes for the rural poor should also be established. Credit would allow households to purchase inputs, buy emergency food, or replenish assets such as livestock. Finally, agricultural extension systems for small farmers must be improved to ensure that new inputs and credit are used productively.

Famine prevention and long-term food security: the larger transformations

Famines signal the failure of institutions, organizations, and policies. Without long-term policies a country will remain vulnerable to famines. Such policies must encourage agricultural growth among small farmers, infrastructure development, environmental rehabilitation, and more effective markets. Well-developed famine early warning systems and emergency mitigation measures are also needed. To bring about these changes, countries must develop institutional capacity in design and implementation.

Finally, sound governance is absolutely essential. Without transparency, accountability and participation in governance, and a public commitment to end hunger, investments in development will have little impact.

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